Rialtas.net - Government 2.0

The Connected Rebublic is a community website, developed by Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group. The aim is to create a space where people with ideas can meet, share their thinking and link up with each other. The site is open to anyone who wants to get involved.

There are a number of very interesting presentations on Government 2.0 available for download from the site.

The New Zealand Government have just released their Draft Digital Strategy 2.0 the consultation period runs from April 14 to May 12 2008 at www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz There is also a wiki at this site which invites public collaboration on the strategy. http://wiki.digitalstrategy.govt.nz

Here are some excerpts from the draft:

“In the few years since the 2005 Digital Strategy, we have seen changes in the ways people communicate, interact, do business and experience their histories and cultures,” the draft strategy says.

“Today’s digital technologies are enabling new expressions of New Zealanders’ sense of identity and community on screen and online. New business models are emerging, disrupting the old. Citizen-centred transactions have the potential to transform government. Smart digital technologies are enabling us to do things faster but with fewer resources.”

The Strategy focuses on issues such as the emerging net-generation, the read-write web, digital broadcasting, digital culture,and legal issues.

(I note also that the public consulation wiki is using Screw Turn wiki which is the wiki solution we have decided to use here in Ireland for our own public consultation wiki- coming soon.)

Here is an outline of the NZ Digital strategy from the strategy website:

Vision
Creating Our Digital Future

New Zealand will be a world leader in using information and technology to realise its economic, social, environmental, and cultural goals, to the benefit of all its people.

The Digital Strategy is about how we will create a digital future for all New Zealanders, using the power of information and communications technology (ICT).

The Digital Strategy was launched on 16 May 2005 and is made up of three key enablers.

Find out more about the sections of the Digital Strategy
Content

Information made available through digital networks. “Information” is a broad concept that encompasses national heritage collections, government information, Māori language resources, research databases, traditional cultural products such as literature and history and new cultural products from the creative industries and entertainment, as well as relationships that can be conducted through online facilities (e.g. e-learning, online GST returns or Internet banking). The term also includes the information generated by government, businesses and community organisations.
Confidence

Developing the necessary skills at all ages, in all parts of society, to use and participate in ICT effectively. Such skills include functional and digital literacy and the ability to take part in an interactive electronic environment. Confidence also encompasses the dimension of trust in using ICT and addressing the challenges that may slow ICT uptake such as spam and electronic crime.
Connection

Affordable access to viable ICT infrastructure such as telecommunications networks, computers, mobile phones and other devices.

The Digital Strategy is about considering these three components together. Content provides the reason, confidence provides the skills and trust, and being connected provides the means. The Digital Strategy also recognises that businesses will have different drivers and needs from those of Government and wider Community groups. Our evolving Action Plan takes these differences into account.

More on New Zealand and Government 2.0

www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz

Harry McGee Reports in the Irish Times today that John Gormley, the Minister for the Environment, last night unveiled some of the key components of the Green Party Paper on local government which will be published in 10 days’ time.

Speaking at the opening of the Green Party’s annual convention in Dundalk, Co Louth, Mr Gormley said it would deliver the biggest reform of local administration since 1898.

Some excerpts..

Mr Gormley said the new measures, when implemented, would allow citizens to be centrally-involved in decisions taken at local level. “I want to see citizens given a say in budgetary decisions. There is no reason why the people should not decide what the spending priorities should be in their communities. I will be examining the increased use of plebiscites which would allow people shape major decisions to be taken by town, city and county councils.”

Turning to his plans for a petition system, he said it would allow people gather signatures on pressing local issues and present them to the local council. The council would then be compelled to debate and decide the issue.

 Link to Irish Times Article

(Requires paid subscription)

See also some of my earlier posts:

E-Democracy , E-Petitioning and Local Government

MySociety.org E-Petitioning System

Communities of Practice Website for Local Government Employees.

Excerpt From the editorial of the New York Star Gazette 16th March 2008

The power of public access has moved from using persistence and shoe leather to your fingertips and computer mouse. The transition is a long way from complete, but online databases, record keeping and search capabilities have the potential to open government records — owned by you the taxpayer — to anyone with a computer who wants to see them.
Public access best built around more online connections
The Internet can put records at the tips of taxpayers’ fingers, but only if officials have the will to do so.

Despite the legal right to most documents in New York state, there remains a disturbing attitude among some government agencies that public information is what they say it is. Either out of ignorance or arrogance, there are too many officials who believe the dispersal of public information is at their discretion.

That kind of attitude is wrong, especially when considering the principle repeated by Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York Committee on Open Government. All documents are presumed public unless officials can show that they fall into designated categories that allow the information to be withheld, Freeman says. We like that theory: public unless proven otherwise. More and more local government officials understand that and willingly provide public information even without the need for Freedom of Information requests, which can be time-consuming and totally unnecessary for information that is readily available.

With the ease of the Internet connecting the public to government, officials have seen the power of posting databases online that formerly would have been kept in bulky books tucked in a shelf in some office. Instead, anyone, whether the media or the public, can now access various records that open up government and actually take the burden off public employees by reducing paperwork and disruptive walk-in traffic.

Read more here… http://www.star-gazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/OPINION01/803160341/1004

The survey focused on public awareness of the Data Protection Act (DPA) and sought to see if people knew its provisions. Individuals were also asked if they had used subject access requests under the DPA, or an internet or credit search to check data held about them, and, if they had, what their experience had been. In spite of a high awareness of the DPA, and that one quarter of people have made internet or credit searches about themselves, only 4% were subject access requests under the DPA.

Yet the most important issue of those raised amongst adults questioned about the DPA was having the automatic right to correct data about oneself if it is incorrect: 77% said this is very important to them. 71% also indicated that it is very important to them to be asked for their consent if other organisations or Government departments want access to their data originally collected for another purpose. While two thirds claimed that it was very important to them to be aware of the names of organisations or Government departments that hold information about them and what it is.

In the wake of recent publicity regarding government held data loss, 57% of British adults indicated that it is very important to them that the handling of data by Government employees should be on a sliding scale of seniority - the more sensitive the information, the more senior the employee should be.

Read a summary here http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.18160

Or download the results here http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/dgs2008.pdf

Tom Watson MP Minister for Transformational Government, Cabinet Office

Below is an excerpt from the speech he gave at the Tower ‘08 conference on 10th March 2008.

You are all in this room today because you “get it”.

You know that the way that government configures public services is going to change beyond comprehension in years to come and you want to be part of it.

We all of us in this room understand the possibilities of technological advance.

Our challenge is to use it to make a difference to the lives of people we are all here to serve.

I began to understand the change going on in the world when I set up a political blog five years ago.

At the time it was seen as a radical act. People could not believe that I had opened myself up to such scrutiny and occasional daily abuse. I sometimes still wonder about that bit myself.

But the blog broke down the walls between legislators and electors in a way that interested me so I persevered.

Yesterday I read with regret the story of an anonymous civil servant blogger by the name of Civil Serf. Her bluntly written blog about life in Whitehall was taken down, after it came to the attention of the national press. Now, I’m not going to say that we should tear up the civil service code it’s very important that civil servants play by the rules, nor do I agree with everything she says, but surely a truly transformed government would be one in which speaking engagingly about life our public services would be far from newsworthy, and far from career wrecking.

When the MySociety people established the theyworkforyou web site, I began to understand how the old order of things was going to change.

Put simply, I began to understand the power of information.

So let me tell you where I stand.

I believe in the power of mass collaboration.

I believe that as James Surowiecki says ‘the many are smarter than the few’.

I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made and crucially for you in this room the way in which it is delivered - are going to change for ever.

People tell me that we are entering a post-bureaucratic age. I don’t accept that. It?s just old thinking - laissez faire ideas with a new badge.

The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.

And as Kevin Kelly says “the bottom is not enough”.

A post bureaucratic age misunderstands the idea of an enabling state, one that moderates collaborative activity for a shared social good.

The collaborative state still requires leaders and enablers, doers and thinkers. It still requires public services but services with boundaries porous to external ideas.

Read the full speech here

http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=1899

Photo By Jrawle from Flickr.

Interesting Series of blog entries and comments debating as to whether Civil Servant Bloggers in the UK should be governed by a set of blogging guidelines or whether adherence to the UK civil service code should be sufficient. This was all prompted by the recent posts of an anonymous blogger ‘Civil Serf’ known only as a 33-year-old civil servant who attacked the civil service for its lack of innovation and also highlighted incompetences regarding some of the UKs ministers. More on this here..

Tom Watson posted these suggestions on his own blog last Tuesday (11 March 08).

1. Write as yourself
2. Own your own content
3. Be nice
4. Keep secrets
5. No anonymous comments
6. Remember the civil service code
7. Got a problem? Talk to your boss
8. Stop it if we say so
9. Be the authority in your specialist field – provide worthwhile information
10. Think about consequences
11. Media interest? Tell your boss
12. Correct your own mistakes

Matt Wardman then continues the debate on his own Blog.

The Civil Service Code

The CSC is based on values not specifics, and as a result is both rather good and rather flexible. It seems to me that any blogging code should be based on a similar expectation and assumption of trust and professionalism - and should therefore be phrased in similar terms, rather than at a level of “do not use anonymous comments” (which are fine anyway if properly policed and can be beneficial - for example in a discussion of forced marriage).

The meat of the Civil Service Code covers, among other things:

* Integrity
* Honesty
* Objectivity
* Impartiality
* Political Impartiality

and I prefer those concepts, rather than a great fluff of detailed prescriptions and explanatory notes - whether brief or not. Civil Servants are grown-ups; treat them as such.

So my 10 recommended guidelines are in the next section.
The Blogging Code

1. 99.9% of Civil Servants are sensible and professional people of integrity.
2. Civil Serf is an exception in not behaving professionally.
3. Exception control for the 0.1% in this case should be by disciplinary action of the 0.1% under the Civil Service Code, not by creating guidelines for the 99.9%.
4. Blogging guidelines are only an unnecessary result of a need to be seen to take dynamic action.
5. A multiplication of guidelines like rabbits will only serve to generate more boundary quarrels, and waste more time in argument about whether the letter of the guidelines has been breached or not.
6. And then there will have to be a review of the guidelines to identify the weak points.
7. And a policy commission to evaluate the results.
8. And then there will be even more guidelines.
9. And they will have to be put under version control, and distributed to all the Intranets etc etc etc … sod it … go to 5 and continue in circles.
10. In summary - Ockham’s Razor just shredded the guidelines. Or the need for them. Just follow the Civil Service Code.

Required Action

Mr Milliband (or whoever) needs to issue a two sentence policy reminder:

You may write about your work on your blog, but must do so in accordance with the Civil Service Code, the “personal use of office computers” policy, and local policy. Discuss any specifics or questions with your line manager in the usual way.

Job done. Back to work.

And finally (unfortunately?) it seems that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, is to set out new guidance to civil servants to cover blogging and online social networks following the demise of the “Civil Serf” blogger, The UK Times has learnt…

Sir Gus will shortly issue guidelines to tell officials whether they can start up blogs or use social networking websites such as Facebook and YouTube, and even if they can change details on Wikipedia.

A Cabinet Office spokesman denied that the move was directly linked with the Civil Serf blogger, believed to work for the Department for Work and Pensions, who has embarrassed Westminster with her revelations about officials and ministers.

Read the coverage on Times online.

A new (free) report by the New Local Government Network in the UK arguing that e-petitions could become an effective tool in creating a constant dialogue between communities and their elected representatives, helping to maintain a conversation in between elections and engaging voters, particularly young people.

The paper identifies four key advantages for councils to introduce e-petitioning:

* To widen participation to include those who appear to be more disengaged:
the young and the those who are less well-off;
* To establish methods of ongoing engagement that give people the ability to voice their opinions with methods accessible to them and the ability to see the impact this has;
* To ensure methods of accountability and direct dialogue with representatives;
* To provide methods by which information is readily available and accessible.

It also argues that e-petitioning should become a formal mechanism within the local authority “Community Call For Action”, which allows local residents to raise concerns about persistent or serious problems in their area and which local councillors have a duty to respond to.

See also an earlier post on Downing Street’s E-Petitions site. (Open Source software available)

Link

Computerworld Blog Post by Mary Brandel Framingham on the necessity for CIO’s to take on Web 2.0

“There are kids coming out of school who can run circles around IT in terms of Web 2.0 technology,” Hayes says. “That makes it important to become more business-oriented so that we don’t become hindrances to getting business done.”

Gartner analyst Anthony Bradley foresees “a significant shift in power” within organisations. With free internet applications, web platforms and social software, “the consumer side of the world is driving most technology advancement, not enterprise IT”, he says.

The job of maintaining the perception of relevance — and possibly avoiding extinction — may require IT managers to take a close look at their current management styles and make some tweaks, especially if they’ve been working in IT for a while. “The main issue for CIOs is that they’re just plumb unaware [of consumer technology developments] or pretend it’s not there,” DePaul’s Kellen says.

Link

Lots of organisations are starting to clamp down on Internet usage within the organisation. It should be remembered however, that heavy handed IT security policies can demoralise and demotivate staff. The old adage, ‘treat people like children and they will behave like children’ comes to mind.

I know some people whom have had experience working in organisations where very strict internet access policies were implemented and where staff that would have formerly chosen to work late or perhaps whom would have worked through lunch if they could have just checked their personal email or priced a holiday or booked a ticket on ticketmaster etc.. instead went home. And not only went home in order to book their ticket or check their mail, but now also went home because their loyalty to the organisation was diminished and their motivation to work harder reduced.

Many young internet users are growing up using social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, they are messaging each other with messenger or Gmail chat, they are talking and video conferencing with Skype or perhaps even ‘meeting’ in Second Life. Very soon many of these young ‘net-genners’ will be in the work force and will expect to be able to communicate with Government and with business using the tools with which they grew up. If these tools and technologies are not available to government employees they will not be able to communicate effectively with their customers, the public. Similarly as ‘net-genners’ have grown up communicating through these ‘Web 2.0′ tools they are not likely to find working for a government organisation appealing if that organisation prohibits all of the technologies that constitute the infrastructure of ‘net-genners’ social and professional communications.

In addition to this many employees now already have broadband Internet access on their mobile phones and as laptops get cheaper (a brand new laptop in Ireland can be purchased for about 330 Euro at the moment) many employees will soon have an always-on internet enabled device available to them. An organisation today trying to restrict access to the internet is akin to King Canute commanding the tide not to come in. Rather than restrict, it would be wiser for organisations to create practical and realistic policies that enhance people’s working lives and make their jobs and communications easier and better.

For a practical starting point see the Irish Data Commissioners website:

Use of the Computer Network, E-Mail and Internet.

Private use of the Internet in the workplace and the monitoring of private emails pose certain challenges. A workplace policy should be in place in an open and transparent manner to provide that:

• A balance is required between the legitimate rights of employers and the personal privacy rights of employees
• Any monitoring activity should be transparent to workers
• Employers should consider whether they would obtain the same results with traditional measures of supervision
• Monitoring should be fair and proportionate with prevention being more important than detection.

The Data Commissioner’s Website lists their own policy in addition to providing guidelines on data protection and privacy on an organisations network.