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Featured postings and discussions
Creating a Transparent Policy Process
The attached 4-page document seeks to identify some of the key elements of an open policy-making process. Very interested in any reactions in particular suggested improvements!
Video: John Seddon to Scottish Finance Committee 'When you learn to study & manage value you drive costs out of the system'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/scotland/newsid_8630000/8630161.stm
Achieving Massive Citizen Involvement in Policy-Making
Today (March 22) UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a major speech on building Britain’s Digital Future which included a commitment to opening “the door to new ways of enabling people to influence and even decide public policy”. And of course this is also something the Conservative Opposition have committed to. So how do you do it? Well, any new citizen participation platform needs to extremely user-friendly – you need to be able to go there, find the issue y...
Lean and Systems Thinking in the Public Sector in Wales
Just wanted to share some academic research commissioned by the Welsh Audit Office and carried out by Cardiff University. Here's some of the blurb from the report. Cardiff University’s Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC) was commissioned to undertake an evaluation of systems thinking in the public sector on behalf of the Wales Audit Office as part of its programme focusing on efficiency and the constrained public sector financial environment. The Wales Audit Offic...
An Experiment in Open Government or What a Brave New UK Government Might Do
Problem statement: Governments have improved consultation processes and experimented with other ways of getting citizens involved in policy-making, but policy-making is still seen as a black box that people feel excluded from. Also despite government efforts to listen more to outside voices including frontline public sector workers, the process of agreeing a change package can encourage a bunker mentality where potential problems (or implementation improvements) are missed in the dri...
The idea of a Europe 2.0
The 5th E-Government Ministerial Conference held in Malmo, integrated in the Swedish Presidency, reinforced the strategic importance that the new tools of a more transparent, capable and flexible Government have in the consolidation of the trust of citizens in the role of the State. As Dan Tapscott clearly said, “there is no more time for the lack of capability in a society where the State must be the central enabler of Trust and Ambition for Society”. That ´s it. In...
A Public Sector Where Digital Natives Thrive
Digital Natives (people who have grown up in a connected world) have different attitudes, approaches and habits than those in preceding generations and will soon be a major part of society’s workforce. How does the public sector need to change to attract these people and provide them with a working environment which will let them fulfill their potential? This session will compare and contrast Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, and Digital Skeptics and explore how the public sector mig...
Guidelines for social media in the public service
There is an interesting discussion going on at the moment as part of the blog by the Australian Government Task Force on Government 2.0 (of which I am a member) about the best way to offer useful guidance and support to public servants wishing to explore the potential of social media and online engagement. I'd urge you to have a look and perhaps contribute your perspetives and insights. The thread includes some interesting and predictably challenging insights from Garnter's Andrea DiMa...
Mapping Participatory Budgeting and e-Participatory Budgeting
This is still work in progress. I have been trying to map participatory budgeting and e-participatory budgeting initiatives across the world.There are many more e-participatory budgeting initiatives to be inserted, as well as offline initiatives. The e-PB initiatives included so far are highlighted in red color. If anyone here at TCR can think of any cases to be included or would like to collaborate in this effort, please let me know. Any suggestions on how I could make this map more ...
eParticipation beyond political topics?
Right now we are thinking eParticipation mainly as a tool for political or administrative issues. But why stop there? eParticipation tools could be used any other area of discourse which needs the involvement many participants. One example would be the development of long term strategies which affect a large population of a region. Adaptation to climate change is one of these large scale challenges and the Klimzug-Nord project in Germany tries to make use of eParticipation to tackle it. O...
Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency
This is an early version of a whitepaper I am working on about the Obama administration's open government initiatives. I realise that we are all waiting with bated breadth for the transparency directive that is due in the next couple of weeks, but I would be interested in feedback on the paper in the meantime. I do think this year Nobel Peace Prize winner :-) has done a good job in moving the debate forward in this area, but I think there is still plenty to think about and a lot more that nee...
Public Services 2.0 in Europe - the story continues
David Osimo and I are continuing with our open declaration adventure which is teaching us a great deal while also hopefully have some kind of an impact! We have now got a declaration which I think looks pretty good. It is still open for comments, so feel free to give your reaction in a comment on this blog or on http://eups20.wordpress.com/draft-declaration/ We will also do a more detailed supporting document which I will share here for your input in due course. However, the other issue...
Inky Fingers - the Perils of Collaboration
As part of the European Public Services 2.0 initiative that I am involved in, we used the mixedink tool, but we had quite a few problems. The creators of the tool were very helpful and clearly if we choose it, it was because we (and in particular me) were very impressed with the idea behind it and the way it was developed. You can see the output from the exercise here and my initial comments on that output and next steps here. Interestingly, it looks like we will now move to a conve...
What does Europe need to do to lead the way in Public Services 2.0?
My impression is that we have made huge progress in the last 18 months in terms of the public sector taking on board Web 2.0 approaches and Web 2.0 tools. There have been plenty of great initiatives in Europe and the election of Barack Obama has prompted an impressive upswell of activity in the United States. But (and I am sure you knew there was a but coming) there is still a huge way to go before these new approaches become mainstream. As it happens, the European Union is in the middle of ...