msweeks

Recently, msweeks...

• created Guidelines for social media in the public service over 3 years ago.

  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...

• created easyCouncil over 3 years ago.

  This story in from the UK: Conservative-run council adopts budget airline model as part of an efficiency drive A Conservative-run council is using the business model pioneered by budget airline such as Ryanair and easyJet in an attempt to reduce public spending. Barnet council plans to allow residents to pay charges in return for priority service as part of "a relentless drive for efficiency". Householders, for instance, will be able to pay a surcharge to jump the queue for planning cons...

• created Public Services 2.0 over 3 years ago.

  Everything is "2.0" these days.  Maybe too many things.  We might well be reaching the point where "2.0" can claim the dubious honour of joining terms like "strategic" and "transformational", words whose often subversive meaning is being steadily eroded by a mixture of laziness and cynical co-option by those dedicated to everything except what those words really mean in order to defend the status quo. But this recent piece from renowned UK thinker and provocative analyst ...

• uploaded a PDF file: Govt 2.0 Briefing Paper over 3 years ago.

  This is the report from Public Sphere #2, convened by Australian Senator Kate Lundy and her office in Canberra at which the Ministerial Task Force on Government 2.0 was launched (www.gov2.net.au).  The report is one of the best compendiums I've seen of the issues and ideas that are now crowding onto the Govt 2.0 agenda.  Some nice 'mind map' summaries too of the issues and main topics covered during the day. The report was itself crowdsourced ...35 speakers on the day, 170 people ...

• created Social media is subversive over 3 years ago.

  In case we didn't already know (and most of the people who read this site probably do), this brilliant little article from Federal Computer Week in the US succinctly summarises why the applicatoin of Web 2.0 to the business of government threatens to be be so subversive ( but in a good way, of course). Have a read - http://fcw.com/Articles/2009/06/08/feature-social-media-government.aspx?p=1 - and see why they have picked these 5 principles: Take control by giving up control keep the f...

• created Nothing stays still in cyberspace over 3 years ago.

  Just read this from ReadWriteWeb: How fickle are kids these days? Just when all the grown ups started figuring out Facebook, college and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. There are more Facebook users ove...

• created Open Government over 4 years ago.

  Will be attending the 2nd Public Sphere Camp in Canberra on 22 June, being organised by Senator Kate Lundy, a Senator in the Australian Parliament (http://www.katelundy.com.au/) and by a group of supporters in the Govtr2.0Group in Canberra. http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/05/29/public-sphere-2-open-government-policy-and-practice/ Have a look at the invitation - the event will be streamed and there will be oportunities for virtual as well as physical engagement on the day

• edited Is the Web making us stupid? over 4 years ago.

  In a continuation of a familiar theme (cf the debate between David Weinberger and Andrew Keene), this rather dispiriting analysis from ReadWrite Web caught my eye: Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid What are you doing? How about now? Has anything changed since you started reading this blog post? Every story has a who, what, where, when, and why - but the event-driven nature of the social Web may be putting such a premium on broadcasting about what we're doing, that software designed to help us ...

• edited Is the Web making us stupid? over 4 years ago.

  In a continuation of a familiar theme (cf the debate between David Weinberger and Andrew Keene), this rather dispiriting analysis from ReadWrite Web caught my eye: Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid What are you doing? How about now? Has anything changed since you started reading this blog post? Every story has a who, what, where, when, and why - but the event-driven nature of the social Web may be putting such a premium on broadcasting about what we're doing, that software designed to help us ...

• commented on Is the Web making us stupid? over 4 years ago.

  Sorry - forgot the URL http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/activity_streams_poetry_or_nihilism.php

• created Is the Web making us stupid? over 4 years ago.

  In a continuation of a familiar theme (cf the debate between David Weinberger and Andrew Keene), this rather dispiriting analysis from ReadWrite Web caught my eye: Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid What are you doing? How about now? Has anything changed since you started reading this blog post? Every story has a who, what, where, when, and why - but the event-driven nature of the social Web may be putting such a premium on broadcasting about what we're doing, that software designed to help us ...

• created Australia's eGovt awards over 4 years ago.

  A good overview of the 10 finalists and winners at this year's eGov awards Down Under. http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/better-practice-and-collaboration/e-government-awards.html Without in any way wishing to diminish the value and success of the winners, it struck me that all of them, except the YouthCentral site in Victoria perhaps, were very firmly in the Government 1.0 camp.  No signs yet, at least in these kinds of competition arenas, of ground breaking work in the social ne...

• created Tipping point? over 4 years ago.

  In the constant battle to determine whether all of this online stuff is "fad" or "future", two more bits of evidence. In a provincial parliament in Malaysia last week, the Speaker was dragged from the chamber by irate opposition members anxious to effectively stage a coup, of sorts.  Normally, we'd hear little and know even less about this democratic ding-dong.  But what happened?  Several people Twittered the event as it happened, pictures were uploaded and the blogs fired up....

• commented on Systems Thinking and the Case Against Benchmarking over 4 years ago.

  Copying undermines learning?  Not necesarily or at least not in all circumstances. Depends whta you want to learn and posibly whta you mean  learning in the first place.  I'm not sure benchmarkng, if it's done properly, is about copying.  It's about setting, and hopefully, raising standards.  Mind you, done badly (which is the argument here I guess) it can get in the way if people interpret a benchmark as a standard to meet, rather than a quality to surpass.

• created Calling all social innovators over 4 years ago.

  I've written the first post in a blog we've kicked off in Australia on Open Forum around the development of the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX). Here's the URL - http://www.openforum.com.au/content/connecting-social-innovators There's a link to TCR in the piece so hopefully we'll get plenty of cross-pollination from the various communities of interest.  "Our ambition is to create a platform that makes it easier for innovators to connect, communicate and collaborate. ...

• uploaded a PDF file: Report on Web 2.0 in Govt - better than most over 4 years ago.

  This is a brief extract from a report I've just received from one of the Asia-Pac colleagues about government and web 2.0.  My heart increasingly sinks when I get these reports as many of them are beginning to sound very predictable and shed steadily less light on these topics.  But this one is unusually literate and insightful, I think.  These brief headlines from the summary will give you a flavour for the report's tone.  You might find it worth a quick review...  ...

• commented on The Eight Rungs of Citizen Participation over 4 years ago.

  Shelly Arnstein's work on the ladder of participation is classic and, therefore, timeless.  I used it extensively in my earlier Masters work on social capital and an idea called 'place management', popular at that time in parts of Australia as a version of the 'joined up' government thesis. Arnstein's insights are disruptive to the extent they challange many of the more comfortable concepts of consultation which, for some politicians and bureaucrats, pass for citizen engagement.  Y...

• commented on NZ justice system utilises facebook over 4 years ago.

  So, the revolution continues, one crazy judge at a time! Brilliant BTW, how is it possible to be 'effectively' someone's father.  Either you are or you're not...

• created Read this, and weep... over 4 years ago.

  By Tom Steinberg on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 To: Anyone thinking of running any reasonably developed country, any time soon. Preamble The most scary thing about the Internet for your government is not pedophiles, terrorists or viruses, whatever you may have read in the papers. It is the danger of your administration being silently obsoleted by the lightening pace at which the Internet changes expectations. I’m not going to give examples of this change, others can do this far be...

• commented on A Touch of Classics on Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  Terrific stuff - and strong resonance I think with some of Yochai Benkler's writing about the "wealth of networks" and the ability of some of these new social networking tools to fulfil exactly this same capability of harnessing dispersed individual and group knowledge and experience into something useful at a collective level without creating vast centralising mechanisms. It's also strangely resonant, I think, of some of Hayek's writing about the genius of the market (when it works well!) w...

• commented on Fit for purpose..the machine is broken over 4 years ago.

  All good points.  I'm sure that no single report, from wherever it emanates, is going to comrehensively deal with these difficult issues that basically come to grips with the real question - to what extent is the civil service ripe for some real institutional innovation?  My guess is, not terribly originally, more than its reflexive defenders assume and less than its headline-grabbing critics might like us to believe.  Just by the by, I can't help offering at least a mild defen...

• edited The Internet is the enemy over 4 years ago.

  This from a comment by Australian commentator Clive Hamilton...I'm not sure if I agree with him, but the issue is real enough I guess: It is commonly believed that the advent of the Internet has been a boon for free speech. No longer do the mainstream media act as the exclusive gate-keepers of public opinion. Anyone with a point of view can set up a website and start publishing. Online news and analysis sites like Crikey, New Matilda and On Line Opinion have proliferated. D...

• uploaded a PDF file: Fit for purpose..the machine is broken over 4 years ago.

  This might be one for my UK colleagues in the first instance.  A new report from UK public sector think tank REFORM suggests that the Whitehall bureaucracy is no longer 'fit for purpose'.  This is an extract from its executive summary: The systemic weaknesses in Whitehall have built up over the years and are now of critical proportions...the reasons for this are entrenched – the culture and structure of Whitehall rewards risk avoidance and punishes innovation. One public se...

• created The Internet is the enemy over 4 years ago.

  This from a comment by Australian commentator Clive Hamilton...I'm not sure if I agree with him, but the issue is real enough I guess: It is commonly believed that the advent of the Internet has been a boon for free speech. No longer do the mainstream media act as the exclusive gate-keepers of public opinion. Anyone with a point of view can set up a website and start publishing. Online news and analysis sites like Crikey, New Matilda and On Line Opinion have proliferated. D...

• commented on Who should run the U.S.? over 4 years ago.

  As Cisco colleague Peter Gruettern put it in another thread on this site, technology+compassion+human wisdom.  It's a compelling cocktail. I think we're all agreed that a kind of simplistic techno-democracy is not what we're seeking.  Rather, the consistent thread is about the need to make 'the system' more responsive, although we're not always clear about whether that means politics, the bureaucracy, the regulatory process or some combination of al of those, and more. I thin...

• commented on Who's in charge? over 4 years ago.

  Fabulous.  Yes, facile and cheap shots and undergraduate debating stuff in some ways but awkward and unsettling questions and implications too that are presumably designed to make it impossible to fob it off as mere posturing.  This, of course, is the stuff of political debate, not all smooth and sophisticated and informed by gobs of political science theory and government experience but just stabbing, difficult, clumsy questions that are important.  Who is in charge?  He...

• commented on Clay and the Wisdom of the Crowd over 4 years ago.

  Always good to go back to the original text...sometimes these famous lines, like 'wisdom of the crowd' take on a life of their own with little resemblance to their original intent.  My take on Surowiecki is the idea that, when you are looking for insight, ideas and innovation, the wide you throw the next the more likely you are to stumble across the spark of imagination or simple insight you need.  Someone once described innovation to me as "the collision of the unfamiliar".  S...

• created Blogging advice from the US Airforce over 4 years ago.

    Extract from Public Strategy...interesting approach http://strategytalk.typepad.com/public_strategy/ The US Air Force may seem an unlikely source for good guidance on blogging - but they have come up with something thoughtful, well organised and on one piece of paper, which are attributes not to be sneezed at. Found from Global Nerdy (who also offers a PDF version) via Jeremiah Owyang.

• commented on Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement over 4 years ago.

  Like they say, consultation is an unnatural act between non-consenting adults!  The truth is, as Craig would know from his experience in Canberra, the underlying cultural and attitudinal shifts are the real obstacle.  Paul's idea though seems to make sense - find a couple of agencies and/or Minister willing to play a small 'champion' role and get some change happening at the edge.  I'm keen to use the Richard Allan work on Power of Information, which caused such a positive stir...

• commented on Collaboration Has Become the Building Block for Productivity and Growth in Government over 4 years ago.

  Interesting point - i suspect that, in many countries, the potential resistance to the collaboration model that Gerald has outlined, and its implications, could well be much fiercer than we think.  Perhaps the evolution of the model will be accelerated to the extent the discussion more openly engages the potential risks and how they might be confronted.

• created Social Media 2009 - time to grow up over 4 years ago.

  The geekier ones amongst you may already have come across this story from the ReadWriteWeb site about 10 Ways that Social Media Will Change in 2009 - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_social_media_will_change_in_2009.php Couple of quick extracts: But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie. Meaning and connection -- two key anchors of all things social media -- are corroding by t...

• created Insurgent parents - scary stuff? over 4 years ago.

  If you are a teacher or an education policy maker, this story from the US will be very unsettling.. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012904176.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter Headed "well connected parents take on school boards", it catalogues a number of instances where parents have harnessed the social web and other online campaigning tools to challenge, and in some cases overthrow the decisions of local school superi...

• created Brand-standing - how does your country look? over 4 years ago.

  Interesting article by the chief economist of the Australian Trade Commission looking at the increasing focus by countries on managing their 'brand standing', that is, the way in which they are are perceived by others.  Very topical as President Obama embarks on what we might describe as a radical 'brand standing' recovery program around the world, and pehaps at home too. He refers to work being done in the UK, which develops a "brand 'hexagon' of six areas on which a country ...

• commented on Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government? over 4 years ago.

  Manxman's comment reminds me of a couple of points on this debate abut self-organisation.  One is that the current fascination with self-organising communities is very much a 'back to the future' phenomenon.  Parish Councils and other forms of local self-government, together with much of the mutual movement in health and social care, have been good examples of exactly the kind of engaged self-governance in whose favour so many of us seem to be speaking. The second point is that, in...

• commented on Reflections on a Nobel Journey over 4 years ago.

  We shouldn’t be so surprised, perhaps?  After all, government of the sort with which we are so familiar and which we all keep agreeing needs to be so radically transformed is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Before the era of mass ‘industrialised’ government, people did plenty of co-creating, harnessing the instincts and practices of voluntary association to create often large-scale and powerful public or mutual intuitions that educated, healed and kept insured aga...

• commented on Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government? over 4 years ago.

  All the difficult issues captured here- really good.  Scale, complexity and especially Paul's concern about resolving conflicting interests and the nasty trade-offs that is the stuff of politics.  Does this mean the new tools are only useful when life is simple and friendly? 

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic III over 4 years ago.

  So we seem to be stuck in the discussion, recognising the need for more openness and flexibility but also accepting that we can't just discount the important "rules of the game" that the public sector has evolved over a long period to keep the system fair and honest.  Presumably we should be able to find a way to create a system that is all of these things - open, flexibile, innovative and fair and honest too.

• created Public Sector Futures: Workforce Propositions over 4 years ago.

  These are the four propositions we will be voting on, and discussing, at the Nobel Public Services Summit in Stockholm next week. Feel free to chip in and 'vote' or add your ideas and responses... 1 The public sector needs a whole new work model – how public servants work, where they work and how they stay connected to their work – to retain and attract top talent and to meet the new demands it is facing. 2 A new Workforce and Workspace Sustainability model, reflecting the dem...

• created Public Sector Futures: Four Propositions over 4 years ago.

  These are the four propositions that we will be voting on, and discussing, at the Nobel Public Services Summit next week.  You don't need to be there to 'vote' or to comment - feel free to add yur thoughts and responses... 1 The worst case scenario for the public service in the next 20 years is a slow and steady decline in the face of too many complex problems. 2 Public sector renewal will call on new values needed for of an effective public service – orchestration, risk-taki...

• created Public Sector Futures: Workforce and Workplace Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  This is the final post in the "Nobel" series of posts with some initial ideas around the future of the public sector.  This post looks specifically at issues of workforce and workspace, linked closely to the rising imperative for sustainability across the public sector...   The assumption that the public sector has to embrace changes to its structure and operating model carries considerable consequences for recruiting and retaining a requisite workforce, and creating more effectiv...

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic VI over 4 years ago.

  Something my Cisco colleague Richard Allan said recently is relevant to this discussion.  Richard, who heads the UK's implementation task force on the Power of Information report (and is overseeing the current competition for ideas from the public about new services they could htink of using, or re-using, freely available government data) explained that he envisaged something he called BackStage Government. Aparently, the BBC has a platform it has created on whhich it pushes more and mo...

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic VI over 4 years ago.

  And a final observation from Fred on the last of the scenarios, Virtual Disappearance... "Again, I see this option as being too simplistic.  It may be that man will not truly be free (per Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire) “until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”  I think, that, in fact, it would take extremely bold leadership by the public sector to see this “virtual disappearance” scenario occur.  Government leaders would n...

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic VI over 4 years ago.

  This is what Fred Thompson had to say about the second scenario specifically - Slow and Steady Decline: I’m not sure that I agree with the premise that poor performance leads to less performance or less authority.  I think that it is more likely that governments will perform poorly but will not give up any authority.  The impact of this will be arbitrary and capricious actions by government officials either because their values differ from their predecessors or because they...

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic IV over 4 years ago.

  Here's an insight from colleague Fred Thompson on the issue of risk in the pbulic sector... The biggest difference that I saw in my experience in the public and private sectors was the total risk aversion in the public sector.  A model where government can “fail fast” with less consequence (models, pilots, prototypes on small scale) would be very desirable.  Often government acts with such moment and impact with such great resources at stake that it can’t afford...

• created Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic VI over 4 years ago.

  If you had to describe two or three scenarios that describe your sense of what might happen to the public sector over the next 20 years, what would you write?  Here are three that occur to me: ·         Reformed and relevant – the rise of the public purpose sector ·         Slow, but steady decline ·         Virtual disappearance I&rsqu...

• created Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic V over 4 years ago.

  What are the big factors driving change in the public sector?  Here are a few obvious ones…feel free to throw in your suggestions and explain why you think they are having such a significant impact on the way the public sector works and evolves. Growing complexity of policy challenges and ‘wicked’ problems to be fixed (think climate change, financial meltdown, chronic disease management, pandemics, looking after older people, lifting literacy, sustainable cities&hel...

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic III over 4 years ago.

  Here's a response to my elbaoration from IBSG Advisory Fellow, Fred Thompson: Re:  Design, Deliver and Defend -- although I like the alliteration, I think "defend" has a bit of a military ring here (minor quibble).  Often we think of government defending itself with military or police.  That's a subset of what government does, but it also preserves institutions and rules across a much broader spectrum and in a much less confrontational way.  I'm thinking John Locke m...

• commented on Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic III over 4 years ago.

  In the light of some feedback, I've tried to clarify what I mean by "manage the system", the third of the generic functions.  It's a little vague I guess because it’s a question I find hard to answer.  I guess I’m groping towards a way to articulate the public sector’s role in ‘defending’ the whole system of laws, regulations and openness that allows the rest of the ‘game’ to be played in the first place. It’s not just the role of the ...

• created Obama is coming...but are we ready? over 4 years ago.

  I was struck by this piece about the looming collision of the Obama world of connected campaigning and the often rather less connected government machinery he will be inheriting... "President-elect Barack Obama has offered up a compelling vision for how he’d like information technology to transform government. Citizens would be able to view agency policy and regulatory meetings via Webcast. They could chime in with their concerns about a pending bill awaiting his signature. They could...

• created The Obama Stats over 4 years ago.

  Many will be familiar with these Obama campaign stats, but they are astonishing not only for what they reflect on but for what they promise... 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses. In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes....To put this in perspective, John Kerry's '04 ca...

• created Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic IV over 4 years ago.

  Some more in the series of posts on public sector 'futures' in the lead up to the Global Public Services Summit in Stockholm next month...this post focuses on values and attributes that we might expect to see in the new public sector... Another way of thinking about the future of the public sector is to reflect on the kinds of values and instincts that we expect to see manifest in the way the public sector works and in the way public servants behave. Here are some of the traditional values ...

• commented on It's 10 PM ... Do You Know Where Your Constituents Are? over 4 years ago.

  Wonderful stuff, Norm - very powerful.   I think the idea of leadership being about catching up to where people already are is positively incendiary in its implications for the models of political leadership with which we are currently burdened.  Very nice, and reminds me too of the next phase in this discussion as we move from issues like services, convenience and new forms of public dialogue to the profound shifts in the remaking of our public realm, the idea that these techn...

• created Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic III over 4 years ago.

  Third part in a series leading up to the Public Services Summit in Stockholm in December If we’re going to have a discussion about the future of the public sector, we need to have a discussion about its role and function.  What exactly is it we expect the public sector to do as it evolves into the 21st century?  What are the challenges to which we want the public sector to be able to respond?  To be blunt, what exactly is the point of the public sector? Traditionally, t...

• created Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic II over 4 years ago.

  Part 2 of a series in the lead up to this year's Public Services Summit @ Nobel in Stockholm... Let’s start by putting the current discussion into some sort of context.  See what you think of these initial ideas – and feel free to challenge them or, better still, add a perspective of your own. According to one view, the public sector is in crisis, reeling from the impact of wrenching changes in the political, social, economic and technology context in which it operates and ...

• created Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic I over 4 years ago.

  At this year’s Public Services Summit @ Nobel in Stockholm in December, we will be running a specialist session that looks at the future of the public sector.  Part of the discussion will be a ‘futures’ session in which participants will get the chance to explore some of the big questions confronting the public sector into an uncertain future.  What is the purpose and role of the public sector in a more connected world?  How does the public sector’s ro...

• commented on US Views on Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  Here's a rather pungent response to the same seminar from which David Weinberger's original blog emanated.  Captures one of the lingering concerns about this discussion inside government: Much lip service was given to welcoming new technologies, openness, information sharing, transparency, and collaboration. But there was no talk of a strategy, a plan, or a roadmap. Frankly, there was no talk of anything concrete in the way of actual progress towards Government 2.0, as the title of the ...

• edited All together now? over 4 years ago.

  A great article in The Weekend Australian reflects on the true potential of the Obama virtual campaign and its implications for the rebuilding of a public realm.  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24635990-5010800,00.html Here's the potential.., Taken together, these are developments unprecedented in the course of Western democracy. Never before has a technology proved itself capable of replacing the town halls and city squares that, since the early democratic experim...

• created All together now? over 4 years ago.

  A great article in The Weekend Australian reflects on the true potential of the Obama virtual campaign and its implications for the rebuilding of a public realm.  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24635990-5010800,00.html Here's the potential.., Taken together, these are developments unprecedented in the course of Western democracy. Never before has a technology proved itself capable of replacing the town halls and city squares that, since the early democratic experim...

• commented on What comes first - e-government Web 2.0 services or government cultural change? over 4 years ago.

  Whoops - pressed the 'submit' button by mistake... For the most part, organisations (and especially in the public sector) adopt the approach that you institute a program of cutural change as a precursor to the introduction of the new initiative or capability, whatever it is.  Even if it is more parallel than that, the assumption is that the cultural change program is somehow separate and distinct from the change itself. The great lesson of the web 2.0 world is that the new capability i...

• commented on What comes first - e-government Web 2.0 services or government cultural change? over 4 years ago.

  For the most part, organisations

• commented on US Views on Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  Agree with Terry that the reasons for these actions are always complex.  We need to spend more time focusing on the operational, cultural and governance obstacles to wider uptake by government of the Web 2.0 tools and less time on sweeping, and sometime superficial exhortations for them to do better.  Part of the problem for the public sector is that it tends to work on the basis, when faced with something new like these new technologies, that it has to be tested, checked and studi...

• commented on Interview with Marshall Ganz, Designer of Obama's Organization over 4 years ago.

  Love the idea of a 'fifth column' actually inside government - has that slightly wry sense of the need to spend at least some time working out how to fight people who are meant to be on your side!  The really powerful insight from these comments, and the interview with Marshall, is just how subversive, at least potentially, these new tools might be.  The idea that people will start to use these tools to create public action or public value without reference to government is intrigui...

• uploaded a PDF file: Incremental change isn't enough over 4 years ago.

  Leading Canadian public servant Jocelyne Bourgon has written a powerful essay about the future of the public service with the misleadingly bland title "New directions in public administration" serving beyond the predictable".  The paper, given at a conference in the UK in September, sketches 30 years of dramatic change in public administration to arrrive at this conclusion: New directions in public administration must also entail exploring 1) how to encourage innovation in government t...

• commented on Digital Swarming over 4 years ago.

  Let me put a slightly different spin on this. Of course the concept of 'digital swarming' - or creating what we might describe as 'connected decision spaces' - is absolutely applicable to the public sector.  In fact, I can't think of a concept that is both more applicable and compelling than this focus on making better use of collective intelligence when you think of the tangle of 'wicked' problems that public policy is expected to find answers to.  How did President-elect Obama put...

• created a post which has since been deleted. over 4 years ago.

• uploaded a PDF file: To Portal or Not to Portal? over 4 years ago.

  This article from the Yale Law Journal argues that governments should concentrate less on creating all-encompassing integrated portals and more on making its information available more easily. It contrasts rather strikingly with a series of presentations I saw at a recent conference which were all about efforts by several governments to create exactly those kinds of portals. It reminded me of the story from the UK where the folks from MySociety set out to prove the new UK Governmet site...

• created The City as the Platform over 4 years ago.

  I have just spent 3 days at the Metropolis08 Congress in Sydney (actually I'm about to head off to the third day and chair a workshop on technology and the city).  Lots of fascinating discussions and stories from over 80 cities from all around the world. A couple of things have struck me.  Firstly, given the predictions that within then next 30 years or so, over 70% of the world's population will be living in urban areas, the whole concept of the public sector and public management...

• commented on A New Vision for the Welfare State over 4 years ago.

  To be contentious - the shift that Participle is advocating will be hard to perpetrate because the people who occupy the key positions of power and leverage which will be necessary to effect the huge institutional redesign they anticipate are often those whose perceived self-interest lies in perpetrating the status quo.  Paul is exactly right - the Charlie Leadbeater approach is profoundly unsettling to the inherited instiututional format of the past 100 years in public service provisio...

• commented on Competitive Government vs. Democratic Government over 4 years ago.

  Slightly different take...think about Google health records or private education or the provision on nongovernment health services or maybe even microcredit...these are services increasingly testing the concept of monopolistic public services and, in the process, inventing perhaps a non-state public sphere which is taking market share from the public sector.  In that sense, maybe, we are seeing the rise of 'competitive' government in the sense of a raft of new, potentially scaleable publ...

• commented on Collaboration as 'Productive Disputatiousness' over 4 years ago.

  Good point.  It depends on what you're trying to achieve doesn't it?  Sometimes concensus is actually important - decisions need to be made and, as far as possible, you need to fashion a 'working majority' of the collective involved.  In other situations, contention is both the point and the motivating force.  Often, the whole point of the discussion is to understand the nature and scope of different views.  The best writing I've found recently about the democratic i...

• tagged NZ experiments with Web 2.0 with the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

• created NZ experiments with Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  http://www.e.govt.nz/resources/research/progress/agency-initiatives/chapter6.html "Agencies are recognising that the social and community dimension of these tools enhances their ability to involve and engage people more directly. They are being used to enable people to participate in proposing and shaping policies and laws, and to reach different and broader constituencies. People are providing feedback on programmes and services, and in some instances are beginning to influence service des...

• created Government Data and the Invisible Hand over 4 years ago.

  My Cisco colleague Richard Allan introduced me to a paper from Yale entitled "Governmnet Data and the Invisible Hand".  Worth a quick read.  The burden of its central message is that governments should stop setting up websites and start the less sexy, but ultimately much kore useful and revolutionary work of providing reusable data.  Basically the authors suggest that in an age of relatively easy and cheap access to the tools of mash-ups and online forums, governments should spend much less ...

• created It’s the network, stupid over 4 years ago.

  I'm attaching a short piece from the MIT's Technology Review entitled "How Obama Really Did It".  The piece explores the Obama campaign's phenomenal success with their web and online strategy, which apparently promoted Clinton advisor James Carville, of the famed "it's the economy, stupid", to paraphrase his own quip with the network now as his focus... A few interesting hints from the article: The Obama team put such technologies (Web 2, collaboration etc) at the centre of its campaign Th...

• created The changing nature of work over 4 years ago.

  In response to a request from Open Forum, a public policy discussion forum in Australia, I posted a short piece on the changing nature of work and the way in which Cisco enables a more flexible and distributed workstyle... The full post is at http://www.openforum.com.au/content/working-smarter This is the start of it... The nature of work is changing and consequently we're witnessing a proliferation of workstyles that reflect new demands for flexibility, balance and autonomy. Organisations...

• created One Machine to rule them alll over 4 years ago.

  Another muse from Kevin Kelly... http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/st_infoporn_1607 "Never mind Web 3.0: The next stage in technological evolution is a single worldwide computer. Collectively, we are already assembling this megacomputer from our billions of Net-connected PCs, cell phones, PDAs, and the like. As an increasing number and variety of devices are lashed to one another via the Internet and other communication systems, they form the components of what we might call the ...

• created Clever, kind and connected - the new politics over 5 years ago.

  Australia's smallest state, the island of Tasmania off the south eastern coast, has just had a bloodless coup.  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23764043-5006788,00.html  Former Premier Paul Lennon fell on his sword in the wake of several scandals and political turmoil over a pulp mill proposal, to be replaced  by David Bartlett, 40 years old and only 4 years in politics.  Hiw new deputy, Lara Giddings, is 36.  Both represent the first burst of Generation X political leade...

• created Free at last? Maybe not... over 5 years ago.

  The quote below is from an article by Seth Finkelstein that I read today in the Sydney Morning Herald.  Every time my romantic inner self is predisposed to celebrate the proliferating and apparently unstoppable freedom of the Internet and the new power of the participative web, I read statements like this.  The real world is unlikely to be be as untramelled as we might like to hope... "It's sometimes suggested that we are entering a new internet era with blogs and syndication feeds and massi...

• created Look what God has wrought - the rise and rise of government blogging over 5 years ago.

  Thanks for friend and NSW Government colleague  Ken Dray for pointing out this great piece from the US about the state of the official federal government blogopshere - http://www.fcw.com/print/22_13/management/152465-1.html?topic=management. It's worth a read...some great insights from those inside government who are pioneering the use of blogs not just as yet another channel to reinforce the dismal one-way conversation that so often passes for 'communications' and 'collaboration' in governm...

• created Social networks the platform of the future over 5 years ago.

  Australian business and technology analyst and writer Ross Dawson (Trends in the Living Networks - http://rossdawsonblog.com/) has some interesting reflections on the growing significance of social networking as the dominant platform for commuication and value. Here's his brief comments - http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/09/microsoft_faceb.html.  A couple of quick excerpts: "Value is increasingly seen as shifting to social networks. When News Corp bought MySpace 2 ½ years ago ...

• created Is the public sector ‘fit for purpose’? over 5 years ago.

  A few years ago, the Australian Labor Party was led by a young man called Mark Latham.  His accession to the Labor leadership was somewhat unexpected but fuelled by a reputation for original policy thinking and an eclectic curiosity (one of his political opponents was once unkind enough to label his approach "policy by Google").  Mark's leadership crashed badly in the 2004 election following which he abruptly left politics altogether.  An iconoclastic writer and diarist, he's back in the mai...

• created Australia 2020 over 5 years ago.

  I've put in some links for the recent Australia 2020 exercise, which saw 1000 people selected to join the new Australian Prime Minister and some of his senior Ministers for a 2-day ideas and strategies session in Parliament House in Canberra last weekend.   In many ways, the whole process can be seen as a powerful experiment in open innovation, a real attempt to throw open the traditionally impenetrable process of policy and decision making to a much wider influence.  The event was streamed ...

• created You can’t live your whole life on the Internet... over 5 years ago.

  Stephen Coleman gave a great interview to Australian youth site Vibewire as part of the eFestival of Ideas which is on this week, specifically on the eParticipation forum. There are two parts to what turns out to be a great interview, in which Stephen reinforces his position as one of the most thoughtful, pragmatic and insightful analysts of the impact of the Internet and the 'hyperconnected' world on politics and democracy. Have a listen...and while you're there, leave a couple of comments...

• created eFestival of Ideas over 5 years ago.

  A week-long eFestival of Ideas is currently on hosted by Sydney-based youth organisation Vibewire.  I'm contributing to a forum on "eParticipation: Fad or Future", which Cisco is sponsoring. Come and have a look at the debate and join in. http://www.vibewire.net/forum/view_topic?topic_id=86 One of the other guest contributors, Mark Pesce, had this to say in a recent blog.  It will give you a flavour for the debate we're enjoying: "The institution finds itself caught in a paradox: aggregat...

• created Quick reality check (contd) - some wise counsel over 5 years ago.

  From the 'Designing for Civil Society" discussion comes some salutary insights and wise advice from Tom Steinberg, MySociety founder and generally all-round smart thinker (and do-er) in the government 2.0 space. In a post to the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange, Tom writes "mySociety has traditionally worked on the assumption that it's basically impossible to ever get any part of any government to do anything of any real significance in the field of edemocracy, or in the wider field of gr...

• created Quick reality check: are we kidding ourselves? over 5 years ago.

  Recently, UK Cabinet Office Minister Hazel Blears gave a speech about eGovernment and eDemocracy. Her concerns focused on the success, or otherwise, of local government.  These two blog responses brought me up a bit sharply.  The first was clearly sceptical: "That's good coming from Blears! Local government, with a few exceptions, hasn't had a problem with revolutionising services, its central government that's been lagging and we get tired of hearing it the other way around. I've spent the...

• created 2,761,832 - is this a totally different game? over 5 years ago.

  More evidence from the front line of the world of online politics that tests our views about whether we are witnessing the birth of a genuine, disruptive transformation of the way we play the game of politics and government, or whether we are witnessing nothing of the sort.This is how PoliticsOnline reported the phenomenon of Barack Obama's 'Wright' speech which was posted on YouTube: "Barack Obama's 37 minute-long speech has skyrocketed to the 51st most viewed video of all time on YouTube. ...

• created Yes, but what about accountability? over 5 years ago.

  We've been fortunate in the past couple of months to enjoy a double dose of David Weinberger.  At the Nobel Public Services Summit in Stockholm and at the recent Cisco meeting in Orlando, the author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and more recently "Everything is Miscellaneous" shared his views about the possibilities and pitfalls of the social web. My big interest in David's thesis of the semantic web is the impact on public policy and public management, of course.  It strikes me we are witnessi...

• created Perils of modernity over 5 years ago.

  I know it’s dangerous to get too misty-eyed about the corrosive and liberating potential of the blogosphere, but stories like this can’t help make you feel a little more optimistic. Maybe I’m just kidding myself…but for the moment, I’m going to take this as another important straw in the wind that tells us something good about the renovation of the democratic conversation. Here is how the Economist told the story: The government's cyber-enthusiasm comes back to haunt it ON MARCH 8th Malay...

• created Safe to Play over 5 years ago.

  The biggest single obstacle to the wider and more rapid uptake of online services and capabilities, in the private as well as the public sector, is trust or rather the lack of it. All of the evidence seems to reinforce that what holds people back from a more full-blooded embrace of the online world is whether it is 'safe to play'. Will my privacy be respected? How will my information be treated and how can i be sure noone is going to mieuse it for purposes I didn't agree to when it was leg...

• created Connected Urban Development - last note over 5 years ago.

  The conference is over and, without doubt, Cisco and its city partners have landed a wonderful result.  Four new cities have joined (Lisbon, Madrid, Hamburg and Birmingham), the link has been forged between CUD's conceptual platform and the very real and practical 'things' that are now beginning to take shape - the fabulous 'connected bus', the Personal Travel Assistant, the new approach to smart work centres.  Basically, a real proof-of-concept meeting that has unleashed what I suspect is an...

• created CUD global conference II over 5 years ago.

  We're meeting in one of San Francisco's greenest buildings, the new Govt Services Administration Federal Government building.   Quite a controversial design, but a fascinating building.  Built from recycled concrete and steel, no air conditioning (all done through clever use of windows and through-drafts).  Here's a link to more information via Arup, who built the building - http://www.arup.com/americas/project.cfm?pageid=1618 Couple of other big messages so far - shifting sustainability o...

• created Connected Urban Development conference over 5 years ago.

  Reporting in from the first global conference for Connected Urban Development (CUD) in San Francisco.  The meeting has got off to a great start - hearing from the 3 CUD cities (Amsterdam, San Francisco and Seoul) and introduced to the 4 next CUD cities (Lisbon, Madrid, Birmingham and Hamburg).  Short note - we need to speed up the spread of CUD and CUD-like initiatives into Asia, which is after all where much of the largest, most urgent and spectacular urban action is going to be in the next ...

• created An intractable challenge! over 5 years ago.

  How's this for an understatement...."despite significant progress (in eGovernment), transforming the deeper structures of government is proving to be an intractable challenge." Really?  What a surprise. The insight comes at the start of a great blog from Don Tapscott at Davos where, in a moment of impromptu madness by all accounts, he convened a quick seminar on the challenges of "government 2.0".  His report suggests the discussion buzzed and sizzled with exciting discussion and considerabl...

• created Government 2.0 - Two Cheers for the Romantics - Final Part over 5 years ago.

  The whole session was titled ‘Government 2.0 – fad or future?’ So what did we conclude by the end of the discussion? I think we decided that government 2.0 was more future than fad, that a long-term, gradual and unstoppable revolution had started that would dramatically change the processes, structures and behaviour of governments and that by and large that was a very good thing. At the same time, we weren’t blind to the obvious obstacles that would provide plenty of opportunity for resist...

• created Government 2.0 - Two Cheers for the Romantics Part 2 over 5 years ago.

  We had a great discussion on the prospects and possibilities facing government from the growing impact of Web 2.0 tools and capabilities. These are just a few of the insights from the 3-hour discussion: In the end, the discussion about Web 2.0 and its impact on government was a discussion about redistributing power and authority and strengthening democracy. Radical change and deep structural reform would be slow and in some cases impossible. But anything that improved, even if incrementa...

• created Government 2.0 - two cheers for the romantics? over 5 years ago.

  We had a great session on "government 2.0" at the just-completed Nobel Public Services Summit in Stockholm this week. Speakers included Geoff Mulgan (The Young Foundation, founder of DEMOS in the UK and Tony Blair policy advisor), Joanne Caddy (senior policy analyst at the OECD with a focus on citizen engagement), Hugh McPhail (leader of the eGovernment team in New Zealand’s State Services Commision) and Tom Bentley (senior advisor in the Dept of Premier & Cabinet in Victoria, Australia...

• created Management 2.0 over 5 years ago.

  A recent piece from famed management writer and all-round guru Gary Hamel is worth a quick look. Just in case you thought the whole "everything 2.0" debate was in need of a little more hyperbole, this is Hamel’s basic message: "Over the next decade or two, it is likely that Internet will grow into the most powerful tool that humanity has ever possessed for boosting human accomplishment…Eventually, the Web may allow each of us to avoid the trade-off between fully exercising our humanity and b...

• created We’re changing a lot but transforming little? over 5 years ago.

  A challenge...when you look around at what is being done in eGovernment around the world, do you get the impression that we're seeing a lot of change but not much transformation?  We're making things faster, smarter, more convenient, cheaper, more integrated - or at least some of these things some of the time and even a few of them all together.  But are we really witnessing 'transformation', that is, change that ushers in a new state of being, a truly new way of doing the business of governm...

• created Breakfast in Phuket over 5 years ago.

  Just finished a fascinating 3 days in Phuket, Thailand at a government and technology conference.  There were speakers from all over Asia offering fascinating insights into the astonishing ambition and scope of the eGovernment agenda in this part of the world.  And an amazing array, too, of different stages of development and progress.  There was lots of talk about new collaborative approaches to improving citizen service, which meant government agencies had to work out better ways not just ...

• created The Next Big Thing over 5 years ago.

  I’ve been thinking recently about when we are going to see the big breakthrough in the search for the much-expected transformation in the business of governing. It was partly prompted by a discussion I facilitated with government people from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the OECD about “government 2.0”. Part of the discussion included a video link to Wellington, where we spoke with a group of high school students who have been working with Wellington City Council about how young people w...

• created eFestival of Ideas over 13 years ago.

  Cisco is sponsoring one of the discussions in a week-long "eFestival of Ideas" being hosted by Sydney-based Vibewire. I am a guest controbutor - come and join in the conversation if you have a moment...http://www.vibewire.net/forum/view_topic?topic_id=86. One of the other guests contributors is Mark Pesce.  This extract from his blog is worth a bit of thinking time in its own right: