Yesterday the Obama Administration launched a new page on Whitehouse.gov: Health Insurance Reform Reality Check.  I found it to be an excellent use of quick-and-dirty social media, and made a mention to that effect on my Facebook page.  My good friend Wes Bowman penned a rapid response:

“This certainly refutes some of the outrageous sound bites you can hear on MSNBC and Fox but it confirms (very clearly) some of the concepts that many people find genuinely objectionable. They’ve probably already lost if they have to spend this much effort telling people what the system will NOT do. What exactly are we getting for $1 trillion+? In interest of full disclosure, you and I aren’t getting anything because we both already live under government-run healthcare.”

I happen to agree with the administration (and disagree with Wes) that health care reform is crucial to the social and economic well-being of the United States.  Beyond the efficiencies that we need to contain overall health care costs, I believe strongly in ‘universal coverage’, that affordable health care should be a right enjoyed by all.  Neither of these can occur without major changes to the status quo.

I also agree with the widespread belief that health care reform is crucial to the perceived short-term success of the Obama administration.  I think it is incredibly unfortunate that the administration and the Democratic party has come under such severe criticism in its attempt to deal with this challenge.  As I’m sure others have written, much of this damage seems to have been self-inflicted.  The administration outsourced the policy-making of this complex issue to a fractious Congress (although I recognise he was attempting to learn from the mistakes of the Clinton administration), and President and Party both failed to create a clear and convincing message/argument for reform from the absolute outset.  Given that the administration had a mandate of sorts for such reform from the election, the game has been theirs to lose.

Clearly, the damage has been done.  I agree with Wes that it is a very bad sign indeed that the debate is so clearly controlled by the opposition — that the administration must spend its time clarifying how the legislation is not going to hurt us rather than focusing on how it will help us.

Nonetheless, I believe that the Reality Check web page is a fine step in addressing and changing the direction of the conversation.  It seems as though it was put together with little fuss, taking clear aim at some of the key myths that have been disseminated by the opposition.  The mix of bite-sized video (I love that we’re getting to actually see and hear from some real Wonks) and well-written FAQs simultaneously dispel rumours and provide advocates with facts and talking points.  Admittedly, I wonder if anyone other than advocates would go to this page, but the ever-present “Share this Page” on the right-hand column should help get the word out.  Even the title of the page - “Health Insurance Reform” (rather than “Health Care Reform”) provides one subtle mechanism in reframing the debate.

Users are encouraged to engage further through the “Stay Connected” - also ever-present - but also to suggest their own ideas for “myths we should address next“.  Finally, it provides a simple doorway, for those that choose to take it, to the greater detail and content of the administration’s primary site for this issue, www.healthreform.gov.

Is it the answer to the adminsitration’s current policy and political predicament?  Clearly it isn’t.  Is it a good step forwards?  For the relatively small amount of time and effort needed to make this simple tool for engagement, it clearly is.

Tags: 1 Comment

This past Saturday, thanks to the spectacular vision and efforts of Emma Mulqueeny, James Darling, and Richard Pope, some 100 coders and geeks gathered at the Channel 4 offices for National Hack the Government Day. As per the Rewired State press release:

Rewired State is a free invite-only event to demonstrate the creative use of public data by great technical minds.

100 developers, designers, hackers and geeks, with support from a few government officials will evaluate government data to see how they could best use this information.

We expect the output of the day to expose better processes, application and ways of working for better use of public data as well as to expose government officials to the concept of allowing great creative minds to play with the data to provide interesting and creative solutions.

At 6 PM, the doors were opened to the non-technorati (including me), who had the pleasure of seeing presentations by the myriad teams who worked throughout the day. A few of my observations from the evening:

1. I can’t believe that I used to call myself a computer programmer. Although I may have a CS degree, and have spent my life in and around the technology sector, it is clear that the world of code has moved far past me. What has not appeared to change is the general coder ethic. Think about it: 100 men and women (many more men than women, it must be said, must of whom were likely born in the late 80s) gathered on a Saturday to coop themselves up in an office, and just play with code. Just for the hell of it. Just to see what they could do. I love that. I love it in the same way that I once was likely to get together with friends on a Saturday and play with code, just for the hell of it. (Another constant: pizza still seems to be a primary fuel, although the drinks have changed a bit. No Jolt cola.)
2. The UK is more than capable to create some spectacular software companies. Admittedly, this has more to do with my innovation policy interests than my govt 2.0 interests, but it was amazing to see what UK ingenuity could achieve in such a short amount of time.
3. Intellectual Property is clearly a non-trivial, and in my opinion completely unnecessary, issue in exploiting government data. Many of the projects acknowledged with a wink-and-a-nod that full roll-out would run into IP issues. Even with OPSI’s click-use license, getting access to and making use of government data (regardless of social or commericial objectives) must be made easier. I applaud the Guardian’s continuing advancement of this issue, and hope to lend my voice to this information revolution.
4. As spectacular as the results were, I couldn’t help but wonder what could be achieved if we combined the programming talent in that room with some policy wonks that know where the issues are. In other words, put the developers together with their “customers”. On this point, Harry at the Dextrous Web and I had a bit of Twitter back and forth, and he made the excellent point that: “This kind of stuff is for fun. If we’d done other ppl’s ideas it just would’ve been another day@work. Nothx!” My response: “I’m not saying to work on other people’s ideas, but rather *find inspiration* in other people’s *needs*.”

My suggestion to the Rewired State team, then, is not necessarily to change the model, but to consider augmenting the teams with other, equally passionate people, who could bring some context to the table. Social Innovation Camp provides an interesting example of such an approach. I believe that the technical folk that attended SI Camp appreciated having the “customer needs” in the room, and vice versa.

To Harry’s point, doing similarly with Rewired State would likely require a bit of additional coaxing to ensure that the geeks still felt that this was their day and made it out with the same level of energy and curiosity. However, given the level of interest for this year’s event, I don’t believe this would be at all beyond the team. An equal challenge would be to get the right government folks to the table, with open minds and a willingness to take a back seat for much of the action. But again, not insurmountable. And anyway, what would a Hack the Government Day be without a good challenge?

Congrats again to the Rewired State team, the coders who devoted their time to the cause, and the various sponsors that made it possible.

To have a glance at the various projects resulting from the day, check out the Rewired State projects page.

Tags:   Government 2.0 · public sector data · Rewired State2 Comments

Perhaps the only thing these days as common as comments of woe and catastrophe, are comments on how the recession is an ideal time for investment and innovation. Numerous organisations, including my old employer NESTA, have released reports on innovating through the recession.

We have recently been asked to put together a set of case studies on companies which have survived and thrived through a depression or recession. In particular, our client is interested in cases in which a company has emerged from a recession a stronger organisation due to some form of innovation (writ large).

We’re looking to write ten of these case studies, and I’d welcome any suggestions or thoughts from those of you Out There. These are the time periods and themes we’ve thought of thus far:

Time periods for consideration:

• C19 Recession
• 1930s Depression
• 1970s US recession
• 1990s UK recession
• 1990s Japanese recession
• 2000s Post .com recession

Business model innovation themes for consideration:

• Moving into new markets
• Switching from product to services provider
• Customer experience strategy
• Disintermediation / Partnering / Leveraging across value chain
• New staffing models / wage cuts / organisational model / innovative staff relationship
• Ownership structure
• Industry consolidation
• Investment in R&D

Any other ideas on these (and demonstrable case studies) would be greatly appreciated. Thoughts?

Tags:   NESTA · On Innovation · RecessionNo Comments.

This past weekend’s UK GovWeb BarCamp was a huge success, and it was an honour to be one of the supporters. While I could wax lyrical about the diversity of conversations and the general sense of empowerment conveyed through the day, I’d like to focus on the one topic which has been consuming my mind both prior to, and since, the big event:

Evolving from “consultation” to “engagement”

As luck would have it, it was the first session of the day to which I was most excited, proved to be the most meaningful for me. Roughly titled “Online Engagement and Consultation”, it was ostensibly chaired by Steph Gray of DIUS and Paul Johnston of Cisco/Connected Republic.

Steph gave an excellent, brief overview of the challenges of online consultation, and provided a few examples of how DIUS has experimented in this space of late. This approach echoed Paul’s blog post prior to the event, in which he suggested what I might call a “scenario” approach — i.e. looking at the different phases or scenarios of consultation/engagement, and considering these individually.

It occurred to me following the discussion, that there are essentially two dimensions by which we might consider online engagement: the stage of engagement, and the type of engagement.

The stages of engagement

There are a number of ways to describe or outline the policy lifecycle. The Home Office has their own “Policy Wheel” with five key stages, if I recall. A popular model in the US is the “Eight-Fold Path“, created by Prof. Gene Bardach. In general, though, the policy process can be abstracted out to the following (Prof. Bardach, please forgive me):

1. Define issue and outcomes
2. Understand system
3. Identify alternatives
4. Analyse alternatives
5. Deliver
6. Evaluate

I’ve long argued that although “consultation” tends to take place at only point of this process (usually 4. Analyse), true engagement can and should occur throughout the policy lifecycle. However, doing this is not only difficult in and of itself, but frequently forces the stakeholder to think in terms of the language of the policy-maker. If we instead think of this in plain english, we can envision the following ‘phases’ of public engagement (which may or may not happen in a linear manner):

• Identifying the issues - identifying problems or potential areas for policy intervention
• Identifying the outcomes - describing the vision or objective, or rather, what is trying to be achieved
• Providing context - contributing detailed information on the current issue, environment, stakeholders, and forces
• Identifying policy ideas for addressing issues - suggesting potential policy interventions, perhaps based upon examples seen elsewhere
• Generating evidence or feedback - contributing specific perspectives, observations, or data related to proposed or existing policies
• Participating in the delivery of a policy - Contributing resources to the actual delivery of a policy intervention

A range of ways to participate

For each of the above, one can envision different degrees of input, ranging from low-effort to high-effort. Consider this my twist on classic “ladder of citizen participation“:

1. Vote - Providing a yes/no or Likert-scale response to a posed statement.
2. Multi-dimensional vote - A more nuanced version of a vote. This could include allocating some set of units or £s across a set of alternatives, to embed some notion of resource constraints. It could also include evaluating options against different criteria (impact, resources required, time limitations, etc.)
3. Comment - Providing a short item of input, usually in response to something posed. This could be a perspective, a rebuttal, or a piece of evidence.
4. Idea - Providing a unique or standalone item of input. This could be a suggestion for an issue, a policy proposal, or an independent observation which might be used as context for other deliberation.
5. Deliberation - Providing detailed input or content to an item or discussion (e.g. fleshing out a wiki outline).
6. Execution - Participating in the actual delivery of a policy intervention.

In subsequent posts, I will try to analyse the challenges to online engagement, and to aggregate and evaluate some of the tools being applied along these two dimensions (stage of engagement, and type of engagement). Finally, I will try to marry all of this up describing polyWonk’s own development of a platform for online policy collaboration/consultation/engagement/involvement/participation.

Tags:   eDemocracy · Engagement · eParticipation5 Comments

Houdini was once quoted as saying that it is easier to break out of a safe than it is to break in to one. Well, how difficult is it to break out of our government? Earlier this week, Steph Gray over at DIUS released the results of a little skunkworks project he ran to answer this question. As he describes in his original post, his objective was to:

We have the Civil Service guidance on participation online, and yet in organisations across the UK, public servants and others are being prevented from engaging online at work thanks to restrictions placed on their internet access by their IT providers. Some of these are well-intentioned: designed to prevent malicious attacks through unguarded use of attachments to webmail messages. Some are questionable, but understandable, like blocking access to webmail to prevent leaking of sensitive material. But often, they’re just bloody-minded and a symptom of a lack of understanding that social networks, wikis and online video are increasingly important tools that people need to access from work in order to their jobs properly.

To address this problem, Steph created his social media suite, a compendium of tests, and released them through his network to test. (I believe a nod also goes to Mark O’Neill at DCMS who may have started the bandwagon).

As an entrepreneur developing a hosted platform (i.e. external to government), these results clearly cause me some concern, as it means that it is entirely likely that a number of central government departments will not be able to use our software, irregardless of what demand might exist from inside policy departments, without our first negotiating some serious bureaucratic hurdles. But, to be honest, we already knew that. It is why our particular model is predicated on uptake from the outside in: from all the myriad local authorities, politicians, advocacy groups, representative bodies, etc. that form the hidden bulk of the public/third sector and who likely have a bit more freedom of motion.

But enough of my whingeing; Bravo to Mr. Gray

But actually, I didn’t want to write this post to criticise. Quite the opposite. I’d like to publicly congratulate Steph on this project (one of many from the lesteph/mlyons/DIUS skunkworks, I might add). Steph saw a need, had a good idea, and rolled up his sleeves to make it happen. It was clever, rapidly executed, and generated some important insights. It is why, during my foray into the public sector over the past several years, I have grown such respect for the civil service and its potential. Steph, like many other civil servants, could easily take his talents elsewhere - but he chooses instead to apply them to the betterment of his nation. Bravo.

Extending the idea: Building an OpenGov Index

It is also why I am moderately embarrassed to build on his great idea with my own, far less clever, suggestion: creating an OpenGov Index. Yes, yes, I know that this is an “old school” approach. But just as contemporary Govt 2.0 wisdom is to engage in those places where your constituents reside, we the OpenGov community must apply the same reasoning to our own target market - the Govt. Politicians love indices. So does the press. They make for good, quick press releases and articles.

So how about we apply this logic to shine a light on those departments which are actively trying to embrace the new world of collaboration and engagement, and perhaps shame those that couldn’t care less. The OpenGov Index could use Steph’s statiscs as part of an “Inside-Out” component of the index. These would be augmented with some “Outside-In” measures, such as a department’s use of blogs, wikis, twitter, etc. in communicating - and engaging - its constituents. I imagine it should also include an analysis of offline approaches, as well. Extra points should be given to particularly bold experiments, or rapid adoption (or creation) of new tools.

Given yesterday’s launch of the Digital Britain interim report, it strikes me that yet another star has come into alignment, all generating more pressure for an OpenGov. Steph and his colleagues have long been champions of this notion, and I applaud them for yet another exceptional contribution.

Tags:   Civil Service · Index1 Comment

Over the past several weeks (and months, really) much has been made of the Obama campaign’s impressive application of the internet and Web 2.0 to connect with, raise funds from, and mobilise his supporters.

I have long applauded those activities, particularly the degree with which such efforts enabled supporters to feel part of the movement. However, I’ve also said that mobilisation is only one step of the engagement process. Despite the popularity of my.barackobama.com, it did not provide much of a mechanism for supporters and other interested parties to actively participate in the development of the his policy agenda. Activities like the Briefing Book aside (which was a great experiment, I must admit), my understanding is that his policies were generated in the old-fashioned way: by a coterie of policy advisors, think-tanks, and external experts.

Which is why I have been immensely pleased at the imminent inclusion of a Director of Citizen Participation directly within the White House. I had heard through the grapevine that such a post was being created, but saw that it was announced yesterday that Google executive Katie Jacobs Stanton is taking this appointment.

This announcement excites me for two reasons. The first, and perhaps most importantly, is that it is placing Participation with a capital “P” at the heart of the administration’s activity. As I have argued in the past, Web 2.0 at its heart is about a set of principles, not technology; principles of collaboration, and user-generated content. It is the notion that expertise, experience, and creativity are all around us, and that the more our governments embrace and engage broad participation, the better our policies will be. And the better our outcomes will be. And the stronger our democracy will be.

My sense in the past is that the resistance of government to Web 2.0 tools hasn’t been so much resistance to technology, but resistance to these principles. Broad participation is, quite simply, antithetical to bureaucratic operations. This isn’t because government is nasty and doesn’t want to involve people, but simply because the way government operates does not easily make allowance for it. The power structures, the hierarchies, the general risk intolerance, the workload, the limited resources, the need for accountability — all of these make it hard to simply open the floodgates to really broad engagement.

And this is what excites me so much about Ms. Stanton’s appointment. Because it means that — all fancy technologies aside — that the Obama administration is well and truly committed to the principles. By placing Ms. Stanton’s close to the seat of power, and with the voice of our new leader clearing her path, that the US central government writ large is better positioned than ever to chip away at the bureaucratic obstacles and infrastructure which hamper meaningful participation and engagement. Because if we can get the government to truly adopt a participative and collaborative culture, then the rest, including technology, will just fall into place.

Which brings me to the second reason that I’m excited for Ms. Stanton’s appointment: because she comes from Google - the heart of the tech landscape, and an innovative, private sector juggernaut to boot. It means that technology can’t help but be a part of her Participation Agenda. And all of my ramblings above aside, I am a geek at heart. I would so love OpenGov technology (such as polyWonk!) to be one of the primary mechanisms to help transform my government, the way policy is made, and the way the people are included at its heart. Because as many have said before me, that is the true meaning of democracy.

P.S. Thanks much to Emma Mulqueeny for prodding me yesterday to get these thoughts finally down onto paper.

Tags:   Katie Jacobs · Obama · Participation1 Comment

Great post this morning by Emma Mulqueeny on a recent report on Obama’s social media strategy. My reaction to the Social Obamedia phenomenon has been one of contradictions: pride that the campaign’s application of key social media principles has been successful, optimism that it has generated such an avalanche of interest from the mainstream, and frustration

Perhaps my greatest frustration, to echo some of your sentiments, is that things have not advanced more rapidly here in the UK. As an American living here and devoted to the Govt Social Media realm, I can’t help but point out that for a while, the UK was further ahead . Given the size of the country, the centralised nature of its government, and the reasonably collegial nature of regional governments (so I am lead to believe), I believe that the UK has, and is, particularly well placed to innovate and scale approaches to Govt 2.0/eParticipation/etc. The eDemocracy movement has been strong here for some time. Folks like Emma and Jeremy Gould have been doing this stuff for ages and have insights aplenty. And for some time now, we have a spectacular minister at the cabinet level intensely devoted to this subject. The US has no such thing (although given the way that the West Wing operates, Macon Phillips is well positioned to play one). When I started the idea of polyWonk a year ago, I had the naive notion that I’d be able to easily arrange to get 20K out of some department to develop and run a pilot project around ‘open-sourcing policy’ (as we called it then). The government would get a tangible product and demonstration of its democratic agenda, and a strong start-up in a growing space, to boot. Alas, despite the rhetoric within government, this proved significantly harder than I had predicted, and I have had to turn to private individuals for development capital.

Let me finish on a note of optimism, however. Based upon my recent investigations across the pond, the US hasn’t cracked this nut yet. At all. As you can tell by this report, much of the discussion re: social media and govt is still focused on the political side - i.e. running campaigns, mobilising people, and communications. They still need to make the same leap to incorporating not just the tools, but the *principles* of social media into government: active collaboration and engagement, and user-contributed/generated content. The same goes for Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. There are many experiments and a growing hunger, creating great opportunity for innovation and the sharing of ideas. There are still no household names in this realm, no trade magazines for govt 2.0, no simple primer for the vast number of civil servants out there who are struggling to understand social media and their implcations. The social and commercial potential are still great. But we must act, once again allow the US to take lead in an area in which the UK has no shortage whatsoever of great ideas, and great people.

Tags:   eParticipation · ObamaNo Comments.

Within the past several months the government has rolled out a number of policy measures targeted at helping the nation’s small businesses: DCMS ‘Digital Britain’ initiative, BERR’s plan to guarantee up to £20bn of loans to small and medium-sized firms, and UKTI’s support of Web Missions, to name a few.  Others are still on the drawing board, such as NESTA’s proposal for a £1 billion fund to help address the increasing paucity of funding for early-stage companies.

As an occasional policy analyst focused on this space, and now as an entrepreneur, I have more than a passing interest in such interventions and discussions.  While I certainly welcome the government’s continued efforts to facilitate the development and growth of innovative early-stage firms, I occassionally wonder how much input they are getting from this very consituency which they aimsto support.

Bytes of the Roundtable

At the close of last year, I had the opportunity to discuss this, albeit very briefly, with two different government ministers.  In doing so, I made the suggestion that the government could probably make use of an “Advisory Council of Entrepreneurs” to help provide a sounding board and discussion forum for the government’s innovation and entrepreurship policies.  In those and subsequent conversations with others within government and the start-up community, I’ve become increasingly convinced of the usefulness of getting entrepreneur voices to the government table.

Now, as the head of a digital start-up (and one devoted to enabling policy and public engagement) I recognise that this suggestion of an Advisory Council is rather ‘old school’ and limited in what it could achieve.  Nonetheless, several years of operating within the policy realm taught me that frequently it is such old school approaches which are what works best to get things moving.  It is a time-tested mechanism and one which the current policy and political apparatus is familiar.  “When in Rome” and all that jazz…

What might it look like?  My gut is that it would consist of 15-20 UK innovative entrepreneurs - individuals who not only have an interest in the strength of the UK’s start-up environment, put an interest in actively engaging government to help bring it about.   It would be a roundtable, oriented at providing practical feedback to the government’s current policy proposals, as well as concrete suggestions for new policies.

While the number physically surrounding the table might be limited in a number, we could certainly apply some new media approaches (a la my own venture,  polyWonk) to engaging the larger community of innovative entrepreneurs to pool ideas, opinions, etc, and using the Roundtable to aggregate, filter, and channel these to government, in a means and format with which they are comfortable.

Entrepreneurs’ Guild

Of course, if there is really significant interest, then I see no reason that we couldn’t step it up a notch - forming a proper trade association.  Last week’s packed OpenSoho showed me that there is certainly no shortage of digital entrepreneurs around.  Again, while recognising that this may be a bit of an ‘old school’ type of institution, there are reasons that the western world contains thousands of them: they are useful, and broadly accepted, mechanisms for aggregating a set of organisations or individuals with a common purpose or interests, and representing those interests to government, the press, and society.  The UK has associations ranging from Pet Food Manufacturers, to Gin and Vodka producers, to a trade association of trade associations (One of my favourites back home in San Francisco was the Northern California Korean Dry Cleaners Assocation, with membership not just determined by profession, by geography and ethnicity to boot.  Talk about selective.).   In the start-up-related world, VC’s have one (BVCA).  Business angels have one (BBAA). Even one of London’s favourite entrepreneurs, Paul Walsh, directs a trade body for new media agencies.   While the FSB exists to represent all small and medium enterprises (from kabab shops to small factories), I believe that the needs, ambitions, and approaches of the UK’s innovative entrepreneurs are sufficiently unique to justify their own voice.

Whether such an entity should focus just on digital entrepreneurs, or more broadly to technology and innovative entrepreneurs writ large, I’m open.  Similarly, perhaps it also makes sense to leverage an existing activity or network, such as Amplified.  Again, I’m open.

So, anyone care to lobby with me?

Tags:   Government · Lobbying · Start-ups1 Comment

In a recent TechCrunch article, Nick Halstead of fav.or.it wrote some observations on the government’s new debt-related support interventions for small and medium businesses.  For odd reasons, though, he concluded the article with a brief “scathing” criticism of NESTA Investments.  Amusingly, this last paragraph seems to have generated more debate than the substance of his article.  As an ex-NESTA employee, I felt obliged to join in the fray.

A few words in defense of NESTA: as a CEO of a web 2.0 start-up, I certainly sympathise with your frustration.  However, it would be arrogant of us to assume that “Technology” only includes Web 2.0 developments.  Indeed, Web 2.0 activity in the UK only comprises a fraction of technological development, and associated investment into this space.  As a technology fund, NESTA Investments actively pursues and manages a portfolio of investments in ICT (particularly high-tech hardware), biotech, and cleantech.

Additionally, as NESTA funding currently originates from the public purse (technically, from lottery proceeds) as taxpayers we should be pleased that they are investing their resources on areas in which they have solid expertise (and accordingly, can make more intelligent investments and provide meaningful support to their portfolio), rather than pouring money into whatever technology seems ‘hot’ at the moment.

Furthermore, as can be seen by the popularity of the myriad web 2.0 networking events, there are a number of other investors, both angels and institutional players, now active in the Web 2.0 space.  While there is certainly room for additional investment in this realm, it seems entirely appropriate to me that NESTA spend its limited resources on areas where there are fewer private sector players (and accordingly, a more significant equity gap).  Don’t get me wrong - I’d be overjoyed if they launched a web 2.0 fund - but I do understand their rationale for not having done so yet.

Finally, just because NESTA Investments is not active in Web 2.0 work, does not mean that NESTA is not involved in the social media space.  Indeed, they have an entire programmatic stream, called Web Connect, devoted to investigation and support of highly innovative applications of web 2.0 concepts.

Coming from a country (the US) with no real analogue to NESTA, I’m constantly amazed that people so harshly criticise having a quasi-government agency focused on technology, creativity, and entrepreneurship - or, in other words, the future.  I suppose that fact that it is the subject of growing debate could be seen as a sign of its growing significance and repuation.  I certainly have my own thoughts on how NESTA might improve and evolve into its next incarnation, but they are based upon experience and analysis of the organisation and its activities.  And despite such reservations, as a UK resident I can only consider myself luck that such an unusual and forward-thinking organisation exists.

Tags:   NESTA2 Comments

The UK faces some big issues: climate change, an aging population, changing demographics, global competition, etc. Increasingly, these issues are defying the conventional mechanisms we have for developing and delivering the policy to address them. Policy-making roles within government entities tend to conform to rigid structures and internal cultural norms (i.e who can speak to whom, who can say what to the public, who needs to approve new ideas, etc.). Any others who might wish to participate in the process must first learn to conform to those norms and the oft-hidden pathways into the system.

Tackling, together

These problems can’t be solved with one particular skillset or within one particular department. They require interdisciplinary skills, and the combined efforts of many people working across government, the economy, and society. Those with knowledge might be in a national government agency, or in a local council. They might be experts in a think-tank, or a practitioner with years of experience delivering a service in their community. They might live in a city, a rural town, or even another country altogether. And all of them might have a key piece to the larger puzzle. Only with all of the pieces will we see the puzzle solved.

This is where Web 2.0, or the social web, comes in. Frequently, when we think of Web 2.0, we think of blogs, wikis, and social networks — and this is certainly the case. But Web 2.0 is more than than a collection of internet tools. It is a philosophy. One of collaboration and user-involvement. The idea that through the efforts and knowledge of many, we can tackle issues which far exceed the capacity of one.

Bottom-up and Top-down

In the policy and social arena, this philosophy is being born out in grassroots activity and experiments across society. mySociety.org has been building sites for public engagement since 2003. Involve is an exceptional organisation conducting research and experiments on public participation. Social Innovation Camp 2008 brought together dozens of social media mavens, social entrepreneurs, and practitioners to explore different uses of new tools to address social challenges.

Within the government, there are also signs of change. Minister and MP blogs, ePetititions, and community fora — while perhaps not prolific — are no longer unusual. In the beginning of the year, Jeremy Gould of the Ministry of Justice convened the UK’s first UKGovWeb BarCamp, drawing an impressive array of those within government eager to explore tools for engagement and collaboration. Dominic Campbell of FutureGov has recently been appointed [what is believed to be] the first Social Media Manager for a local council. Tom Watson, the West Bromwich MP and a political blogging pioneer, has recently taken up the post of Cabinet Office minister for bringing more web 2.0 principles into government. Within the opposition, George Osborne has long spoken of the potential for ‘open-source policy’, with the Tories using wiki-like tools to facilitate the collaborative development of the party’s numerous substantive white-papers. In the Americas, a term has even been coined to refer to all of this activity: Government 2.0.

A long hill to climb

However, despite these impressive and rapid developments, much remains to be done. Within the halls of government, a long-standing perception that “information is power” stands as a serious obstacle to collaboration and sharing of information. While the tools may exist to facilitate debate and discussion between masses of people, such debate is often seen to lack meaningful deliberation and balanced participation. Even when great ideas and content do emerge, it can be difficult to present these to policy-makers in a manner which is seen as credible and usable.

To explore some of these questions, polyWonk has recently been asked to lead the Policy 2.0 strand at the upcoming 2gether08 festival. At 2gether08 we’re looking to take on these issues, and do something about them. I encourage you to head over to the 2gether08 site, and comment, propose, challenge, collaborate, and debate. The only way we’re going to get better at working together, is by working together.

Note: This entry has (in essence) been cross-posted on 2gether08.com.

Tags:   collaborative government · eDemocracy · Government 2.0 · policy 2.0 · social media · web 2.01 Comment