Three Sides of Open Government
Oliver Bell, Director, Standards Engagement Australia and New Zealand | In April of 2009 Andrea Di Maio, an analyst with Gartner who has been looking at the role of technology in government and governance for some years now, published his thoughts on the future of Government service delivery, the provocative title that he assigned to his paper was “The Future of Government is No Government”. In the document Andrea suggested that we would soon start to see social media and other emerging web2.0 technologies play a significant role in the design of the next generation of government delivered services. When we look at the focus of many of our governments in the region today there is no debate that less than a year later this transformation is well underway, and is generally described as Open Government or Government 2.0. |
As is the case with many new terms as they emerge, while the ideas and goals around Open Government are often common the implementations tend to differ, in this article we thought it would be worth while describing three of the models that we are seeing being deployed in the Asia Pacific region.
It is worth while pointing out that these three implementations of Open Government are in no way exclusive to each other and there are cases, Australia for example, where multiple streams of work are underway to deliver more than one of the scenarios described below.
Throughout this article we will highlight examples from Australia and New Zealand, two countries that we are intimately familiar with. Similar examples exist across the rest of the Asia Pacific region.
The first model that we are seeing focuses very strongly on increasing participation with governance processes. This model is very much about using social media tools to enhance the way that governments, businesses and citizens communicate with each other.
In years gone by an interaction with an agency would be through a formal and often forms based process, and with a politician it would be highly likely that you would interact via letter or by turning up at a public forum.
Today an increasing number of our politicians and government agencies are using tools like Facebook and Twitter to hold ongoing conversations with constituents in a very public forum.
Using these social media tools our elected officials are finding new ways to communicate very directly with their constituents, and vice versa. In Australia and New Zealand you will regularly find Kevin Rudd and John Key posting updates on speeches that they have just delivered and other activities to micro blogging sites like Twitter where they’re immediately seen by literally hundreds of thousands of people.
The second trend that we are seeing, which was again highlighted by Andrew Di Maio, is the mass publication of government held data.
Governments hold massive amounts of statistical, geographic and logistical information about their country and its citizens. This data has often been collected and held to support a specific governmental process, but increasingly agencies are recognizing that the data has much more value than that and by making it available third party developers will build applications that help recognize that additional value.
To help understand the possibilities of published data the Australia Government 2.0 Taskforce recently hosted what they called a “hackday”, bringing together over 150 developers for an intensive two day exercise, giving them the opportunity to build applications using a wide array of public data, including the 60+ datasets that are now hosted at http://data.australia.gov.au.
The results were predictably impressive, with tools that ranged from helping citizens understand the role and activities of the Australian federal government through to an application that allows citizens to quickly report issues in their local neighbourhood that need to be resolved. All of this development was completed within the forty eight hour period of the hackday event, a real testament to both talent of the developers that attended and the power that can be harnessed through the use of published and open government data.
The final scenario that has been getting some attention has been called by Bill English, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister, “Inside Out Government”.
In a 2006 Wired Magazine article journalist Jeff Howe described Crowd Sourcing as a method of harnessing the power of crowds to solve complex problems.
One of the early, well documented and often cited examples is that of a Canadian mining company called Goldcorp.
The story of Goldcorp has been written about in detail in number of books, but at a very basic level involves the then CEO Rob McEwen deciding to publish large amounts of very sensitive company information detailing the geographic and mineral contents of land that the company owned. The company had been struggling to realize the value of their real estate assets after several failed attempts to find an extract the minerals that they were in business to mine.
McEwen’s idea was to offer a prize to individuals who could accurately analyze the data that he published and help the company find gold. The plan worked, saving the company and becoming one of the first examples of successful crowd sourcing.
In a recent speech to New Zealand’s Institute of Public Administration Minister English talked about ways that crowd sourcing could apply to national governance, “Government can tap wider resources in the community to analyse and use government data to help solve problems and produce insights. A ministerial committee is exploring this concept.”- in essence proposing to use the power of crowd sourcing to help solve complex government policy development and improvement challenges.
Under Minister English’s proposal published data could be analysed by any interested party who will in turn be able to help the government find new ways to lower the cost of building a kilometre of road, manage a prison cell, deliver vital medical services and so on.
As you read through these examples I’m sure you will agree that these are interesting times for governments looking for new ways to embrace emerging technologies to improve participation and governance. These are the early experiments, and they are already delivering on their promises.
Oliver Bell*, Director, Standards Engagement Australia and New Zealand, Microsoft & Brett Roberts, National Technology Officer, New Zealand, Micrsosoft
*Oliver writes on eGovernment related topics regularly on his own blog at osrin.net, and is a frequent contributor to TalkStandards.
