NOTE: The article below is my contribution to the Centre for Policy Development’s Insight: Upgrading Democracy, which consists of several pieces from well-known thinkers and doers in the Government 2.0 sector and was CPD’s submission to the Government 2.0 Taskforce. It is republished here because I like to keep everything in one place.
‘There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.’
— Niccolo Machiavelli,The Prince (1532)
One of the biggest hurdles for the public sector and legislators tasked with fulfilling the promise of Government 2.0 will be the cultural change involved.
Culture change is tough in any organisation, let alone in huge, distributed, diverse and largely conservative organisations such as federal and state public services. Yet it is this change that will be the -or-break factor in the transformation that the Government 2.0 Taskforce will advise the Federal government on and that other levels of government (and other governments across the world) are also seeking to .
Change is an uncertain thing. How do we convince others of the need for the change? How will we be successful? How do we define success? How do we measure that success when we don’t even know where the journey of change might take us? And how do we go about making change happen despite this uncertainty?
The Government 2.0 Taskforce is moving ahead fairly well in defining the issue for its audience and incorporating input from the Gov 2.0 community of interest. There are some significant issues that the Taskforce will need to address when it delivers its report:
- a lack of a cohesive ‘whole of government’ approach at any level of government
- a view of accountability that inadequately rewards those responsible for success and innovation
- inadequate trust and permission models across public sector management
- a need to shift to openness as a default, including removing the reticence to participate and obstruction of participation
- a negatively-coloured perception of risk
Of course, these issues are not problems for all individuals, nor even their agencies, in the Australian public sector. They are, however, representative of the public sector generally, based on my experience as a public servant and my time working with the public sector as an outsider.
In New Zealand, the US and the UK, the public sector has been equipped with well-publicised rules of engagement for workers that permit them to actively engage with the public in online communities. These rules are ably backed up by existing codes of behavior that govern overall public sector employee conduct. In Australia, such rules exist, but the weight attached to them, their currency, the level of publicity and explicit, high-profile support for them from either Ministers or the most senior levels of the public service is largely missing or unclear.
No wonder both individuals and agencies are largely confused or indeed, oblivious, to what the position is on the engagement of public servants online.
Other nations have appointed both Ministers for Digital Engagement and, in the case of both the US and the UK, senior public servants whose ambits include digital engagement. In the US, we have seen the young, vibrant and demonstrably engaged, Vivek Kundra, the United States Chief Information Officer, driving change from the top. In the UK, Andrew Stott is the Director of Digital Engagement, and is also leading the way, connecting directly with the public and public servants. These people understand the online environment and its importance to the advancement of the Government 2.0 agenda, and also visibly live and breathe the culture it requires.
In this country, we have neither a Minister nor a senior public servant with carriage of digital engagement as a specific responsibility. Some Ministers even seem at cross-purposes. The Internet censorship agenda being advanced by Senator Stephen Conroy, is in fact anathema to the Government 2.0 model. Yet Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is strong in his support for a reform agenda that can hardly be enhanced by a filtered and potentially slower Internet.
In my time as a public servant, and in my experience since, the model of accountability that we see in the public sector is largely tied to responsibility for action and carriage of blame should something go wrong. Again, this is not true of the entire public sector, but it does represent the perception you get from the whole.
Taskforce member, Martin Stewart-Weeks of Cisco noted recently that, ‘We need a theory of “accountability 2.0″ to match the instincts and values of gov2. Any ideas?’
My response to Martin argued that it was not just accountability that was needed, but also new models of authorship, trust and permission. In order to achieve the cultural change needed with the least possible resistance, several things must happen.
First, I believe a mandate to implement these reforms and to behave and implement in the required way is needed from the highest levels. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet should be the ones that deliver this mandate to the Australian Public Service (APS), to remove any possible doubt about whether agencies and individual public servants are acting in accordance with the wishes of the elected government. They should be supported by the APS Commissioner, the Finance Minister in his capacity as the Minister responsible for the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) and the Special Minister of State.
And, second, the sometimes closed culture of the public sector must be shifted to one in which:
- the creators of innovative programs and thinking are identified for their good work, publicly and often
- openness and publication of material is the default (it should be noted that the FOI reform agenda of the current government is moving this way)
- all public servants are explicitly and implicitly permitted to engage with the public online (and offline) where they have the necessary expertise to do so, and
- public servants are trusted by their senior executive and Ministers to not just do their job but to do it in the public eye and in concert with an engaged, contributing public.
An example of the need for this is alive and kicking now in the work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. As noted by Matthew Landauer of OpenAustralia, just one of the public servant members of the Taskforce has seen fit to engage via the online channels the Taskforce is using, whereas almost all of the non-public servant members of the same have engaged in some way. This is unfortunate.
There is an active Australian Government 2.0 community on Google Groups. Yet, very few of the many public servants who participate there do so officially. Many of them have explicitly stated that they are unsure or afraid of the consequences of doing so. They use personal email addresses and are sometimes reticent to discuss not only what agencies they work for but what projects they are involved in. That this approach is viewed as necessary by so many is disappointing.
Third, and finally, there needs to be a change in the negative perception of risk in the public sector.
It is not often that you encounter a public servant whose perception of risk encompasses risk as an opportunity to innovate. You more often encounter a fearful perception of risk that imagines how an adverse outcome might be difficult to explain for the member of the Senior Executive who will be questioned in Senate Estimates. You can hardly blame public servants for being risk-averse in these circumstances – so the circumstances must change.
All these changes must be supported by relevant and ongoing education and mentoring to ensure that the public sector is equipped with the skills to manage this transformation with the greatest opportunity for success.
I’m under no illusion that the change needed in the public sector at all levels of government will be easy. So, what to do? I do not have all or even many of the answers. But I have many ideas. As do others. It is when these ideas are allowed to come forward, treated seriously and acted on equally seriously that we will have the most opportunity to bring about this much needed change.
So, public sector, let’s act. Let’s “take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things”.
