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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”.

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