This short talk is to be deliv­ered to the IBM Smarter Work­force — Gov­ern­ment Lead­er­ship Forum on 9 Sep­tem­ber 2009.

“Every dystopia is a utopia turned inside out… The prob­lem isn’t in the basic idea, it’s in the arro­gance of imple­men­ta­tion. It’s in the idea that we will get it right the first time.“
- Steven Lloyd Wil­son #

Gov­ern­ment 2.0 is more than just eGov­ern­ment with a new name. eGov­ern­ment in Aus­tralia has largely focused on deliv­ery of ser­vices and pro­grams via online or con­nected means — an admirable agenda that has in large part been suc­cess­ful in the 10 or so years it has been a pri­or­ity. But online deliv­ery is just a part of what Gov­ern­ment 2.0 offers.

My per­sonal view is that Gov­ern­ment 2.0 is an unhelp­ful term. As with Enter­prise 2.0 and Web 2.0 before it, it some­what unin­ten­tion­ally puts tech­nol­ogy in people’s minds and cre­ates visions of some­thing large, expen­sive and com­plex that will be done to gov­ern­ment rather than by gov­ern­ment and misses the point about the groundswell cul­ture and prac­tice change sup­ported by tech­nol­ogy that is arguably the more sub­stan­tial and world-​​changing aspect of the thing.

Tim O’Reilly, one of the co-​​creators of the term Web 2.0, and now pas­sion­ate Gov­ern­ment 2.0 advo­cate, describes Gov­ern­ment 2.0 as requir­ing a shift to plat­form think­ing, where gov­ern­ment pro­vides the plat­form for amaz­ing things to hap­pen — think high­ways, the Inter­net, GPS (all orig­i­nally cre­ated by government) — and builds ser­vices on it, but also opens it up in order for cit­i­zens and busi­ness to build their own appli­ca­tions, prod­ucts and ser­vices. Ones not con­sid­ered or even dreamed of by gov­ern­ment, but using the infra­struc­ture and data pro­vided by gov­ern­ment.

Still, this descrip­tion focuses on the tools and tech­nol­ogy. I think the end game Tim is mov­ing towards is sys­tems think­ing — con­sid­er­ing gov­ern­ment and all the things it does as a part of much larger, con­tex­tual puz­zle. If we focus on the tools and tech­nol­ogy, we risk becom­ing obsessed with minu­tiae that hide the real possibilities.

To my mind, the tools and tech­nol­ogy are the scaf­fold­ing upon which Gov­ern­ment 2.0 can be built — a crit­i­cal part of the whole, but not the answer in and of itself. Rather, for Gov­ern­ment 2.0 to suc­ceed, we should focus on the mod­els deliv­ered by 2.0 think­ing — light­weight, agile, respon­sive over reac­tive, pre­pared to make small mis­takes, open, col­lab­o­ra­tive — and the fact that at its heart, it’s about peo­ple.

So, let’s begin with a use­ful def­i­n­i­tion, the def­i­n­i­tion used by the very active Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment 2.0 com­mu­nity that has gath­ered on Google Groups to dis­cuss the sub­ject. I’ve cho­sen this def­i­n­i­tion not just because I had a hand in mak­ing it, but also because I think it’s one of the most bal­anced out there:

Gov­ern­ment 2.0 is not specif­i­cally about social net­work­ing or tech­nol­ogy based approaches to any­thing. It rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in the imple­men­ta­tion of gov­ern­ment — toward an open, col­lab­o­ra­tive, coop­er­a­tive arrange­ment where there is (wher­ever pos­si­ble) open con­sul­ta­tion, open data, shared knowl­edge, mutual acknowl­edg­ment of exper­tise, mutual respect for shared val­ues and an under­stand­ing of how to agree to dis­agree. Tech­nol­ogy and social tools are an impor­tant part of this change but are essen­tially an enabler in this process.

You’ll see from the def­i­n­i­tion that there’s a sig­nif­i­cantly larger pic­ture that needs to be under­stood, explored, exper­i­mented with and ulti­mately imple­mented to make Gov­ern­ment 2.0 the real­ity it can be.

Gov­ern­ment 2.0 makes a delib­er­ate effort to break down what can seem impen­e­tra­ble bar­ri­ers of bureau­cracy and intro­duce a more human face to the exec­u­tive arm of gov­ern­ment. Pub­lic ser­vants are encour­aged to engage with each other and with the pub­lic where pos­si­ble, within their own spheres of exper­tise. Rather than out­bound com­mu­ni­ca­tion from agen­cies to the pub­lic, the dis­course becomes con­ver­sa­tion — amongst the pub­lic sec­tor, between the pub­lic sec­tor and the com­mu­nity, and amongst the var­i­ous parts of the com­mu­nity itself. This con­ver­sa­tional approach offers many ben­e­fits — the pub­lic sec­tor is kept con­stantly attuned to the needs and wants of the pub­lic, the pub­lic is less baf­fled by bureau­cracy as they are in more fre­quent touch.

Bor­row­ing heav­ily from the cul­ture of Open Source, Gov­ern­ment 2.0 assumes that pub­licly open, mul­ti­ple and rapid iter­a­tions of pol­icy, of pro­grams, of ideas is a good thing. Not nec­es­sar­ily for every­thing gov­ern­ment does, but as and where appro­pri­ate. Adopt­ing this prac­tice allows for a more agile approach to pol­icy devel­op­ment and pro­gram deliv­ery. The big bang approaches of the past where ser­vices deliv­ered by the pub­lic sec­tor are found to not be suit­able for some rea­son but are unchange­able and there­fore an expen­sive waste of funds and effort due to the imple­men­ta­tion model, can be replaced with an approach that sees things tested in pub­lic and sub­ject to change as shift­ing pri­or­i­ties and needs are identified.

The Gov­ern­ment 2.0 Task­force itself is using this model to help iden­tify the pri­or­i­ties the pub­lic want to see returned to the gov­ern­ment in its report. So too are events such as Sen­a­tor Kate Lundy’s Pub­lic Sphere, which have proved mea­sur­ably suc­cess­ful and have cast the net wide for input and exper­tise. Efforts in other juris­dic­tions too, have seen sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess in pri­ori­tis­ing pol­icy, fund­ing and human resource needs. Just last week sev­eral announce­ments here and over­seas moved the con­ver­sa­tion along.

New Zealand’s State Ser­vices Com­mis­sion has announced NZGOAL, an exper­i­ment in licens­ing Pub­lic Sec­tor Infor­ma­tion with an appro­pri­ate license in order to adopt, as they say in the announce­ment, “prin­ci­ples which embrace, among other things, the notions of open access, open licens­ing, cre­ativ­ity, authen­tic­ity, non-​​discrimination and open for­mats”. They very delib­er­ately state it is an exper­i­ment, designed to be iter­ated and improved over time through input from many sources. This announce­ment and what it means has been noticed here and as far away as the UK by senior mem­bers of the Par­lia­ment, as well as by advo­cates of more open licens­ing of PSI.

In Aus­tralia, we have moves in this direc­tion too. The FoI reform agenda will nec­es­sar­ily see a change in licens­ing for some mate­r­ial, it’s a change that has already been adopted by some organ­i­sa­tions and there is help avail­able from the Gov­ern­ment Infor­ma­tion Licens­ing Frame­work for agen­cies unsure how they should more per­mis­sively license their data for reuse

Just last Fri­day, NSW Pre­mier, Nathan Rees announced at the first NSW Sphere event that not only would the NSW Gov­ern­ment be spon­sor­ing a $100,000 com­pe­ti­tion for devel­op­ment of appli­ca­tions that made inno­v­a­tive use of pub­lic sec­tor data, but also that “Gov­ern­ments have to over­come old habits of secrecy and con­trol. We’ve got to be inter­ac­tive. The old one-​​way street style of pol­i­tics has to go.”

This announce­ment bore more than a pass­ing resem­blance to the Prime Minister’s words in last week’s John Pater­son Ora­tion at the Aus­tralia New Zealand School of Gov­ern­ment Annual Con­fer­ence, where he empha­sised the need for an inno­v­a­tive, open, outward-​​looking APS and a cul­ture within the APS that sup­ports these things. It also echoed the words of out­go­ing Com­mis­sioner Lynelle Briggs who has more than once stated the need for a citizen-​​centric pub­lic sec­tor and the need to look out­side the bound­aries of agen­cies to acad­e­mia, to busi­ness and to the pub­lic them­selves by using sys­tems think­ing to solve “wicked prob­lems”.

The solv­ing of wicked prob­lems and a truly citizen-​​centric approach to gov­ern­ment will mean that the abil­ity for the pub­lic sec­tor and the leg­is­la­ture to con­nect closely and col­lab­o­rate with those out­side gov­ern­ment must be enhanced. Amongst other things, approaches like this sup­port and enhance the government’s Social Inclu­sion agenda.

Mov­ing our pub­lic sec­tor to a cul­ture, set of prac­tices and tech­nolo­gies that actively embraces Gov­ern­ment 2.0 is high on the agenda of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment with the Task­force due to report on its find­ings at the end of Decem­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter express­ing his desire to see these types of changes and Min­is­ter Lind­say Tan­ner strong in his sup­port for cul­ture, prac­tice and tech­no­log­i­cal change that will sup­port this agenda. I have no doubt that it presents a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for pub­lic ser­vants of every gen­er­a­tion, but the promise it holds can deliver bet­ter evidence-​​based pol­icy, more tar­geted pro­grams and an open envi­ron­ment where the pub­lic sec­tor is no longer an inscrutable mys­tery to large parts of the com­mu­nity but is some­thing made up of real, approach­able human beings with names and who really care about us — it’s not that these things aren’t already the case, but by adop­tion of Gov­ern­ment 2.0 they become a given.

Gov­ern­ment 2.0 is so much more than just eGov­ern­ment with a new name.

In clos­ing, I’d like to quote the posi­tion on Gov­ern­ment 2.0 from the Obama campaign.

“We need to con­nect cit­i­zens with each other to engage them more fully and directly in solv­ing the prob­lems that face us. We must use all avail­able tech­nolo­gies and meth­ods to open up the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, cre­at­ing a new level of trans­parency to change the way busi­ness is con­ducted … giv­ing [peo­ple] the chance to par­tic­i­pate in gov­ern­ment delib­er­a­tions and decision-​​making in ways that were not pos­si­ble only a few years ago.“
- Obama cam­paign pol­icy state­ment #