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Transparency in government 2.0: why and how
eGovMon project meeting
David OsimoTech4i2 ltd.
Structure of the talk
• examples of gov2.0 transparency initiative
• why does it matter?
• a new vision taking shape?
• what should government do?
2
So far ICT has not fundamentally changed government
• 1990s: ICT expected to make government more transparent, efficient and user oriented
• 2005+: disillusion as burocracy not much different from Max Weber’s description
3
Supply Demand
Many projects of web2.0 in public services, but not by government
Source: own elaboration of IPTS PS20 project
Relevant for key government activities
Back office Front office
RegulationCross-agency collaboration
Knowledge managementInteroperability
Human resources mgmtPublic procurement
Service deliveryeParticipation
Law enforcementPublic sector information
Public communicationTransparency and accountability
source: “Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How? www.jrc.es5
Regulation : Peer-to-patent
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Citizens building services using public data
Private sector delivering public services
Example: DC.gov
Data Catalog (CSV, Atom, XML, ESRI, KML)
Jose Alonso, W3c
Example: DC.gov
Jose Alonso, W3c
Not only spontaneous: INCA awards
• Context in Flanders: very few government 2.0 project
• INCA prize: 1 month, 20K euros for new applications “socially useful”
• results: 35 brand new applications on: family, mobility, culture, environment
• double dividend: ICT innovation and social impact
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Obama administration
• memo on transparency as first act: transparency by default
• recovery.gov as flagship for reusable data
• agreement with social networks
• appointment of best web2.0 people in WhiteHouse staff
• data.gov catalogue
★what about Europe?
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Why?
• Citizens and CIVIL SERVANTS already use web 2.0: no action ≠ no risks
• Likely to stay as it is linked to underlying societal trends
- Today’s teenagers = future users and employees
- Empowered customers
- Creative knowledge workers
- From hierarchy to network-based organizations
- Non linear-innovation models
- Consumerization of ICT16
Why?/2
Because it does not impose change (e-gov 1.0) but acts on leverages, drivers and incentives:
• building on unique and specific knowledge of users: the “cognitive surplus”
• the power of visualization
• reducing information and power asymmetries
• peer recognition rather than hierarchy
• reducing the cost of collective action
• changing the expectations of citizens
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Different kinds of citizens’ involvement in web 2.0
Source: IPTS estimation based on Eurostat, IPSOS-MORI, Forrester
4.Providing attention, taste data
3.Using user-generated content
2.Providing ratings, reviews
1.Producing content
100%3% 40% of Internet users (50% of EU population)10%
“A problem shared is a problem halved
...and a pressure group created”
Dr. Paul Hodgkindirector PatientOpinion.org
“it’s about pressure points, chinks in the armour where
improvements might be possible, whether with the consent of
government or not”
Tom Steinbergdirector mySociety
Before
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Government
citizen
After
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Government
citizen
friends
friends of friends
public
information, trust, attention
A new vision starting to take shape
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To sum up, transparency, which enhances accountability and choice, can be a powerful driver, a catalyst and a flagship for “transformational government”, rather than for “eGovernment” only.
6 What is new? Government transparency is by no means a new issue. It has been the subject of policy action for three centuries, and substantial literature has been written on the topic. The first laws on access to public documents were implemented in 18th century Sweden. Over the last 20 years, most OECD countries have adopted ¨freedom of information laws¨ that allow access to public documents as a fundamental right. “Open government” has been a buzzword for many years, and on a more light-hearted note, it was already a subject of irony in the 80s. For example, the first episode of the BBC comedy “Yes, Minister” was entitled “Open Government”.
However, it seems that policy attention is growing. “OECD countries are moving from a situation where government chose what it revealed, to a principle of all government information being available unless there is a defined public interest in it being withheld” (OECD 2005). In 2007-2008, the Council of Europe is debating a ¨European convention on access to official documents¨.
Why should we take transparency as key driver of government innovation today? There are some specific novelties that make transparency particularly important now.
a) the wide AVAILABILITY OF WEB TOOLS to elaborate on public data makes the impact of transparency much bigger. Just think of free publishing platforms such as blogs, mash-ups like GoogleEarth, visualization tools like ManyEyes, plus all the free and open source software used in web 2.0 projects to, for example, distribute the work of monitoring government activities between many people (crowdsourcing). These tools make public data much more relevant and understandable – and enhance the impact of transparency.
b) the concept of MANY-TO-MANY (Pascu, Osimo et al. 2007) changes the power relationship. Before, transparency was an issue of the individual citizens versus the government, and this limited the impact of the information obtained. Now, the first thing a citizen does when he obtains interesting information out of a Freedom of Information request, is to post it on the web – see, for example, what happened in Italy with the information on the cost of the Tourism portal. The refusal by the Italian government to disclose the information became a boomerang once published on IT blogs,4 and the bureaucratic answer became a monument to inward-looking government. Indeed, even Freedom of Information requests are now monitored by non-governmental services such as whatdotheyknow.com.
4 http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?i=2124310
European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 6 Nº 4 · August 2008 · ISSN: 1988-625X
Jose Alonso, W3C guidelinse
Say it again!?!?
“Public Sector
Information in free open
raw formats and ways that make it
accessible to all and allow
reuse”
more specific? see the 8 principlesThanks and Q&A
http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/
http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/0316-OGD-JA/
The road ahead
Semantic Web
XML
RDFa
API
RSS/Atom
HTML Scrapping
Jose Alonso, W3c
Web-oriented government architecture
UK Cabinet, “Power of information task force report” Robinson et al.: “Government Data and the Invisible Hand “Gartner: “The Real Future of E-Government: From Joined-Up to Mashed-Up”
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What should government do?
1 - DO NO HARM
• don’t hyper-protect public data from re-use
• don’t launch large scale “facade” web2.0 project
• don’t forbid web 2.0 in the workplace
• let bottom-up initiatives flourish as barriers to entry are very low
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2. ENABLE OTHERS TO DO
• publish reusable and machine readable data (XML, RSS, RDFa) > see W3C work
• adopt web-oriented architecture
• create a public data catalogue > see Washington DC
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3. ACTIVELY PROMOTE
• ensure pervasive broadband
• create e-skills in and outside government: digital literacy, media literacy, web2.0 literacy, programming skills
• fund bottom-up initiatives through public procurement, awards
• reach out trough key intermediaries trusted by the community
• listen, experiment and learn-by-doing30
Thank you
Further information:Osimo, 2008. Web2.0 in government: why and how? www.jrc.es
Osimo, 2008. Benchmarking e-government in the web 2.0 era: what to measure, and how. European Journal of ePractice, August 2008.
http://delicious.com/osimod/visualization
http://egov20.wordpress.com
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Back-up slides
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A new innovation model for public services
• A new WAY to innovate public services• Continuous and incremental, • open and non hyerarchical• not only by government: civil society, citizens, civil
servants
• A new effective DRIVER to address the challenges of innovating public services
• citizens’ ratings and reviews: democratization of voice where there is no exit possibility
• more openness and transparency expected• wider availability of IT tools for innovation by
citizens, civil servants, civil society 33
Common mistakes
• “Build it and they will come”: beta testing, trial and error necessary
• Launching “your own” large scale web 2.0 flagship project
• Opening up without soft governance of key challenges:
- privacy
- individual vs institutional role
- destructive participation
• Adopting only the technology with traditional top-down attitude
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Web 2.0 is about values, not technology: and it’s the hacker’s values
ValuesUser as producer, Collective intelligence,
Long tail, Perpetual beta, Extreme ease of use
ApplicationsBlog, Wiki, Podcast, RSS, Tagging, Social networks, Search engine, MPOGames
TechnologiesAjax, XML, Open API, Microformats, REST,
Flash/Flex, Peer-to-Peer
Source: Author’s elaboration based on Forrester
Are these services used?
• in the back-office, yes
• in the front-office, not too much: few thousand users as an average
• still: this is much more than before!
• some (petty) specific causes have viral take-up (mobile phones fees, road tax charge schemes)
• very low costs of experimentation
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Why? /2
• Citizens (and employees) already use web 2.0: no action ≠ no risks
• Likely to stay as it is linked to underlying societal trends
- Today’s teenagers = future users and employees
- Empowered customers
- Creative knowledge workers
- From hierarchy to network-based organizations
- Non linear-innovation models
- Consumerization of ICT37
Is there a visible impact?
Yes, more than the usage:
• in the back office: evidence used by US Patent Office, used to detect Iraqi insurgents
• in the front office, making government really accountable and helping other citizens
• but there is risk of negative impact as well
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Web 2.0 is a set of values more than a set of technologies
ValuesUser as producer, collective intelligence,
openness “by default”, perpetual beta, ease of use
TechnologyBlogs, Podcast, Wiki, Social Networking, Peer-
to-peer, MPOGames, Mash-up Ajax, Microformats, RSS/XML
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Reminder: citizens and employees do it anyway
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