The Federal Government has an overriding obligation to American taxpayers. It should perform its functions efficiently and effectively while ensuring that its actions result in the best value for the taxpayers. - President Obama (March 2009).

Last month, the Center for American Progress (CAP) launched a new two-year project called “Doing What Works”. The aim of the project is to analyse government spending performance, to ensure resources are focused where they’re needed the most, and on efforts that generate the greatest returns.

The project aims to demonstrate how government could achieve results at lower cost, set priorities based on outcomes and efficacy, and restore public confidence that government spending works. It is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers, and includes experts from government advocacy groups like OMBWatch and the Sunlight Foundation.

On announcing the initiative John Pedesta (President of the Center for America Progress) explained how the federal government needed to operate more efficiently, boost its productivity and direct its resources where they’re needed the most and on efforts that generate the greatest returns.

Approaches that prove effective should be replicated. Those that perform poorly should be redesigned to boost results. And those that are redundant, misguided or misdirected should be eliminated.

President Obama’s Chief Performance Officer, Jeffrey Zients, addressed the event and explained how the U.S. government must and will “do more with less”.

Zients on Inefficiency, Strategies to improve and Early Success

Jeffrey Zients and the Obama administration have already taken a number of important steps to set high goals, strengthen performance evaluation and cut waste in federal contracting and other operational systems. While these actions present an ambitious agenda to transform and modernize the way the government does its business, more is necessary. There still exists many examples of inefficiency within the federal government, that contribute to a continuing perception that government wastes taxpayers dollars:

[...] The Department of Veteran Affairs still processes disability claims by hand, passing manila folders six to 12 inches thick from metal desktop to metal desktop. Veterans wait 160 days to receive their benefits.

[...] The Patent Office, the institution right at the center of protecting and promoting innovation, now receives more than 80 percent of patent applications electronically. That’s good. However, these applications are then manually printed out, rescanned and entered into an outdated case management system. The average processing time for a patent is about 3 years.

These types of antiquated processes are too common across government.

In order to improve performance and eliminate these kinds of “antiquated processes” he presented 6 strategies which he is working on (quoted from the event):

• Eliminating Waste – The most sustainable way to save money is not to trim around the margins, but rather to cut what doesn’t work, what is duplicative and what is outdated. Through the line by line review of the 2010 budget, we identified 121 program terminations, reductions and savings totaling $17 billion.

• Drive top priorities – In most organization, leaders set priorities and then drive the organization to meet these goals. This is hard in government because senior political leaders tend to focus on policy development in crisis management – not execution and not implementation. To focus senior agency leaders on getting the most important things done, we launched the High Priority Performance Goal initiative in June 2009.

[...] If you take a look at the High Priority Performance Goals, you will see three attributes. First, the goals are aligned closely with the agencies’ missions…You will also notice that many goals span across agencies, attacking the problem that the government too often works in tight silos, in programs, bureaus and departments…They’re working together with a shared goal to reduce the homeless veteran population by 70 percent by the end of 2012.

• Leverage purchasing scale – The federal government is far and away the world’s largest purchaser. We buy over $500 billion of goods and services every year. Despite this scale, we too often do not get the best prices or value for our money. And our contracting processes are slow and cumbersome.

The president has committed to saving $40 billion through contracting reform by the end of FY 2011. This serves as an important catalyst to push us to action. How do we do this? To start, we need to leverage our purchasing power and buy smarter. We need to work across agencies to take advantage of our scale. Take the simple example of office supplies. Over 100 federal organizations have separate contracts for office supplies. As a result, they’re paying 30 to 50 percent different prices on any given day for the exact same pens and paper.

We do our purchasing like we’re 100 medium-sized businesses, not the world’s single largest purchaser. By standardizing specs for commonly purchased items and working together across silos, we can pool our purchasing power to leverage our size and lower cost.

• Close the IT performance gap – I believe IT represents the largest gap between the private and public sectors. Technology has been at the center of those private-sector productivity gains across the past two decades – both efficiency gains and service quality improvements. For the most part, the federal government hasn’t participated in these gains. In service quality, we’re falling further and further behind.

If you can book dinner for an airline flight online, then why shouldn’t you be able to make an appointment at the local social security office the same way? On the efficiency front, the story is the same. We have antiquated systems and processes throughout many agencies. For example, the government system for managing retirement records is stuck in a different era.

Here it is, a cave in Boyers, Pennsylvania. Yes, a cave and, yes, the retirement records are stored in 35,000 metal file cabinets. It reminds me of that famous last scene at the end of “The Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Every major IT project is rated against performance expectations and we’ve launched tech stat review sessions and accountability sessions. If a project is over budget or behind schedule or not performing up to expectations, we will either develop a credible turnaround plan or we will terminate it.

• Open government -Let’s turn to the next strategy, open government. That’s about opening ourselves up to get feedback that can help us perform better. The president has committed to an unprecedented level of openness. In terms of performance, opening government gets us two things.

First, it makes us more accountable (e.g. USAspending.gov and Recovery.gov) by holding our feet to the fire. Second, it accelerates innovation (e.g. SAVE Award) by engaging the best minds to get to the best solutions.

• Attract and motivate top talent. – Too often, we don’t focus on people as a primary tool for achieving our missions and we underinvest in training and development. To attract and retain the best people, we need to fundamentally rethink how we both hire and develop our employees.

[...] You need all three of these slides in eight-point font to map out the hiring process at HUD. It’s a 40-step process. Nineteen different signatures are required, 139 days from start to finish. Not surprisingly, this results in terrible satisfaction scores from both managers and applicants. And HUD’s 139 days to hire is not the exception.In fact, it’s right at the average across all agencies. I spend a lot of time recruiting in the private sector and my experience is that the best people don’t loiter for five months. They find another home.

[...] Our goal is to cut the hiring time at least in half. We will focus on making the process more candidate-friendly and less bureaucratic. Starting with short, plain language, job descriptions, not 20-page documents full of government lingo. Requesting resumes and cover letters, not burdensome essays that don’t predict performance anyhow.

In conclusion, Zients explained how collaboration and an emphasis on success can bring about the organisational changes required to enable the government to “do more with less”. This spirit of collaboration has been one of the essential tenets of the Open Government initiative, with executive departments and agencies expected to ‘use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves and across all levels of Government‘:

We’re working with the agencies not from a compliance perspective, but with a collaborative spirit that acknowledges that we’re all after the same result. This focused collaboration is a key lever for driving change. But leaders have also got to convince people within the organization that change is possible.

Too often, I believe, organizations spend too much time thinking about and planning for change management and all the steps that are needed to prepare the organization for change. My strong belief is that the best way to prepare an organization for change is by changing and by celebrating the early wins that build change muscles and convince people that change is not only possible, but right within their reach.

After outlining examples of inefficiencies and a path forward, Zeints highlighted some early wins:

Across the government, there are examples of public servants and agencies who are demonstrating this point with early wins.Like Nancy Fichtner, who recently won the SAVE Award and met with the president for suggesting that veterans, leading VA hospitals should keep their medications rather than throwing them out and then having to reorder them at the local pharmacy.

The procurement executive at NNSA who saved 18 percent through eBay-like auctions in reverse, where contractors bid down the price for the services they’re competing for. Or the CIO and his team at the VA who pulled the plug on 12 IT projects when they saw how off-track they were. Or the team at Citizen and Immigration Services, the old INS, which in just 90 days, replaced its opaque application process with a transparent tracking system that allows people to check their status online, better and cheaper.

How Doing What Works facilitates these objectives

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works—whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. – President Obama’s inauguration address.

Doing what works seeks to realise the vision of a more efficient, accountable and transparent government, that can meet crucial national priorities with less resources.

The project will focus on three areas (overlapping with the strategies outlined by Jeffery Zeints):

• Eliminating or redesigning misguided programs and tax expenditures focused on areas such as health care, energy and education;
• Boosting government productivity by streamlining management and improving human resources, IT and contracting;
• Develop a foundation for better decision making through a transparent and metric based approach.

Achieving this objectives will require elected officials and federal agency leaders and managers to:

• Challenge the status quo
• Measure what works
  
• Experiment with what works
• Coordinate and consolidate
• Enlist the public
• Be ready to execute

Along with this, the project seeks to address the public’s mistrust in government’s ability to do what’s right. Some 61% of the public agreed that government spending is almost always wasteful and inefficient. Such mistrust is a significant barrier to advancing the policies above and those outlined by Zeints.

Public attitudes will not change unless the public sees that government is acting responsibly and working to deliver maximum return for taxpayer dollars. As such, the CAP released an adjoining paper called “Golden Goals for Government Performance” that provides five case studies of state governments and foreign governments that are leading the way in terms of defining policy goals.

Government Performance

While the Government Performance and Results Act, requires agencies to define goals, there are often so many goals that it is impossible to get a sense of what different government departments and agencies are actually trying to achieve.

The Golden Goals report sets out a federal government performance model based on an analysis of what works at five different governments in the UK, Australia and the US. It examines examples where governments have successfully defined outcome goals that set out what they intend to achieve for society. The examples include:

• The state of Victoria in Australia in defining goals for government as a whole across a 10-year timeframe in 2000.
• The commonwealth of Virginia adopted a similar approach in 2004 by building consensus across state Democratic and Republican party lines, and involving the legislature, executive branch, and citizen and business leaders in defining success for Virginia should look like.
• The government of Scotland followed the Virginia model, but has gone further by adopting a single overall goal for government, focused on increasing sustainable economic growth that sits above five strategic objectives, including promoting a smarter and a greener Scotland.
• The state of Washington took a slightly different approach by redefining the way budgets are set. After the formulation of goals across government, agencies work together to rank potential programs depending on their likely contribution to the goals.
• The United Kingdom first adopted a set of clear government performance goals across government departments and agencies as part of the budgeting process in 1998. These goals cover the whole range of government activity, from international development to educational attainment and from crime reduction to community relations.

Summary

Last year’s report from OMBWatch on Building a Better Government Performance System outlined various recommendations for reforming current performance systems used by Government. These included changes to PART and GPRA, Promoting Leadership and Accountability, Fostering Policy Innovation and Owernership with Positive Reinforcement, Balancing the roles of OMB and Agencies, Engaging outside Stakeholders and Improving Data. Over-and-above this, however, they specified 6 principles that should guide the Obama administration in its efforts to reform and enhance government performance systems.

These principles include: Enhancing the Public’s right to know how well Government programs work; Strengthening Leadership and Accountability from Top to Bottom, Building on Current Systems rather than creating new ones, Re-Balancing the roles of OMB and Federal Agencies; Improving Performance and Accountability with Positive Reinforcement and Seeking input from Outside Stakeholders. All these principles are contained within CAP’s Doing What Works agenda and Zeints’s performance strategies.

No one topic is more or less important than the others, and many overlap and intertwine in a variety of ways. The overhaul as envisaged by Jeffery Zeints and CAP’s doing what works project is crucial to ensuring the creation of a new government performance system is fair, effective, and widely used. Only through this can we truly understand what works and what doesn’t and ensure resources are directed towards where they’re needed and in efforts that generate the greatest returns.

Related:

• Doing What Works – Includes papers on Government Transparency, Contracting, Performance measurement and more
• Doing What Works Transcript
• Federal News Radio story on Doing What Works
• Building a Better Government Performance System
• Performance management in the Public Sector

With only two weeks left to vote in the POWER 2010 campaign, the top ideas have already amassed considerable support, with the introduction of a proportional voting system expected to top the poll.

There is, however, an idea that has considerable advantages and breaks new ground in how we think about major decisions facing local and national governments. Before getting into an explanation of the merits of Deliberative polling, it’s important to understand the background and aims of the Power 2010 campaign.

What is Power 2010?

The campaign is a truly diverse and mass discussion on the shape of British democracy. In just over 2 months it has received over 4,500 ideas from the public  to change how we do politics in this country.

The Power 2010 campaign explains itself as a means of giving “everyone the chance to have a say in how our democracy works for us”:

We need a healthy democracy that works for all of us and not just a powerful few. POWER2010 exists to help create it. It gives you the chance to have your say on how our democracy works so that together we can change it for the better.

Do you want cleaner funding? Fairer voting? More accountability? You decide. Tell us your ideas for changing the way we run our country. Those with most support will become the POWER2010 Pledge and the focus for our national campaign at the next election.

Deliberative poll (London, UK – Renewing British Democracy)

The POWER2010 campaign kicked off in early January with a Deliberative Poll in central London. Over 130 participants of all backgrounds and walks of life, were brought together to discuss proposals for democratic reform submitted by members of the public (phase 2 above).

The participants were representative of the population as a whole, and received balanced briefing materials detailing each of the reform ideas, with arguments for and against along with axillary background information. They deliberated in small groups with trained moderators and engaged in plenary sessions with experts. Participants’ opinions were gathered through confidential questionnaires before and after deliberations.

Together, by talking through the issues and cross-examining experts from across the spectrum of opinion, participants assembled a shortlist of reforms which they think can bring democracy back to the people.

Some of the comments from participants at the event illustrate the power of constructive debate amongst a diverse range of people:

“it has been good to meet people that don’t think like me, have completely different views, but then find out why”

“it’s quite a good learning process for me. I don’t think I knew an awful lot about politics and the processes, and I’m learning a lot here today…It has fired me up to find out more about the political process and perhaps I’ll be attending my local MP’s surgeries and raising a few more questions. ”

“In a few instances, I’ve.. been reformed to a different way of thinking”

While some of the participants were cynical about politicians, they were passionate about making government more democratic. During the event support for a more proportional system, rose from 48% to 53% and is now leading the list of reforms in the public vote.

Deliberative poll (Michigan, US – Solutions for Michigan’s problems)

Last month, Michigan public television stations broadcast “Hard Times, Hard Choices”, a special report on a  statewide citizens’ deliberation. Michigan is facing severe economic problems with rising unemployment and severe budget cutbacks due to the recession and its declining manufacturing base.

Over the weekend of November 13 – 15, 317 Michigan citizens traveled to Lansing to discuss and debate the state’s problems and what to do about them. The participants were a scientific random sample of people, representative of the population in age, education and political persuasion. Upon arrival the participants filled out a questionnaire to determine what preconceived notions and opinions each held on a wide variety of issues directly related to Michigan’s problems and any their views on possible solutions.

As with the Power 2010 event, the participants received background material in advance, debated the issues in small groups and then put their questions to a panel of experts.

The entire process was filmed by PBS to form the documentary below.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part One
Delegates are introduced to the concept of Deliberative polling and discuss jobs and education in Michigan.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part Two Delegates discuss the budget shortfall and the state’s options for taxing and spending.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part Three
Delegates discuss Michigan’s future and the hard economic choices ahead.

The knowledge the participants gleaned over the weekend alone was enough to spur many to a new activism and sense of purpose:

Carol Selden (Spring Arbor): “I need to become more of an informed citizen, and when I’m informed then I’ll be able to the ideas the legislators need to have to make good choices for us”

Michael Petross (Detroit): “In this group I’ve listened to other people’s opinions and I’ve changed some of my opinions.”

Results of Michigan’s first Deliberative Poll show what the people of the state would think if they could all become more informed, and had opportunities to discuss the issues in depth within diverse groups. When participants filled out the same questionnaire on the final day of the deliberative poll the results, showed a dramatic swing in attitudes and opinions in several major areas:

• Respondents were much more willing to support increases in the state income tax and sales tax to eliminate cuts in education and some other social services.

• Respondents were persuaded that cutting both the Michigan Business Tax and reducing small business taxes were among the best ways to attract and keep businesses, thereby creating jobs.

• Support for increased investment in a “green economy”, agriculture, and tourism also went up significantly during the weekend, as did support for a high-tech, knowledge-based economy.

Summary

The resulting changes of opinion in both Deliberative poll examples offer some dramatic recommendations for both policymakers and the public. These events increase public understanding of complex issues, and demonstrate the large difference between people’s uninformed and informed views (witness the comments and changes in support for issues following both Deliberative polls).

Stephen Whitehead, of the new economics foundation, outlines the benefits of the idea succinctly:

Deliberation – getting together and talking about issues – is a powerful tool to produce wise, well-informed decisions. Whilst critics of citizen involvement worry that the public will produce reactionary, conservative or discriminatory decisions, evidence suggests that talking through issues with people from different backgrounds moves people to views which are generous, tolerant and sometimes even imaginative.

Deliberation offers an alternative to the tiresome tug-of-war between proponents of representative and direct democracy. Rather than trusting in political elites to make decisions on our behalf on the basis of a tenuous mandate, or investing power in populist schemes like referenda which can be vulnerable to kneejerk reactions, deliberative democracy aims to create the conditions where the public can bring their wisdom, experience and empathy to decision-making.

So let me join with Stephen, and nearly 600 others, in recommending you to vote for deliberative polling as a means of “putting political power back into the hands of the people best qualified to use it – all of us.”

Further reading

For more on Deliberative polling check:

• Hard Times, Hard Choices Results
• The Center for Deliberative Democracy
• Deliberative Polling (1-pager)
• Tomorrow’s Europe (European Deliberative poll)
• [Video] Channel 4 News Report on Power 2010
• [Book] When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
• Public Participation methods – Deliberative polling

For details on new ideas from the University of Michigan – (as mentioned in the PBS documentary) – check 1000 pitches.

A new UK Government IT strategy is due to be launched next week according to UKauthority.com. This will be a refresh of the four-year-old Transformational Government programme is expected to be accompanied by a Treasury report on ‘Smarter government’.

A draft version of the ICT Strategy has been leaked to the Conservative opposition who have described it as ‘unambitious’. The document sets out the direction for government ICT until 2020 and seeks to save billions through greater use of social media and innovations such as an ‘App store’ and Government cloud.

The document gathers ideas from John Suffolk (UK Gov Chief Information Officer) and others into a strategic IT vision that is aligned with other government strategies including:

• Digital Britain Strategy – ‘programme to secure the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading digital knowledge economies’
  
• Cyber Security Strategy – sets out government plans to create an Office of Cyber Security and Cyber Security Operations center to ‘make cyber space a safe, secure and resilient place’
• Building Britain’s Future – plan on working ‘with the British people to shape our economic recovery and together build a stronger, fairer and more prosperous country’
• Excellence and Fairness – approach to improving public services through Citizen empowerment, New professionalism and Strategy leadership
• Operational Efficiency Programme – requiring ‘£4 billion of savings a year on back office operations, and £3.2 billion of savings a year on IT spending’.
• Recommendations from the Power of Information Strategy – a call for action to improve government’s use of digital technologies

Strategy Summary

UK Government ICT Strategy

The UK Government is the largest employer of IT Professionals in the UK. It spends approximately £16bn per year on technology which accounts for 4.6% of overall public sector expenditure.

The ICT Strategy has been developed to support the delivery of core public sector goals through: Improving the delivery of public services; Improving access to public services; and Increasing the efficiency of public service delivery.

It acknowledges how:

Demand for public services and expectations of levels of service are ever increasing. Citizens and business expect the same levels of access and personalisation that they see from large private sector organisations such as Amazon and Tesco.

As such public services need to be more citizen focused and utilize the power of social media and the internet as a means of transforming delivery (similar to how the web has transformed the music industry through changing the platform for delivery).

The ICT strategy is based on 14 strands of activity, which include the following initiatives:

1) A Move to Cloud Computing – The ‘G-Cloud’

The strategy envisages developing and implementing a government cloud infrastructure (or ‘G-cloud’) that would enable public bodies to source ‘ICT infrastructure, development capabilities and software applications from a secure, resilient, flexible and cost-effective service based environment’.

A target prototype of a G-cloud infrastructure in expected in early 2010 with the expectation of a standard model by the end of 2010. It’s expected the development of the G-cloud will be a key enabler ‘of the £1.6 billion savings from ICT outlined in the Operational Efficiency Programme report.’

Government departments will be able to adopt a ‘pay as you go’ model – paying only for the time applications are actually in use. They’ll be able to scale up and scale down based on the seasonality of their application needs in a similar way to how Amazon or other cloud services work. 

In the US the General Services Administration (GSA) is already working on this type of approach. Casey Coleman (GSA CIO) recently spoke about the possibility of moving up to 45% of applications – those with a FISMA rating of low – to public/private clouds. Along with this Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has been pushing for the adoption and use of commercial cloud computing services for information not classified or sensitive in nature.

NASA already has a pilot cloud computing environment setup called Nebula, and State authorities (such as Utah) are already developing their own hybrid clouds. Such developments are in their early stages, but represent a recognition of the importance of cloud computing to improve services and reduce costs throughout government.

2) The Government ‘App store’

A Government Application store will be developed to enable sharing and reuse of business applications, services and components across the public sector.

The strategy envisages reuse of a range of ICT services becoming the norm, with anticipated savings of over £500m per annum by 2020:

The net effect will be to increase visibility of software already owned by the public sector so that other public sector bodies, and those bidding for public sector work, can see what’s available at no basic cost. Re-use is, in principle, already accepted as the preferred delivery approach across the public sector. However in most cases today, it is easier to do a fresh procurement.

The G-AS will provide automated electronic support for the applications procurement lifecycle and reduce the overhead costs of reuse of applications.

The scope for savings by 2020 runs here into many hundreds of millions of pounds given that it is not uncommon for large government organisations each to have between 300 and 1,000 applications in its portfolio; the opportunity is to reduce this to the order of 1,000 business services for the entire public sector.

An example of this is already up at running at GSA’s App store. It was setup earlier this year as a means of reducing the cost of IT infrastructure by utilising commercially available software. It provides access to Business, Productivity and Social media applications that have been vetted by GSA, and for which there are government agreements. Cloud IT services are expected to be added to the site soon. Over time it is expected to become a one-stop shopping site for commercial technology and services. While it’s still in an early stage, it does provide an insight into how government procurement could be rationalized and streamlined.

The Strategy notes how the ‘average procurement of an ICT services contract takes 77 weeks.’ Reducing this lead time, has the opportunity to produce significant savings, which increasing the adoption of innovative services within government.

3) Greater emphasis on Open Source

The ICT strategy explains the limitations with commercial off the shelf software:

COTS software uses proprietary code and cannot easily be reused across the public sector – reducing value for money, flexibility and agility. Importantly, this also impacts our opportunity to reduce risks to service delivery.

As part of a plan to increase the use of open source across the public sector the Open Source, Open Standards and Reuse Strategy was published earlier this year. It states:

that Government will actively and fairly consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in making procurement decisions. In addition, Government will, wherever possible, avoid becoming locked in to proprietary software. In particular it will take exit, re-bid and rebuild costs into account in procurement decisions and will require those proposing proprietary software to specify how exit would be achieved.

The ICT strategy seeks to build capability within the public sector to increase the amount of open source code and software in use and to make it available for reuse elsewhere. There is already many examples of open source software in use in government e.g WordPress use at 10 Downing St and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Along with this RedHat ranks the UK 7th in its government open source activity.

Local Government also expects to increase it’s use of open source software significantly over the coming years. Nevertheless, the use of open source is not a panacea. The strategy notes many widespread barriers to the adoption of open source, but highlights how the establishment of the CIO Council and other initiatives are helping to increase it’s reach and acceptance.

The development of open source communities, and EU policy and initiatives (such as the Open Source Observatory and Repository) should help with open source adoption. However, particular initiatives e.g. the White House move to Drupal, can serve as a catalyst to embedding trust and acceptance of open source applications. Bold moves such as this are needed to drive adoption to where it can effect substantial change in government IT budgets and cultures.

Other strands of activity expected to create significant savings include:

• Data center consolidation strategy – with development of 10-12 highly resilient strategic data centers  implemented to common standards saving £300m a year and cutting power consumption by 75%
• Common desktop strategy – will involve 80% of government PCs using a shared utility service by 2015 potentially yielding savings of £400 per year

Make IT Better

The Conservative opposition party has criticized the ICT Strategy for lacking ambition and for failing to consult with the public:

We think there’s a better way. Not only is it possible to develop a more ambitious, cost-effective and transformative vision for government IT, but we believe that it’s also possible to pursue a completely different approach to making policy. Rather than the traditional closed approach to policy making that this report typifies, we want to throw open the process and allow people to contribute their ideas on how policy should be designed. In the post-bureaucratic age, we believe that crowdsourcing and collaborative design can help us to make better policies – and we think this approach should begin now.

As part of this they’ve setup a website called Make IT Better, which allows the public to post comments and suggestions on the leaked report. They have split up the report into different sections and have already received hundreds of comments relating to different areas of the strategy.

While I don’t necessarily agree with all the criticism of the report, there are a few areas in which I feel it falls short. My primary concern is around the lack of transparency and openness in relation to IT projects, contracts and spending.

Waiting for US Style IT openness

The Conservatives claim that since 1997, Labour ministers have spent approximately £100 billion on IT projects. They cite a study, however, that concludes 70% of recent IT projects have failed. This equates to ‘tens of billions of pounds wasted on systems ranging from the calamitous £20 billion NHS supercomputer to the poorly managed Home Office probation service IT system.’

In relation to IT project control and governance the strategy claims:

Once that strengthened management [of the Gateway review process] is established, by 2020, we will follow the lead of the Office of Management and Budget and public sector CIO community in the USA by publicising the objectives and progress of our major projects, including naming the leaders and the results of all external assurance reviews.

The Gateway review process will be strengthened and KPIs will be developed to ‘ensure departments continually test their projects for compliance through their internal portfolio, programme and project governance.’

There is, however, no mention of making the results of these reviews open to the public. Tony Collins notes how this reveals ‘the UK government is as enthusiastic about openness on IT projects as it would be to a corporate visit to the dentist.’ It has taken years for FOI requests to reveal details of these reviews. Instead, these results should be published online, allowing the public visibility of the status of major IT projects.

The strategy appears to reference the Federal IT Dashboard, but suggests the UK will not have such a service until 2020. This is a real disappointment as transparency in this area could serve to increase trust and accountability of the annual £16bn government technology budget.

Openness and citizen participation

The Conservatives have compared the leaked strategy with their own plans to break up large IT projects into smaller components and encourage more use of open source software. They claim this would end the government’s reliance on a handful of large suppliers (they’ve called for a moratorium on the £100 billion of government IT contracts.)

They outline three main principles in relation to IT policy:

• Big is not always better – increase the proportion of IT budgets spent with innovative young companies
• Openness – increase the use of standard data formats and open source. They’ve also claimed they’ll publish online all items of government expenditure over £25,000 – hence spending on IT projects could be analysed in a similar vein to how Recovery.gov/USASpending.gov analyzes spending
• Empowering citizens – opening up government data for others to build on e.g. through releasing data through services such as data.gov.uk (expected to be released in beta this month)

While aspects of these principles are contained within the strategy e.g. the release of government data, the Strategic principles of Better, Greener, Cheaper lack inspiration. The concepts of a government cloud and App store have been mooted since June, and can been seen as just a natural extension of current IT trends. For example, if a citizen App store was announced e.g. such as DataSF or appstore.dc.gov, that would be a real innovation.

The commentary and debate already live on MakeITBetter reflect the desire of many to contribute to this strategy. The Conservatives have taken the lead in setting up a website to crowdsource comments on the strategy. They’re using this as a guide to frame the party’s response when it’s officially released. The government would have been wise to provide the public with the opportunity to comment on the strategy as it was being developed, or at least before the final report was released (similar to the Power of Information Taskforce report).

Maybe the one interesting thing to come from the leak of the report is crowdsourcing has now become a political topic, with parties seeking to be the first to ask the public for their views on policy matters. It’ll be interested to observe whether the site will attract a partisan crowd or whether it’s produce substantial debate on the policies themselves. The recognition of citizen engagement as a tool for framing policy may yet be the most important principle overlooked by this ICT strategy.

Over the past few months I’ve become more and more impressed with the videos on the White House YouTube channel. The President’s Weekly Address is almost a stalemate of my weekends. His explanations of Healthcare reform or assessments of the economy are both engaging and informative.

There is currently well over 400 videos on the White House YouTube channel. These collectively have amassed over 2.2 million views. The channel has 80,400 subscribers, with viewers coming from many different countries depending on the topic e.g. the President’s Message to the Iranian People was ‘most popular’ in Iran.

While the number of viewers has been decreasing over the past few months, it still remains the most viewed political channel on YouTube and far more popular that similar international initiatives from the UK or EU.

The five most viewed White House videos have amassed nearly 5 million YouTube hits. These videos include:

1. President Barack Obama’s Inaugural address – 1,281,063 views
2. 1/24/09: Your Weekly Address – 1,163,256 views
3. Lower Quality Version: President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt – 614,761 views
4. The President’s Message to the Iranian People – 612,576 views
5. President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt – 586,653 views

It’s not so much the formal speeches or policy announcements that are what attracts me to the White House videos; Rather it’s the informal behind-the-scenes clips that are most interesting. These provide an insight into the White House and the President, not normally seen on TV news bulletins. They – along with the other new media activities from the White House – provide greater transparency on the activities of the institution, and serve as a platform upon which to build greater trust with the American public.

I’ve embedded my five favourite videos below. They’re all short clips, but I hope demonstrate a side of President Obama and the Administration not often seen through traditional media.

Behind-the-scenes

The video below is the first in a series of “Inside the White House” videos that will be appearing on WhiteHouse.gov. It shows the President reading letters from ordinary citizens. He reads 10 letters from the Public every day and the video provides a behind-the-scenes look at the process of how those letters make it to his desk. It also provides short interviews with White House staff involved in the distribution of thousands of letters, faxes, and e-mails that are received each day.

Mike Kelleher (Director, Office of Correspondence) describes how they get 65,000 paper letters, 100,000 e-mails and 1,000 faxes each week. This is combined with 2,500 – 3,500 calls per day, and highlights what a huge task it is to distill this into 10 letters each day.

Other behind-the-scenes videos provide an insight into the President’s day-to-day interactions and other less newsworthy activites at the White House. These include:

• White House interns reflecting on their experiences
• The White House Easter Egg Roll
• The President chatting to Willie Mays, grilling with Bobby Flay or taping the audio for Disney’s Hall of Presidents or the Colbert Report

Obama’s personality

It’s rare that TV news bulletins or newspaper articles delve into the personality of President Obama, or provide an insight into how he interacts with people. I think the video below demonstrates how at ease he is conversing with others and taking an interest in what they do.

Some of his personality is reflected in other videos including the dunking of Senior Advisors, playing basketball with the Lady Huskies, reading to children and working with the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. The sight of the President having fun and enjoying himself is something not often seen in press conferences or his Weekly Addresses.

Setting the facts straight

The current debate on Healthcare reform has provoked fiercely passionate arguments on both sides. Unfortunately, the facts of the proposed reforms have often been held hostage to inaccurate portrayals of proposed legislation. The video below refutes many of the scare tactics employed by those against reform.

The White House has sought to defend its position through a series of videos to the American public. The Reality Check videos debunk many of the myths and propaganda surrounding Health Care reform. Allegations of ‘Death Panels’ and the rationing of Healthcare are all dismissed in this series of interviews with those involved in Health care policy. Often the videos are a response to questions from anxious citizens attending health care town hall meetings across the country. It’s important the White House refutes these allegations and explains in simple language the facts of proposed reforms.

Foreign Visits

The montage below highlights the excitement and enthusiasm expressed by the people of Ghana during the President’s tour. It is narrated by extracts of the President’s speech interspersed with African music. Overall, it’s a really nice clip of what looks like a colourful and welcoming reception in Accra.

Overlaying extracts from speeches with travel clips is evident in other videos such as the inaugural Whistle Stop Train Tour or the President’s visit to Canada.

Plain taking

The video below sets out succulently the benefits of the new Credit Card bill of rights. What I like about this video is the language Mr. Goolsbee uses. When referring to credit card contracts he describes the frustrations of many Americans: “I’ve a PHD in economics, but I can bearly read these things’’. He outlines some of the activities of these companies as ‘evil genius’. This kind of plain talking is refreshing and demonstrates how in tune the White House is to the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Other videos include Peter Orszag describing the benefits he gets from reading blogs and the rational for setting up the OMB blog. He explains how he wants the blog to clarify misconceptions and confusion surrounding the activities of the Office of Management and Budget.

Last week, the Irish Government announced its response to the Ideas Campaign. The initiative was launched in March to seek citizens’ ideas for Irish economic recovery and renewal. It set a challenge to people in Ireland to be innovative and creative in suggesting idea and planning the country’s economic recovery.

The campaign sought people’s ideas on key areas required for economic renewal:

• Preserve and grow employment
• Stimulate activity across key areas of the economy
• Make it easier to do business in Ireland
• Enrich local communities

The initiative consisted of two distinct phases:

1: Brainstorming

The first phase of the campaign was launched in March and ran for three weeks. During this time 5,284 ideas were logged covering a wide range of topics. These ranged from ideas for improving Healthcare and Education, to suggestions for new taxes to increase Government revenue.

2. Review

Following the accumulation of ideas, phase two of the initiative was lunched in April. An Advisory Group was created to assist in the process of evaluating the ideas received during brainstorming. This group then created a short list of ideas, which in their view, had the greatest economic and social value, and which could be easily implemented.

The ideas were summarised into eight broad headings and included priority ideas for consideration by organisations (social, voluntary, and business), individuals as well as Government. The broad areas for new ideas included:

• Active Citizenship
• Stimulating Enterprise and Employment
• Developing the Knowledge Economy
• Promoting Arts, Sports and Cultural Activities
• Encouraging Green Initiatives
• Boosting Tourism
• Public Sector Reform
• Improving Healthcare

Action plan

Following a review of the ideas by the Advisory Group an Action plan was developed. This was then submitted submitted to the Government for review on 14th May. Commenting on the Action Plan the Taoiseach Brian Cowen TD said:

I have always said that Ireland’s best natural resource is the talent and ingenuity of the Irish people. The submission of almost 5,300 ideas for consideration by the Ideas Campaign is an extraordinary response and reflects the commitment and energy of Irish people which will carry us through this global downturn.

To get through this difficult period and, most importantly, to set us on the path to economic renewal, we need to think smarter and work smarter.

I have just received a copy of the report. I will be fast-tracking the ideas to the Cabinet sub-committee on Economic Renewal for assessment and implementation, where appropriate.

The Government had already created it’s own plan for a Sustainable Economic Renewal. It has further plans for transforming Public services, and reducing expenditure in the Public sector. These plans, however, did not have any significant input in terms of public participation.

By providing the public with an easily accessible means of participating, the Ideas Campaign has created a greater level of public buy-in than any official reports for Government.

Government reaction

The official Government response to the Action plan came last week. 17 out of the 44 ideas included in the plan are to be implemented on the recommendation of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Renewal.

Some of the 17 ideas include:

Idea 1: Create a new Volunteer Corps to engage the unemployed in community and voluntary work in Ireland and internationally, without losing their unemployment benefits

Idea 2: Build capacity and awareness in community and voluntary groups to enable them to ‘employ’ volunteers effectively.

Idea 9: Review integrated initiatives to derive maximum value from the public sector property portfolio through utilising vacant space, purchasing rather than renting etc

The Government has also committed itself to examining the feasibility of the other ideas in the Action plan, and will be conducting six-monthly reviews of implementation of the Ideas Campaign.

Suggestions for the Implementation of ideas

While it is encouraging to see the Government accept and implement ideas from the public, it is important for the Government to be open and transparent in relation to their implementation plans. Any plans to implement these ideas should proceed with the same tenets of collaboration and participation exemplified by the Ideas Campaign.

Many of the ideas accepted relate to Encouraging, Reviewing or Increasing activities in  certain areas. As such, it may be difficult to fully quantify Government actions to implement these ideas, over and above standard Government policy. For example, Idea 26 relates to ‘Increasing further education and training for the unemployed’. As Ireland’s unemployment rate increases rapidly, this will naturally be a focus for Government, and consequently it will be difficult to apportion activity in this area specifically to the Ideas campaign.

A good initiative would be for the Government to create a wiki in which the public can outline concrete milestones and objectives for how these ideas could be implemented. The US Government created a wiki in order to draft Government policies during their recent Open Government Initiative. In a similar way, the Irish Government should now initiate a wiki to collaborate with the public on the implementation framework, and milestones involved in achieving the objectives of these ideas.

Aileen O’Toole (founder of the Campaign) noted that the implementation of these ideas by the Government was a:

powerful endorsement of this independent citizens’ campaign to create ideas for economic recovery and to help stimulate a different type of national discussion about the Irish economy

While the public has succeeded in framing the discussion, generating ideas and creating an Action plan, it’s now up to the Government to begin the consultation on  implementation. The questions we need to discuss include:  what does the plan for implementation of each idea look like, what are the milestones, who are the stakeholders, how can we measure our achievements etc. Having this discussion in public would demonstrate the Government understands how the public can help in developing concrete plans for an economic revival.

We’ve already generated the ideas and the action plan. Now it’s up to Government to enable us to participate in how these plans are implemented. Some suggestions are:

1. Government to initiative a wiki to seek the the public’s help on specific action plans for the 17 ideas
2. Government to enable the facilitation of a Social Innovation camp e.g. through sponsorship. For example, an online network for the Volunteer Corps could be developed in a weekend e.g. similar to the functionality on Serve.gov or Allforgood.org
3. Government to outline a competition to seek innovative ideas on how to efficiently implement some of the goals of the ideas e.g. like the Netflix prize, but it could be related to improving a particular Government process. This concept has been discussed recently by the US Office of Science and Technology policy.

However the Government decides to enact these ideas, one thing is for certain; Economic renewal will happen a lot faster if the Government can harness the creativity, innovation and expertise of the general public.