The World Bank’s primary mission is fighting global poverty. Such an challenge requires the organisation to be open and responsive to communities and other organisations with which it works. The institution has, however, found itself in the firing line of late, with critics citing a lack of transparency in its policies and project implementations. They also cite a failure to include local insights in decision-making that directly affects the poor.

It was within this context that Alnoor Ebrahim, an associate Professor at Harvard Business School, recently appeared before the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. Congress. His testimony focused on the reform and accountability efforts undertaken at the World Bank over the past fifteen years.

While acknowledging many improvements in accountability at both project and policy level, he outlined 4 key recommendations to strengthen and enforce the primary challenge of the Bank i.e. to reduce global poverty. He noted the implementation of these as crucial for the legitimacy and effectiveness of the World Bank, and necessary to successful development outcomes. The recommendations include:

1). Establishing mandatory minimum standards for public participation, supported by improved staff incentives and performance appraisals

Ebrahim notes that public participation at policy and project level is usually ad-hoc and discretionary. The Bank generally only formalizes or requires it when forced to do so under external pressure. Consequently, he proposes that in order to enhance democratic participatory processes the Bank should develop two sets of mandatory process-based participation standards:

• A fixed administrative procedure for developing and revising Bank operational policies and strategies (i.e., policy level participation)
• A set of minimum requirements for public involvement in different types of lending operations (i.e., project level participation)

Such public participation mechanisms, however, are not absent from the Bank’s current operations. There is a wealth of Bank literature on how to implement high-quality, participatory decision-making. Rather, the issue lies with the inconsistent adherence to and reach of such participation policies.

While the Participation and Civic Engagement Group within the Bank focuses on themes of civic engagement and public participation, more formal processes need to be established to promote public involvement in all areas of the Bank’s operations. Participation can help to build public confidence and trust for World Bank policies and projects. Public engagement and the more innovative consultations should form the cornerstone of participation within the bank.

2). Systematically incorporate public participation in decision-making at each stage of its project/policy cycles

The Bank’s existing project/policy cycle already provides a structure for improving participation. There are, however, a number of improvements that can be made to improve the operation effectiveness of such engagements. These include :

• Ensuring all stages of the project/policy cycle are transparent and information is made available to the public for deliberation before key decisions are made;

• Requiring adequate budgetary resources to be made available for participation through all stages of decision-making;

• Ensuring public disclosure of all materials that can help citizens understand board decisions. These include committee minutes and reports, meeting summaries, and draft documents used for deliberation.

While the Bank already consults widely on policy – see an example of the current consultation process for it’s 2010 Environment strategy – it needs to embrace new mechanisms for participation especially among the poorest sections of society. Governor Schwarzenegger’s innovative use of Twitter to solicit budget ideas represents an example of how the public can be consulted easily. New participation activities – such as an upcoming Hackathon – are interesting examples of how the public can engage with the institution to solve major issues in innovative ways. Such innovative experiments should be encouraged as a means of reducing the effort necessary for the public to engage with the Bank.

3). Improve the transparency of its governance and operations, particularly for project-affected people

Ebrahim highlights transparency as the basis for participatory decision-making. It enables people to participate meaningfully in public decision-making by providing them with the information they need to understand, evaluate, and influence the actions of decision-makers. As such, he recommends the Bank’s current review of its information disclosure policy should include the following:

• A guiding principle of maximum disclosure, in which all information is subject to disclosure unless there is an overriding public interest in keeping it secret;

• An obligation to publish proactively key documents and categories of information, even in the absence of a specific request;

The model World Bank Policy on Information Disclosure proposed by the Global Transparency Initiative acknowledges the right to access information as a ‘fundamental human right, as well as a cornerstone of effective governance and development’. It provides practical provisions to give effect to this right, including:

• A commitment to the automatic disclosure of a wide range of information, including to facilitate participation in decision-making.
• Clear and progressive rules on the processing of requests.
• A narrow regime of exceptions (constraints) based on a clear risk of harm to protected interests and a public interest override.
• A broad right to appeal refusals to disclose information to the Inspection Panel, an oversight body which is independent of Bank management.
• A strong and yet practical set of promotional measures to ensure fulsome implementation of the policy.

Lawrence Lessig has sparked much debate recently, however, on the topic of ‘naked transparency’. While it’s important for the Bank to release information and data (as it does at worldbank.org/data), it should also provide context and tools for making sense of it.

More information on project spending should also me made available – perhaps taking a leaf from the new Recovery.gov site. Enabling the public to easily visualise where funds were being spent, how many jobs these projects are creating and how they help to alleviate poverty, would be an important demonstration of the Bank’s commitment to transparency.

4). Expand and protect political space for democratic and participatory decision-making in national political processes.

Ebrahim recognizes that while it is essential for the Bank to increase participation in its own governance and operations, it’s equally important for it to respect and support local democratic institutions and processes. This implies:

• Promoting better oversight by national parliaments, who frequently have little information on what the Bank is doing in their countries.

• In countries in which democratic spaces are limited, the Bank should facilitate the use of more inclusive and democratic domestic decision-making processes.

Promoting concepts such as Participatory Budgeting would be a good example of how the Bank could increase democratic decision making processes in other countries. The Bank has conducted research into various methods of improving civic participation, and should try to faciliate different means of civic empowerment within its projects, especially where such democratic ideals are in such supply.

Reform of disclosure policy

Many of the recommendations presented above are already being embraced by the World Bank. The President of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, mentioned these at its Annual Meeting in Istanbul earlier this month:

To serve the changing global economy, the world needs agile, nimble, competent, and accountable institutions. The World Bank Group will improve its legitimacy, efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, and further expand its cooperation with the UN, the IMF, the other Multilateral Development Banks, donors, civil society, and foundations which have become increasingly important development actors…

Our efforts include:

Promoting accountability and good governance, including with our global anti-corruption efforts, an improved transparency and disclosure policy…

Earlier this year the Bank completed a consultation on proposed changes to its disclosure policy. The consultation accepted comments online and also held live consultations in 33 countries. The wide range of responses from different countries is impressive and highlights the importance that was attached to the consultation.

The consultation outlined some of the issues with the World Bank’s current disclosure policy:

• Ambiguous rules for disclosing information
• Limited information available on project implementation
• Unclear rules for disclosing country-owned information
• Cumbersome and costly procedures for disclosing historical information
• No appeals process

The new approach was to be based on four guiding principles:

1. Maximum access to information
2. A clear list of exceptions that is easier to interpret
3. Clear procedures for processing requests
4. An appeals mechanism

The results of the consultation are contained in a revised approach paper entitled Toward Greater Transparency Through Access to Information: The World Bank’s Disclosure Policy. The new policy is due to come into effect in July 2010 and represents a paradigm shift from previous policy:

The proposed policy would constitute a radical shift in the Bank’s disclosure paradigm—from a policy that spells out what the Bank may disclose, to one that presumes the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions.

Unlocking the potential of Aid information

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has recently launched a consultation on ‘how to improve the availability and accessibility of aid information by designing common standards for publication of info about aid’. A series of recommendations are proposed  for the development of a standard for publishing aid information. These include:

• Aid information should be legally open
• Aid information should be technically open
• Aid information should be easily findable

As the Development 2.0 blog notes it also includes a number of recommendations for the World Bank in relation to how it releases data.

Future

With the implementation of Alnoor Ebrahim’s recommendations, the new Transparency policy and the recommendations from the IATI, the World Bank has the opportunity to become a beacon of transparency within the International Financial Institution environment. Its Transparency Scorecard will then be a model with which to benchmark other institutions against.

(Scorecard taken from Toward Greater Transparency: Rethinking The World Bank’s Disclosure Policy – Approach paper).

One of the interesting examples cited in the recent paper “Promising Practices in Online Engagement” surrounded the concept of Participatory budgeting. It can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and monitoring public spending. This participation can take various forms, from effective decision-making power in the allocation of resources, to more modest initiatives that confer voice during the development of the budget.

The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the execution of Participatory budgeting initiatives varies widely. The central tenet of PB is to engage local citizens – through whatever means practicable – in the budgeting process. Through this it can confer greater legitimacy and acceptance of the budgeting outcomes. It also increases trust in the process through ensuring a transparent and democratic process towards any decision making. Engaging citizens and ensuring diverse participation  is one of the primary challenges of any PB initiative.

The core values of Public Participation are essential to the Participatory budgeting process. These, however, do not mandate any form of e-Participation. Rather the use of ICT is optional as a means of  public involvement. What is fundamental to Participatory budgeting, however, is that the core tenets of Public participation are embraced:

1. Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.
2. Public participation includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.
3. Public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognising and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers.
4. Public participation seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision.
5. Public participation seeks input from participants in designing how they participate.
6. Public participation provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.
7. Public participation communicates to participants how their input affected the decision.

The use of online mediums to faciliate these tenets and increase engagement varies considerably, and is exemplified in the three different approaches to participation described below.

Toronto Community Housing (Face-to-face participation)

Toronto Community Housing is Canada’s largest social housing provider. For the past eight years it has engaged in Participatory budgeting as a means of allocating funding to ideas on how to improve tenants’ quality of life. The process involves bringing citizens together to discuss and vote on proposals for the distribution of $9 million.

The budgeting process – as explained in the video above – involves:

1. Bringing ideas together – Tenants in every Toronto Community Housing building come forward with ideas for improving their community. They then sort through the ideas and democratically decide which are the top priorities for their buildings. Only capital projects are eligible for funding.
2. A voting event – Ideas are brought forward to big voting events, where tenants from different buildings come together to hear all the proposals and vote on the winners. Tenants present their ideas at these events and solicit support from other neighborhoods. Questions can be asked and ideas are examined for their public good and contribution to improving tenants quality of life.
3. Voting – One delegate for each building gets stickers which they then use to vote for the best ideas.

These votes are counted and the winners announced. This democratic and transparency process helped over 150 ideas received more than $9 million in funding in 2009.

The process of participation is primarily based on face-to-face meetings and events, rather than any online model. The concept of e-Participation is not utilised in Toronto, in contrast to the next example in Germany.

Berlin – Lichtenberg (e-Participation and Face-to-face)

The Participatory budgeting process in Berlin-Lichtenberg includes online deliberation along with face-to-face meetings as part of its civic engagement process. The Promising Practices in Online Engagement paper highlights this as an example of the merging of online and face-to-face engagement models:

The process combines face-to-face dialogues based on the Open Space technique with online dialogue to provide citizens with multiple channels to participate and contribute their budget ideas.

(Image courtesy of Governance International Case Study)

The budgeting process for Berlin-Lichtenberg consists of five-stages:

1. Kick-off meeting - An initial meeting is held with residents of the district to welcome participants and introduce the process.
2. Offline and Online idea generation -  Meetings are then arranged where residents in each of the neighborhoods creates suggestions for budget items. Participation in the idea generation stage was also available online, and through household surveys. A second phase then allows for participants with similar ideas to collaboratively create a final version of their suggested budget item. The online platform is used to collect and track the progress of all suggestions no matter where they originated.
3. Proposals meeting – A one-day meeting is held where citizen panels edit and aggregate all ideas down to a list of the most noteworthy proposals.
4. Prioritization of ideas – All ideas then go back to the participants to be prioritized. A written vote, an internet vote and a final citizen assembly are used to select the 20 most important proposals. These results are then submitted to decision markers who ensure the suggestions are feasible for inclusion given the framework of the budget laws.
5. Feedback survey – A citizen survey is then conducted to see how the people who did not participate react to the prioritized proposals.

Berlin-Lichtenberg’s use of an online engagement medium throughout the budgeting process led to an increase in participant numbers and diversity. Online participants outnumbered those physically present at the various events. An evaluation of the internet platform revealed some interesting findings including:

• The biggest increase in participation stemmed from the online participation
• It was a good decision to use a mix of media to inform and engage citizens, since each of the communication channels – citizen assemblies, the internet and the postal vote – showed distortions in terms of gender, age, education and nationality.
• The aggregation of proposals from various sources and sequencing of votes helped neutralise the influence of organised interest groups.

Germany, however, is not unique in its use of the Internet as an engagement medium for PB. It has been enthusiastically embraced in Brazil (the birthplace of the initiative) as a means of increasing participation throughout the budgeting process.

Belo Horizonte, Brazil  (e-Participation only)

In 2006, the city of Belo Horizonte launched a Digital Participatory Budgeting (e-PB) initiative independent of their traditional Participatory budgeting process. It was allocated a fund of US $11 million which was to be distributed based on an exclusively online e-PB process.

The process involved a scheme where citizens registered as electors in Belo Horizonte, independent of their place of residency in the city, and voted exclusively online for 1 out of 4 public works for each of the nine districts of the city.

The initiative had three primary goals:

• to modernise the participatory budgeting process through the use of ICTs
• to increase citizens’ participation in the process
• and to broaden the scope of public works that are submitted to voting

Tiago Peixoto outlines how traditionally the level of public participation in Belo Horizonte’s Participatory budgeting initiatives had been low. Indeed, in the previous 4 years only 1.46% of the population participated in the second round of the process. Along with this the demographic participating was older and of lower socio-economic background, making the process unrepresentative of the city’s population. Thus, the use of the internet and e-PB was seen as a way of engaging a greater cross section of the community through reducing the time and cost of participation.

Four public works per city district were subject to online voting with the aim of selecting one work per district. The initiative was heavily promoted and the website provided detailed information on the proposed works to be selected. The online forums facilitated deliberative action and discussion on the proposed projects.

At the end of the initiative (lasting 42 days) the total number of votes was 503,266 from 172,938 voters. Voters were allowed to vote nine times as long as they voted for only one work per district. Tiago Peixoto’s analysis of participation levels highlights its engagement success:

These numbers therefore correspond to a participation level of around 10 per cent of electors, nearly seven times more participants than the traditional participatory budgeting.

This is, without a doubt, the highest level of participation ever seen in a Participatory Budgeting programme anywhere in the world; and indeed is surely one of the most significant e-democracy exercises ever conducted.

Is e-Participation the answer?

The different engagement mediums used for Participatory budgeting have significant affects on the level of participation. While research shows that the Web is not replacing traditional methods of civic engagement, it’s use for increasing participation and expanding the diversity of those contributing cannot be understated.

Tiago Peixoto in his analysis of the success of e-Participatory budgeting in Belo Horizonte concludes:

However, one can safely hypothesize that the ease with which participants could vote – with the Internet as an enabler – and the salience of the initiative along with the citizens’ view of their own participation as decisive in the process, were definitive factors in the attainment of such a high level of participation. Despite its novelty and relative flaws, the e-PB is a unique experience and an initiative that cannot be ignored by anyone interested in the use of ICTs as a means to enhance participation, and its future developments should be followed closely.

This, along with Berlin-Lichtenberg’s use of the internet, highlight how online engagement strategies can be utilised to further public participation in Participatory budgeting. Relying exclusively on face-to-face meetings as the engagement model can serve to limit participation, community reach and the diversity of ideas. Consequently, the merging of online and face-to-face engagement looks to be the solution to greater civic involvement in this form of democratic and transparent budgeting.

HelpMeInvestigate.com was setup as a platform to enable anyone to start investigations, or help out with ones that are already running. It’s aim is to allow people to ask civic questions, and work together to find the answers. This can be through Freedom of Information requests, questioning elected officials, investigating raw data or many other means.

By joining the site, users can pose questions they want to find the answers to, or suggest topics that need investigating. They can also look at the investigations that are already running and either suggest ways of solving them, or help out themselves.

The site has been in experimental phase, but recently saw the results of its investigations taken up by the mainstream press.

Investigations published

The Birmingham Post published a story based on an investigation instigated through the site. This investigation began with Heather Brooke posing a question:

Help me investigate on which Birmingham Streets are the most parking tickets issued?

Through a Freedom of Information request she then obtained 3 separate excel files from Birmingham City Council detailing the 135,656 parking tickets the Council issued from April 2008 – March 2009. This data was then analysed by visualised by another user of the site, Neil Houston.

(Image taken from http://bevocal.org.uk)

Details of the Investigation were then published on HelpMeInvestigate, and as a consequence the story was picked up by the Birmingham Post.

Nick Booth highlights the story as an example of how citizens can collaborate with journalists to investigate local issues affecting local people. The data uncovered as a result of the investigation has also triggered new questions about Council activity in this area, and could have a ripple effect throughout other local councils. It might cause others to request more openness and transparency of this data from their local government institutions. In the future, perhaps this data could be freely available from all Councils, and accessed through sites such as OpenlyLocal for comparative analysis.

This new model for investigating local issues, utilities the power of the Internet as a mechanism for group formation and collaboration on civic issues. It’s not a replacement for the investigative journalism practiced by local newspapers; rather it provides a platform upon which interested parties can work together on stories for the public good.

Changing models for investigative journalism

The kind of investigative journalism that HelpMeInvestigate is seeking to faciliate is at risk, because today’s investigative reporters lack resources. Arianna Huffington said on launching the Huffington Post’s Investigative fund:

Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy.

…the creation of original journalism in the public interest, and particularly the form that has come to be known as “investigative reporting,” is being squeezed down, and in some cases out.

The Huffington Post’s fund (starting with a budget of $1.75 million) will range from long-form investigations to short breaking news stores. All the content the fund produces will be free, and open anyone to publish. She noted the structure of the Fund as:

Picture a large pool of reporters — some on staff, and many freelancers — proposing stories and also receiving assignments from Investigative Fund editors.

This is somewhat similar to the structure of HelpMeInvestigate, but with Journalists rather than citizens proposing the stories. As news still requires a business model (see Jeff Jarvis’s comment below) these Journalists then receive assignments and funding from editors to begin these investigations.

A similar UK initiative – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – has recently received £2 million of funding towards investigative, not-for-profit journalism, in the public interest. This will also experiment with crowdsourcing as a means of providing content across the media spectrum.

It’s not just local newspapers, and blogs such as the Huffington Post, however, that are experimenting with new models for Investigative journalism. The Associated Press announced earlier in June that it would be providing its 1,500 member papers with ready-to-run stories produced by independent reporters and editors.

AP announced it would distribute “watchdog and investigative journalism” penned not by its own staff or that of member papers, but by four outside groups:

• the Center for Investigative Reporting;
• ProPublica
• Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the
• Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

The goal is to provide these nonprofit journalism organizations with an additional distribution channel for their work, while making it easy for newspapers to find and use the content they produce. AP’s rational for embracing nonprofit journalism is that newspapers are struggling and shedding staff. They no longer have the manpower or resources to root out corruption by digging into complex areas of government or corporate life.

One of the non-profit organisations partnering with AP is ProPublica. It is is one of the largest American non-profit news ventures and recently announced it would be recruiting citizen journalists for investigative reporting. These stories are then given, not sold, to news outlets with the story then appearing on ProPublica.com after an appropriate period of exclusivity.

Anyone—including practicing and retired journalists, students, policy experts, construction workers, accountants—can join the ProPublica Reporting Network. Their first assignment will be to “Adopt a Stimulus Project”, where people will dedicate themselves to following a local project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Their task will be to monitor it through its completion reporting on the companies involved, the value of the project to the local community, how many people are employed by the project, and so on. Interesting project details are already appearing on the site as a result of the efforts of citizen journalists.

Nonprofit and citizen journalism certainly can serve the public interest. It often, however, requires the assistance and professionalism of trained journalists in order write or improve the story for publication. The distribution network and reach provided by established newspapers, blogs or news wires provides stories with the oxygen of publicity required for change to occur. As such, the future appears to be a symbiotic relationship, between citizen journalists and the established media. Jeff Jarvis notes how we cannot simply rely on citizens or charity as the future of news, but rather should see them as contributors and partners:

Charity is likely to be a contributor to the future of news. So will volunteer labour in the form of bloggers and crowdsourcing. But we still need a business model for news. News still needs to be profitable to survive. It’s not a church.

John Monroe’s article on Federal Computer Week earlier this month collates advice from social media experts at May’s Government Leadership Summit in Williamsburg, Va. He outlines 7 key steps towards achieving social-media success within government. These steps quantify the risks associated with social media, and explain that only by embracing these can success be achieved. These 7 steps are key tenets of Web 2.0 and are expanded on below.

1. Take control by giving up control

This is about recognizing and accepting that a brand’s value is inherently based on, and reflected by, whatever people say it is. While perceptions can often be inaccurate, they reflect the view of a brand from the outside and cannot be said to be ‘wrong’. Rather, it’s better to accept that the marketing or communications department cannot control the message, but instead should engage with those discussing it. The growth and power of social media means brands are becoming more heavily reliant upon consumers/citizens for survival, and therefore reaching out to brand evangelists/government enthusiasts cannot be underestimated.

Charlene Li notes that while communication specialists do not like the idea of giving up control over their message, it’s important to realise that in a socially networked environment controlling messages is not feasible. Instead, it’s better to participate in, and become a part of, discussions relating to the message. This can be through social networking sites, blogs, twitter or other communications platforms upon which your message is being discussed. The State Department’s twitter account participates in conversations regarding their mission, and can be seen as a tool in rebuilding the US brand overseas.

2. Keep the finger off the policy panic button

Any social media policies should guide employees on how to use new technologies, rather than simply outline what they can and cannot do. The recent Dow Jones social media guidelines are an example of what not to do. Your employees are usually your best brand ambassadors and should be trusted to uphold the values and aspirations of their employer. Harnessing and embracing their passions and expertise is a much more suitable policy, than restricting exactly how they can represent themselves.

Nevertheless, there are many considerations that need to be taken into account when creating sustainable policies and guidelines. There are many legal and policy challenges, that need to be acknowledged in any set of guidelines. Many agencies have included aspects of these in their different social media policies.

It’s also important to appreciate that policies can and should be flexible to deal with unexpected scenarios. This is aluded to in one of Steve Radick’s twenty theses for Government 2.0:

Policies are not written in stone.  With justification, passion, and knowledge, policies and rules can and should be changed.  Sometimes it’s as easy as asking, but other times will require a knockdown, drag-out fight.  Both are important.

There is, however, a need to update existing practices to allow the use of new tools to break down barriers to communication and information. The Open Government brainstorming sessions outlined many policies which need to be looked at – and potentially updated – in order to effectively promote citizen participation. These include the Paperwork Reduction Act, Federal Cookie Policy and Records Management. Notwithstanding these existing policies, we’ve already seen many examples of successful social media initiatives. Therefore, there should not be any assumption that existing policies or legislation create barriers for any agency to engage with social media.

3. Brace for, and embrace, the unexpected

The example of NASA’s online contest to name a new module of the International Space Station is cited as an example of how online participation can produce unexpected results.

More than 230.000 people suggested the name Colbert as a result of comedian Stephen Colbert, who used his nightly talk-show to rally audience support for this name to be used. NASA did not expect this when they conceived the contest, but it was not necessarily a bad thing.

As a result of Colbert’s campaign, and the subsequent appearance of a NASA official on his show, NASA received a lot of great publicity. Jeanne Holm, chief knowledge architect at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said:

You just have to understand that there will be unexpected ‘opportunities’ that social media will give you

In the end NASA named the station Tranquility — in honor of the touchdown site of Apollo 11 — but gave Colbert’s name to an on-station exercise machine.

The story above highlights how engaging in social media, and soliciting public feedback can have unintended consequences. NASA’s ability to deal with this through a compromise highlights a fundamental trait which all social media initiatives must adhere i.e. if you seek public participation and feedback you must be prepared to recognize it even/especially when it’s not what was originally expected.

4. Relinquish your pride in your own expertise

Beth Noveck (Deputy CTO for Open Government) explains this when she says:

We [Government] do not have a monopoly on the best ideas. We do not have all the answers …to the tremendous challenges we confront today.

An acceptance that all the subject-matter experts – in relation to government data – do not work in government agencies, is the first step towards creating platforms upon which outside ideas are solicited. These platforms have been enthusiastically embraced by the Obama administration and many State agencies. Recent examples include:

• Virginia’s State Government’s Idea portal
• New York State’s Tech talk
• Regulations.gov exchange
• Apps for Democracy – District of Columbia’s Community edition
• Open Government brainstorm
• The National Dialogue on Recovery.gov

Vivek Kundra recently blogged about using different technology strategies to empower government officials and the public to work together. Federal officials should actively tap into the public’s expertise to help solve specific problems. Whether this is how to improve a website, or ideas on Healthcare reform, this form of citizen to government interaction is a central pillar of an open civic system, and should be utilized to enhance existing agency expertise.

5. Everything you know about productivity is wrong

The prevailing orthodoxy within many government agencies is that access to social networking sites should be restricted, or actively banned. The theory is that staff will be so busy updating their Facebook or Twitter accounts, that they will neglect their work.

Instead, agencies should evaluate the productivity risks in not allowing people to access these tools. RRW recently reported on a study by Australian scientists which found that allowing access to ‘websites of personal interest, including news sites and YouTube, provided workers a mental break that ultimately increased their ability to concentrate and was correlated with a 9% increase in total productivity.’

Social networks can be used to harness the knowledge of experts to find better answers and ideas to work related issues. Networks such as Twitter can provide feedback on all kinds of questions, and serve as real-time information repositories. The Army has recently ordered bases to stop blocking Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, in order to ‘facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information’ among troops.

The Federal Web managers council outlined this issue in a paper last year. They identified the reasons for blocking these sites as relating to security, time wasting and bandwidth. Nevertheless, their view was the ‘new Administration should require agencies to provide access to social media sites unless the agency head justifies blocking certain employees or certain sites’.

6. Same employees, new job descriptions

President Obama explained in his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government:

Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.

Collaboration within government and among citizens will become a much more important aspect of how agencies and their employees work. Whether this is through sharing best practices within networks such as Govloop, or contributing to blogs and twitter streams, online collaboration will become a matter-of-fact activity, in which everyone may be required to engage with.

The recent Open Government brainstorm session distilled ideas on collaboration into three main topics:

• Enhancing Intra- and Inter-Government Collaboration – to improve institutional collaboration
• Creating Incentives for Public-Private Partnerships – to ensure all government partners work together
• Innovating in Alternative Dispute Resolution – ideas on dispute resolution strategies

The ideas submitted around these topics highlight the public’s expectations of great collaboration within, and around government. The Enterprise 2.0 movement – primarily concerned with greater collaboration and networking possibilities – is fueling a reorganization and re-evaluation of roles within corporations. Successful social media and government 2.0 implementations, will necessitate similar changes in job descriptions to prioritize collaboration and sharing among government workers.

7. Fail early, fail often

One of the best measures of success might be failure. During Clay Shirky’s recent talk at TED@State, he repeated his oft stated mantra of how failing fast and quickly is sometimes of tremendous benefit. Failure can be informative and serve to create longer lasting success; it’s synonymous with risk taking and experimenting. Also, the public is often forgiving of failure if it’s in the execution of a worthy principle.

Charlene Li notes how managers should try to imagine five to 10 worst-case scenarios and create plans for mitigating or responding to these if they come to fruition. This enables the risk associated with failure to be actively managed and contained.

The steps highlighted above do not conform to traditional governance models of how to achieve project success. The tenets of social media i.e. transparency, human interaction, collaboration and conversation, represent a paradigm shift in how government institutions can dialogue with citizens. Understanding what makes social media different is a key ingredient towards achieving success in this area.

]]> http://www.rfahey.org/2009/06/20/7-steps-towards-social-media-success/feed/ 1 http://www.rfahey.org/2009/05/23/datagov-opens/ http://www.rfahey.org/2009/05/23/datagov-opens/#comments Sat, 23 May 2009 16:05:18 +0000 Richard Fahey http://www.rfahey.org/?p=683

The eagerly awaited data.gov site launched this week, ushering in a new area of openness and transparency throughout the federal government. Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra announced the site as a platform to democratize government data by stimulating the creation of innovative applications and visualizations.

Kundra’s aim is for the government to tap into the ingenuity and ideas of the public to exploit information held by government agencies and institutions. He wants others to create new applications, conduct research and come up with new ideas to transform the way government works.

Data.gov is going to democratize data that the taxpayer has already paid for…It is fundamental to the President’s commitment to a transparent and open government. It lifts the veil on how your government works… and is going to be fundamental to driving transparency, innovation and lowering the cost of government operations.

Datasets

The site launched with dozens of datsets consisting of raw data in machine readable formats e.g. XML, Text/CSV, KML/KMZ, Feeds and XML. Along with this the public is invited to suggest datasets to be added to the site. The current data catalogs include:

• Environmentally-relevant data (copper smelters, energy usages, brownfields, soil geochemistries, clean air statuses, weather trends, earthquakes, etc.)
• Demographic data (earnings, ages, etc.)
• National income and accounts (Gross Domestic Products, income levels, etc.)
• Regulatory alerts
• Patent applications and grant information

Vivek Kundra’s interview on Federal news radio explains how more and more information will be added to the site over the coming months and years. Indeed, he expects over 240,000 data sets to be added from a wide range of agencies and departments across the federal government.

The majority of the data sets on the site (see Sunlight labs chart) are from the US Geological Survey, but Kundra expects more data to be added in relation to healthcare and energy.

He mentions how the Sunlight Foundation has launched a competition, called Apps for America 2, to see what applications/visualizations citizens can develop from the information on Data.gov. This crowdsourcing of ideas and inventions from the public is the exactly the kind of activity Kundra is trying to promote through the site. Public participation, analysis and exploitation of the data is encouraged, and re-reinforces Kundra’s view that the government does not have a monopoly on how it’s/our data is best represented.

Open Government needs you

Data.gov is a major milestone in the Obama administration’s Open Government Initiative. Indeed, its launch coincided with the White House’s other initiative for a more open government. Whitehouse.gov now includes an Open Government section highlighting process on this directive. It includes a link for the public to submit ideas, a blog and an innovations gallery that features other federal transparency projects.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy has launched a three phase approach to develop recommendations on how to make the government more transparent. Public participation is integral to the open government roadmap, and the solicitation of ideas is a cornerstone for progress in this area.

• Phase 1 seeks ideas and suggestions from the public on how to make government more open. The public can submit and vote on ideas at http://opengov.ideascale.com. Hundreds of ideas have already been submitted in the areas of Transparency, Participation and Collaboration.
  
• Phase 2 is a discussion and in-depth analysis of the ideas and suggestions submitted during the brainstorm stage. The feasibility and value of ideas will be discussed, with a view on how best they contribute to the President’s objective of a more transparent and open government.
  
• Phase 3 is concerned with drafting proposals to implement the most relevant ideas from phase 2.

The plan outlined above is similar in scope to the National Dialog on how to improve Recovery.gov. Seeking the public’s input and ideas for improving government is a central tenent of Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopera’s mission towards fulfilling the goals of President Barack Obama’s memorandum on transparency and open government.

The confirmation of Aneesh Chopra this week to the role of federal CTO will help develop and embed this directive throughout the federal government. Data.gov and the Open Government Initiative are an exciting start to this transformation. Their success, and the mashups/ideas they generate, will be a measure of how the public wants to participate in helping to improve government. It’s now over to us – the public – to engage and demonstrate what can be done with open date.

The first applications built on this data has already arrived (see FBI Fugitive Concentration). It’s exciting to see how an ecology of innovation will develop based on this data. What’s certain is government data, and its visualization are about to get a lot more interesting.