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New Innovation: Open Government 2.0
A new wave of innovation has just begun forming. This time it is around wider participation and involvement of citizens in Government and Democracy leveraging technology.
This nascent idea in innovation is based on the premise that the government should have an open platform to provide access to data to anyone with a great idea to build innovative services to connect government to the people. The citizens will get a transparent view into decision making and going forward will be able to participate in shaping the policy directly, first hand.
This will also create a shift away from the traditional "Vendor Machine Model" of the Government (aptly coined by Donald Kettl) where you pay taxes and vend the services you need. If the vending machine does not perform you "protest" by "shaking the box". But is that enough participation?
Mckinsey has found that "In the face of... users’ heightened expectations based on the integration of the Internet into their daily life and work, it is imperative that the public sector refine its approach to e-government to ensure that these initiatives achieve maximum impact. In our experience, three obstacles have, however, limited the impact of e-government efforts: ineffective governance, lack of Web-related capabilities, and reluctance to allow user participation in the creation of applications and content"
First Step
Some of us may be familiar with Apps For Democracy run by Vivek Kundra while he was former CTO of Washington D.C., (now CIO of US). "The Apps for Democracy yielded 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in 30 days - a $2,300,000 value to the city at a cost of $50,000..."
Some early examples have started appearing. Police in Metro Cities have started using Tweeter to disseminate crime information in the neighborhood. Next location aware devices can be employed to provide easy and timely access to all services. Various agencies in Federal Government are using Twitter to give storm warning, flu information and back to school advice.
Two years ago on a visit to Bangalore I was pleasantly surprised to get very useful traffic and routing information from BLR police through SMS . Some parts of the city were experiencing violence and the information told me how to navigate in real time.
A radical approach to using technology to reinforcing relationship in democracy...!
This nascent idea in innovation is based on the premise that the government should have an open platform to provide access to data to anyone with a great idea to build innovative services to connect government to the people. The citizens will get a transparent view into decision making and going forward will be able to participate in shaping the policy directly, first hand.
This will also create a shift away from the traditional "Vendor Machine Model" of the Government (aptly coined by Donald Kettl) where you pay taxes and vend the services you need. If the vending machine does not perform you "protest" by "shaking the box". But is that enough participation?
Mckinsey has found that "In the face of... users’ heightened expectations based on the integration of the Internet into their daily life and work, it is imperative that the public sector refine its approach to e-government to ensure that these initiatives achieve maximum impact. In our experience, three obstacles have, however, limited the impact of e-government efforts: ineffective governance, lack of Web-related capabilities, and reluctance to allow user participation in the creation of applications and content"
First Step
Some of us may be familiar with Apps For Democracy run by Vivek Kundra while he was former CTO of Washington D.C., (now CIO of US). "The Apps for Democracy yielded 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in 30 days - a $2,300,000 value to the city at a cost of $50,000..."
Some early examples have started appearing. Police in Metro Cities have started using Tweeter to disseminate crime information in the neighborhood. Next location aware devices can be employed to provide easy and timely access to all services. Various agencies in Federal Government are using Twitter to give storm warning, flu information and back to school advice.
Two years ago on a visit to Bangalore I was pleasantly surprised to get very useful traffic and routing information from BLR police through SMS . Some parts of the city were experiencing violence and the information told me how to navigate in real time.
A radical approach to using technology to reinforcing relationship in democracy...!
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