London: CityCamp London is a Model for Building Community in #gov20 and #opengov

Great Conversation on Gov20 and Business Models Needed for Sustainable Change in London

Great Conversation on Gov20 and Business Models Needed for Sustainable Change in London

I realize I am posting a review of CityCamp London while it is still going on, but it has been going so well, I doubt that day 3 will derail the effort (and I need to get on a plane to Korea soon for the Tourism 2.0 (Login Tourism) event in Buyeo, Korea for a keynote).

The balance needed for a great govcamp is far more art than science, but to see it done so well is rare.  The organizers need to keep a wayward group of activists on task, moving forward, entertained, informed and inspired.  The folks at FutureGov (and Dominic in particular) did this extremely well.

It says something about the movement that folks not only show up on the weekend, but remain energized and active the entire time.  I was involved with a few of the breakouts yesterday that were amazing.  And while the proof will certainly be in the sustainable motion AFTER the event, the event itself has created the platform and generated the connections needed for this all to be successful.  And for that to work, the connections need to be the focus of the events, the organizations, people, moderators need to facilitate but stay out of the way, which is exactly how CityCamp London has happened so far.

And the true diversity of attendees is impressive.  From traditional diversity metrics to diversity of thought, ccLDN has committed to the power of ideas carrying the day and we have all checked our baggage at the door.  I was welcomed as a Microsoft global guy as were folks from IBM, Google, Accenture and many other companies.  Advocates from inside government were numerous coming from some of the most powerful structures within the government including DWP and NHS among many others.

And the fact that they all blended in so well, in a great atmosphere, and focused on great conversations about how to move all of these issues forward was truly impressive.  I have been responsible for GovCamps in cities around the world (Berlin, Mexico City, Bogata, Toronto, Auckland, Sydney) and attended multiple other ones.  I can absolutely say that Dom and his crew have taught us all how to do these the right way.

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Fixing Potholes – Tip O’Neill, Open Data and Single Moms and What it Means to the Future of #Gov20 and #OpenGov

President Ford and Tip O'Neill - Government 2.0, Open Government Data and Fixing Potholes

President Ford and Tip O'Neill - Government 2.0, Open Government Data and Fixing Potholes

“All politics is local” said Tip O’Neill. An early American hero of mine while I was a young politico working in the States in the midwest and then Washington D.C.

And I have lived my life believing that, driving for it when I worked as an LBJ Scholar in Congress, with Congressman Jerry Kleczka representing Milwaukee’s South Side, as a Get Out The Vote specialist on multiple campaigns (School Boards, State Legislatures, Senators, Congressmen, Governors and candidates for President), when I had the honor of working for Governor Jim Doyle and running his ICT Department for years.  And when I led the National Association of State CIO’s (NASCIO) as their President and, as the General Manager for Worldwide Government at Microsoft and most recently as the SVP of Global Public Sector at Salesforce.

Through all of these experiences I try to remember that real people care about things like, well, potholes.  And that while those issues may seem small, they are, in fact enormous.  You see, when potholes exist they affect all that we do in society.  Single moms cant get their kids to school so she can get to work.  Those same potholes stop both local tradesmen and global logistics firms from moving commerce along, affecting local and global commerce.  Our brave first responders can’t respond in a timely manner to citizen emergencies.  Kids can’t safely play a game of stickball in the street safely (I know, they shouldn’t be playing in the street anyways).

But, through my experiences I have found one issue among all of these to be primary.  Potholes erode the faith that citizens place in their government.  They generate a perception that government is not effective at solving problems, cares less than they do about safety or is not focused on those things that matter most to citizens.  That erosion is becoming even more evident as young adults now enter civil society (digital natives) wondering why interactions with government are so hard when their digital world is so darn easy.  But, when Governments focus on getting small things, like potholes, right then we all start to rebuild that faith, our community and the future of civic life.

And that is why I focus on Potholes.

And as an unconventional thinker since birth, please don’t think I feel that there is only one way to fix those pesky things either.  I believe that Government should be more oriented toward being a platform upon which citizens, non-governmental organizations, unions, churches, associations, developers, database admins and single moms can work together to hope to fix.  By Fixing Potholes I mean all of us, which requires Governments to shift their orientation.  From simply providing the workers, trucks, shovels and asphalt to providing data streams and sensors and information on routes and other masses of data directly to those single moms and her brethren.  To rebuild the trust we have eroded by focusing too much on providing services directly (the vending machine model) and instead switching to providing platforms that we can all work on collaboratively.  From the pipes (broadband deployment), to software platforms like the Force.com and driving data to a new open world potentially at database.com.

You see I was raised by one of those single mothers.  And the greatest gift she gave me was her passion for politics.  She had incredible insight into politics from environmental sustainability to workers rights to growing our economy.  But she was a single mom, who worked hard, late into most nights, so her boys could grow up to live a better life.  And because our government drove service delivery exclusively, they did not have platforms available for my mom to pass along her passion.  Her voice remained silent, as she was at work during the only public meeting times left open in our state – from 9AM to 5PM.  Had we embraced always on, 24-hour social computing connected to government, or had multi-day GovCamps that allowed ongoing interactions, or had her young boy had access to the data from the State so he could put his coding skills to good use – who knows how incredible our state could have become.

But the incredible thing is, she can now start to unleash that passion.  The US, the UK and Australia have publicly committed to open data in Government.  There are now myriads of online systems dedicated to crowdsourcing public policy solutions, and yes, potholes are well covered from FixMyStreets to our own solution soon to be released called StreetCare.  The impact can be felt world of education as with the New York City Department of Education deployment of Force.com and beyond.  It is an exciting time to be a part of government transformation.

And a darn good time to fight for us all to start Fixing Potholes.

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Co-Delivery as a part of Government as a Platform, #gov20 and #opengov

Co-Delivery can help make the Government as a Platform vision happen.

Co-Delivery can help make the Government as a Platform vision happen.

Gadi Ben-Yehuda writes on the issue of Government service co-deliveryover at Huffington Post.

While the McDonaldization of Government service delivery may be distasteful to some (although a Big Mac sounds good right now), it is a vital ingredient to realizing the future of Government as a Platform (GaaP) and needs to be a part of the investment matrix that governments consider as they push GaaP thinking forward.  A market driven approach is certainly important to drive the mission moving forward, but self-service needs to continue to be a focus in areas where governments feel that service delivery itself cannot be avoided.

I have posted before about the need to commoditize such services to ensure absolute efficiency when we decide the vending machine model is a necessity, but I did not touch on Co-dlivery and should have.  As our overall effort in Government 2.0 as a movement is to help bring the governed closer to the government, nothing creates affinity better than direct involvement in the service delivery process.

So, the matrix now has five major components:

1)  When potential services touch a large number of citizens and is demanded by them, the offering should be delivered directly, but commoditized and delivered as efficiently as possible (lowering investment needs long term).

2)  Whenever possible in areas covered by #1, we should endeavor to embrace co-delivery as another option to reduce the cost and increase the affinity between served and service provider.

3)  When the potential services touch a large number of citizens but can be enabled by citizen activists, private sector partners, developers-at large, the Government should invest directly in building a platform (including open government data initiatives).  This will lead to an initial capital outlay but will ultimately create a more sustainable delivery model.

4)  When the services touch very few people and do not have a high degree of electoral or political demand, and there is no compelling reason to provide the service directly, overnments should considering dis-investing in the provision of the service.

5)  When the services might touch more people long term, but currently have a lower citizen demand, Governments should partner with the private sector to have them build the platforms and put private capital at risk rather than precious public expenditures.  This investment should be targeted toward building platforms and not individual services such that the result is a more sustainable model of service delivery.

The addition of co-delivery to this model makes it better.  I am working to publish an easy to consume model that will allow Governments to quickly analyze their service delivery model and to present investments in light of government as a platform thinking.

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