Connecting people with what they want

MyMashup or MashMeUp?

What exactly do we want from Government? Apart from something to blame when things go wrong of course, this question is too big to have an easy answer. But focusing on a department or agency, or one of their sub-units even helps frame the response. At this level, a misappropriated management-consultant-style 2×2 grid can be used to view the inside-out view of the type of engagement the government sub-unit does.

Government communications types

But this still begs the question: what do the people want? That depends on the situation, but one thing is for sure – it won’t necessarily be in the format predicted from the inside-out view. The indeterminate nature probably exists as a spectrum or normal distribution along some axis. Here’s where the idea of mashups is good. What if the starting point was the situation where all government data was surfaced as raw data, thus allowing the citizen, when interacting with one or many government departments, to get at what they want via their own personal mashup. This would include their own personal data, as is currently the situation when logging on to do the dreaded tax return or whatever, but by creating a personalised data mixing-desk, people can get what they want all in one place. Its just the same as the mashups being discussed for wholesale use, but applied to the individual.

Information Flows

• Many-to-one relationship, information flows both ways: Crowdsourcing… “crowdsourcing is getting less hip and more productive”
• Some-to-one relationship, information flows in both ways: Wiki-Government
• One-to-one, information flows in only: Form-filling, tax returns… not usually enjoyable things.
• One-to-one, information flows both ways: Some kind of P2P (albeit this is also many-to-many)?
• One-to-one, information flows out only: Post – if its important, the government sends it snailmail. Of course there are exceptions, particularly when its person (gov’t employee) to person (citizen). I have yet to receive demands for my tax return via email, though the presumption by government is increasingly towards online returns (especially if you leave it until January like me).
• One-to-many relationship, information flows out only: Broadcasting in all its guises.

… and many more configurations, I’m sure. The White House came in for some flak about not quite living up to the expectation of bidirectional information flows, and was described as using crowdsourcing as listening-only mechanism in this piece which mentions other variations.

Government online

Is the government supertanker now turning around apropos to digital engagement? Maybe. Plenty has been said about the grand plan, for example see Emma Mulqueeny et al. (see her blogroll for others), and there are official things coming out of the Cabinet Office, never mind the appointment of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. However, the underlying issues seem to include instilling a culture of data sharing within government, agencies, quangos, etc.; making data accessible (common format, single point of access, appropriate access rights, dealing with privacy issues); and simply getting something out there, and working on improving it in an iterative way. Note the emphasis here on POIT recommendation 14. Also TBL’s own opinion piece on publishing data. Progress on interim POIT recommendations (made 31 March 2008) indicated a degree of optimism.

A quick, back-of-envelope analysis of what the interim and final reports were about may explain why there was much optimism at the outset, and why the enthusiasm may need bolstering now. This chart maps how the shape of POIT has evolved, shifting largely from exploration to culture change. This could be why things may be getting difficult.

The changing shape of POIT

Looking back at the original ambitions in setting up POIT in 2008 (“increase innovation and improve the way the Government shares information so ordinary people can develop online services that benefit their community.”), and following this through to the final report, hearing reports from the front line, indicates to me that the change of scope within POIT may be an issue. Comments by IT people exhort us to ‘just do it’, but at the general, non-IT coalface, I see some tensions arising. Emma Mulqueeny, I think, hits the nail on the head about digital engagement: “It is simply a discipline that needs incorporating into current working plans and practices.”

The DE journey is now not as it is portrayed in POIT and earlier reports: all civil servants should, when they ‘engage’, do so both digitally and traditionally without making any distinction between the two. At the moment, digital is considered exotic, and this attitude is engrained in practices ranging from blocking social media websites from work computers (except mine, hence my being interrupted by the top man’s PS who needs to access blocked sites on his behalf for legitimate purposes – see POIT rec 2) to insisting on wholesale printing of reports for distribution to people who have already expressed a desire to receive an electronic version (potentially violating POIT rec 9). It is clear to me that civil servants don’t, as a group (not individuals), think in this way yet. Otherwise there would be no need for POIT rec 5 about digital self-expression, and POIT rec 6, about the concomitant need for training (only for policy people, though).

Government digital engagement is driven from different angles. On the one hand there is the top-down objective setting, then there are the IT prototype projects pushing upwards, and then there are internal departmental strategies and guidance issued by the COI which sit in the middle and have to have to respond to both of these in a middle-up-down way a phrase I first encountered in The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Now there’s a thought – why are we only setting our targets at information? Isn’t it knowledge we should be aiming at…?

First cut

• Understand what client does. [digital engagement & government in general: What drivers exist]

• Understand what client’s audience wants. [how do citizens want to engage with government: what motivates them]

• Understand the problem. [what disconnects are there?]

• Define the proposed solution. [how to connect the two, and overcome the barriers]

• Find way of explaining these elegantly. [How to make it a killer app]

• Explain benefits. [who benefits most? are there any win-win situations or do different, non-overlapping problems get solved?]

• Do sanity check on costs, logistics, deliverables, processes, timings, etc. [Is this achievable? What does the ideal solution look like?]

Connections with “Digital Britain”T

The first cut of the presentation outline. This section is about the thinking, preparing, planning, prototyping phase. Experimenting with ideas, and seeing if they work:

• What are the top-level drivers for digital engagement & government?

• What do citizens actually want? How do they want to engage with government? What motivates them to do this online?

• What disconnects are there between government and citizen aims?

• How to overcome the barriers, and cross the gaps between government and citizen?

• Is there an elegant solution? Can it be made into a killer app?

• Benefits: who benefits most? are there any win-win situations or do only independent, non-overlapping problems get solved?

• Is this achievable? What about costs, logistics, deliverables, processes, timings, etc.? There may be connections with the “Digital Britain” report here…

Three things

Those not familiar with Latin or architecture may be wondering what a Vitruvian triad is, and why it is relevant to this project. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman Architect whose treatise ‘The Ten Books of Architecture’ described the qualities a building should have. These are “Comoditas, Utilitas, e Venustas”, which have been translated as Commodity, Firmness and Delight.

Why is this important here?

It is a convenient shorthand form which has been appropriated by many other disciplines, including software development, and from there into social media. This Venn diagram from a new media agency’s pitch document shows how the Vitruvian triad pops up in all sorts of unexpected places:

Vitruvian triad in new business pitch

Prologue

This morning, before I started this project, I had to take my daughter to her ice-skating class. So that I could join in, I bought myself a pair of skates on eBay. Nothing special about that. Its when you make the transition from online world to offline that you realise what is missing. The boots hurt like hell. Maybe if I could have poked and prodded the merchandise I would have made a different choice.

Discussions of social media, especially when applied to government engagement, need to remember that citizens interacting with government often involve some sort of suffering – whether it be querying NHS Direct or tax returns. Doctors are taught about having a good bedside manner, in addition to the hard science. How can a good ‘bedside manner’ be replicated online?