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…?
