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.

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…?

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…

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

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?