What Happens After Next? 10 issues for the future of digital engagement in government
2009 April 20
Once upon a time social media was radical; now ministers regularly use it. Once ‘Transformational Government’ was an item on an agenda, but now it is the agenda. And, the Power of Information recommendations were just ideas; now they are in practice.
As yesterday’s concepts become today’s policies, those concerned with digital engagement in government are afforded the opportunity to think about tomorrow’s challenges. Here are 10 that have been playing on my mind…
- Encouraging data-sharing but also reassuring the public and stakeholders on data integrity and security;
- Approaching digital engagement as something that has costs associated with it rather than being a way of doing everything for free;
- Investing thought and effort into exploration of the potential in municipal ICT and localised networks;
- Managing and sustaining ‘everyday’ digital engagement as it becomes a party political issue;
- Crowdsourcing problem-solving while ensuring that it is complementary to good governance rather than an alternative to it;
- Giving civil servants remote access to systems to enable secure, mobile and resourceful working;
- Creating a charter of democratic engagement entitlements and responsibilities for government and the public;
- Developing an understanding of how to prioritise cross-border cyber-cooperation in order to mitigate cyber-conflict;
- Improving the use of energy-efficient IT to underpin digital engagement;
- Developing standardised digital engagement metrics suitable for use in the public sector and embedding their use.
Please query or add to the list…
Queries or tweaks to points 2 and 3:
On 2, the costs aren’t just financial. Giving a wad of cash to a social media consultancy or employing a highly paid Director of Digital Engagement isn’t enough. What governments find harder is adapting their behaviour to the new context. It may have become policy, but it hasn’t become second nature.
On 3, I think some exploration of the potential has already been done. What we don’t know is how to make localised, community based networks sustainable ; how to justify and fund doing things that the market won’t.
Hi Ross – great ideas! Can we tempt you across to replay at http://net.digitalengagement.org?
David
I think you have identified many of the key issues, to which I’d add a couple of others:
11. Overcoming the fear of failure in the face of a media that is on the look out for social media gaffs.
12. Creating a culture of participation where the disengaged see it as their right to be heard.
I’m looking forward to continuing the debate at the OpenGov event tomorrow!
Interesting. There are certainly some niche ones in there! 1, 3, 5 and 10 certainly have my vote. From my little corner, on a rather shorter timescale, I’d add:
# Making use of feedback given
# Responding appropriately to online comment
# Making it about the message, not the media
# Accepting the messyness of debate and digital engagement
# Making it less about democratic participation, and more about customer service
That last one is not necessarily a contradiction of your #7: I’m really just arguing for a debate which moves on from voting and political comment online, towards engagement about services and needs where the tools are used to understand customers and optimise delivery, as much as they are about campaigning or decision-making.