The electronic government landscape is increasingly pointing towards a diffusion of power, and an increased role and voice for citizens in public decision-making.

Tomasz Janowski from the UNU-IIST Center for Electronic Governance discusses some of the global trends that he is observing: participatory democracy, the increased regulation of new service delivery channels and the need for leadership in ICT services, challenging the notion of what “whole of government” really means in practice.

With positions of CTO, Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief Innovation Officer emerging, we also see the Government CIO as a consolidating role speaking on behalf of government information technology to other functions of government, and also to the public.

Tomasz also shares some of the recent discussions and shared experiences emerging from the W3C e-Government interest group around the use of social media in Government.

About Dr Tomasz Janowski

Tomasz Janowski is a Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology in Macao, where he founded and heads the Center for Electronic Governance. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, where he obtained PhD in Computer Science and Assistant Professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, where he obtained MSc in Applied Mathematics. He also worked for software companies in Poland and the U.S.

Tomasz’s research focuses on Electronic Governance (EGOV) policy and practice including foundations, education, development frameworks, models and design, measurement, etc. He directs EGOV research, transfers research results into practical instruments, and applies such instruments in government policy and practice. Under his leadership, the EGOV center developed a capacity-based EGOV development framework EGOV.*; built instruments to support the use of this framework; applied the framework in Afghanistan (EGOV.AF), Cameroon (EGOV.CM) and Macao SAR (e-Macao); and contributed to EGOV awareness- and capacity-building in Argentina, Bahrain, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine, Philippines, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam and other countries.

Tomasz is the co-founder and an international speaker at the  ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear his sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

Feature image courtesy UNU

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Episode links and resources

• United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology and the Center for Electronic Governance
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• W3C eGov interest group
• W3C eGov LinkedIn group

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In this special 2-part interview with Zachary Tumin from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Centre, we look at how all parts of society can collaborate to innovate.

Zach also previews his new book ‘Collaborate or Perish’ where he and co-author William J. Bratton have developed an 8-phase collaboration lifecycle to help anyone with an idea to more successfully collaborate.

“Gov 2.0, as a proxy for increased engagement and involvement of citizens with government, is mighty and a force to be reckoned with… Whether or not government gets the idea of collaboration, it’s constantly going on all around us and the best thing that government can do is tap into it.”

About Zachary Tumin

Zachary Tumin is Special Assistant to Director and Faculty Chair, Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Over his career, Zach has served at the Kennedy School in research and staff positions, and in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors as chief executive, staff, and consultant to leaders in industry and government.

Zach leads research initiatives, teaches senior executives in closed door sessions and addresses organizations in keynote and panels around the world. He is the author of numerous teaching cases, working papers, reports and essays.

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Part 1 – Gov 2.0

Part 2  – Collaboration

Episode links and resources

• Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government
• Report – From Government 2.0 to Society 2.0: Pathways to Engagement, Collaboration and Transformation
• Zach Tumin’s personal website

Collaborate or Perish!

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In this special live recording at the Mutinerie Coworking space in Paris, we speak with Christophe Tallec of Utilisacteur/Uinfoshare and Anne Marie Boutin, head of the French National Design Centre (Agence pour la promotion de la création industrielle) who collaborated on GovJam Paris, and are convening the Global Service Design Network Conference in October 2012.

Christophe and Anne Marie share their experiences with service design in the public sector, and explain how design thinking helps organisations to focus on asking the right questions before looking for solutions.

“What I find really interesting is that service design is a really good tool because one of the first things it does is to make people communicate through different hierarchies and structures.”

About Christophe Tallec

Christophe Tallec is the co-founder of Utilisacteur/Uinfoshare, both an innovative service design provider and a consultant, which gives users the opportunity to take an active role in their services by any means, product and service system.

He has been consulting for design promotion organisms, companies and think tanks for the past years, both at a national level in the finance industry, public sector, transport, for clients such as APCI, FING, La Poste and internationally by building pluri-disciplinar partnerships. Christophe holds the french equivalent of a master in design from ENSAD.

About Anne Marie Boutin

Anne Marie Boutin is the president of the French design promotion agency, APCI, which she founded in 1983.  She was also President and Director of the French national institute for advanced studies in design, ENSCI-les
Ateliers, from 1984 to 1992.

She is a member of advisory committees for several international art and design publications and the author of numerous articles and contributions to books and catalogues on design education, design management, design strategy, design-culture and technology. She was an elected member of the French National Commission for UNESCO till 1993, consultant to the OECD for the evaluation of innovation policies and education systems.

Senior magistrate in the Cour des comptes (French supreme audit institution) she was also Expert delegated to the Director of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (French Institute for Civil Servants) and responsible for international affairs from 1970 to 1979.

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Episode links and resources

• Agence pour la promotion de la création Industrielle (National Design Centre)
• Utilisacteur/Uinfoshare
• GovJam
• The Global Service Design Network Conference 2012

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Nicholas Gruen, economist and former chair of the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce debates the ways in which 2.0 thinking and technologies are changing economic definitions of public goods.

In this far-ranging discussion, Nicholas explains how Gov 2.0 is a nexus between ‘Jefferson’s dream’ of the transformative potential of ideas as public goods, and ‘Schumpeter’s nightmare’ of the chaos of direct democracy.  He argues that democracy is chaos unless it’s mediated by specialists, and that the social web actually makes it harder to get the leaders we need to govern.

About Dr Nicholas Gruen

Dr Nicholas Gruen has advised two Australian Cabinet Ministers, directed the Business Council’s New Directions program and sat on the Productivity Commission. He is founder of economic policy consultancy Lateral Economics and Peach Financial. He is a frequentnewspaper columnist and media commentator and a prolific blogger at Club Troppo.

He is Chairman of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, Online Opinion –an internet forum for opinion on political and cultural matters –and medical ICT startup Specialist Link. He was the founding chairman of Kaggle, a Melbourne ‘big data’ start up now based in San Francisco. He is also a board member of Sustainability Victoria and the Federal Government’s Innovation Australia.

In 2009 Nicholas chaired the Federal Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce.

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Episode links and resources

• Presentation summary and slides: Realising Jefferson’s Dream, Avoiding Schumpeter’s Nightmare: Democracy, Deliberation and Government in the Age of Web 2.0’

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In this wide-ranging episode, Don challenges many assumptions such as the use of online/social tools; “public” vs “citizen” engagement; and the role of citizens as well as policy-makers in the co-design process.  Don also overviews the “Co-design Community Engagement Prototype” developed this year with Australian Federal and Local Government organisations.

I think there’s a growing awareness, especially among public servants, that the processes we have are not adequate – we need public engagement as a way of dealing with complexity, but it’s still perceived to be a risky business.

About Dr Don Lenihan

Don Lenihan is Vice President, Engagement at the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa, Canada. He is an internationally recognized expert on democracy and public engagement, accountability and service delivery. From 2009 – January 2012, he led the Public Engagement Project (PEP), a research and capacity-building project involving some 500 public servants from nine federal, provincial/territorial and municipal governments, and the Government of Australia.

Don is also the author of “Rescuing Policy: The Case for Public Engagement” , a new book published by Public Policy Forum, which is the result of the Public Engagement Project, a two-year dialogue and capacity-building project on public engagement that involved nine federal, provincial and municipal governments in Canada, the Government of Australia and some 500 public servants. Its premise is that as public policy issues are becoming increasingly complex, the process by which governments make decisions about them has not kept pace.

Don has over 25 years of experience in the field as a project leader, writer, speaker, senior government advisor, trainer and facilitator. Throughout his career, he has developed and led many research and consultation projects involving senior public servants, academics, elected officials, journalists and members of the private and third sectors. He is the author of numerous articles, studies and books, a former columnist with the Hill Times newspaper in Ottawa, and is a regular columnist for iPolitics. He earned his PhD in political theory from the University of Ottawa.

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Episode links and resources

• About Don Lenihan
• Public Policy Forum Canada
• Final report on the Australian Government’s Co-Design Community Engagement Prototype Building a Strategic Design Capacity for Co-Design
• Municipal Association of Victoria on the Co-Design Prototype project
• Don’s latest book “Rescuing Policy: The Case for Public Engagement”
• Interview with Tiago Peixoto on Participatory Budgeting
• Public engagement papers from the Public Policy Forum

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Hear from Michael P McDonald and Micah Altman of the Public Mapping Project, which is an organization that is using open source software to enable people to create their own redistricting maps and send them to local government for potential adoption. Using a tool called District Builder, citizens can make their own maps based on demographics, voting patterns and legal requirements (among other criteria) and submit them to local government for consideration for redistricting.

Redistricting is a very, very difficult problem – it’s so complex that we know no one person is going to find the optimal solution… having that added crowdsourcing power means we can discover new ways of drawing districts that maybe people just hadn’t thought of before.

About Michael McDonald and Micah Altman

• Dr Michael McDonald is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics in the Public and International Affairs Department at George Mason University, and a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. His research interests include voting behavior, redistricting, Congress, American political development, and political methodology.
• Dr Micah Altman is Director of Research and Head/Scientist, Program on Information Science for the MIT Libraries, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Altman is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Prior to arriving at MIT, Dr. Altman served at Harvard University for fifteen years as the Associate Director of the Harvard-MIT Data Center, Archival Director of the Henry A. Murray Archive, and Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences.

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Episode links and resources

• Public Mapping project for participatory redistricting
• District Builder software to enable citizens to collaborate on creating redistricting scenarios

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