Open Government Now

[Gruden]

Introduction

The idea of ‘Open Government’ has become popular in a few different forms over the past years, tending to follow general internet trends with only minor modification to make them appropriate to the context of government. More recently, however, it’s becoming a mature concept with clear goals and guiding principles.

History

In the late 90s, the web was discovered as a self-service platform, a way for businesses to offload customer service to a seemingly free alternative. The buzzwords were all prepended with ‘e-’, and so we got e-Government and e-Citizenship. The idea was to get existing processes online, but the end goal wasn’t transformative (e-tax and e-voting), and there was never a sense of ownership imparted to the citizen.

In the early 00s, in the wake of the dot-com bubble, we saw little new in the government space. Though the period did allow for some consolidation, with some of the promising ‘e-’ projects coming to fruition, and the more burdensome being left behind.

Then Web 2.0 hit. With a focus on the user, Web 2.0 became conflated with many of its early success stories in the ‘social networking’ space, later expanded to ‘social media’. This time around, the ’2.0′ got appended to things, and we got ‘Government 2.0′. Now the end goal was transformative — replace the government of institutions with a government of*people. But it quickly descended into the mere use of Facebook and Twitter. Again, there’ve been some successes, but the best results have been from groups that already had strong community ties, such as local government or institutions.

Along with a focus on the user, much of the strength of Web 2.0 has been aboutdata, manifested in the ‘mash-up’, combining datasets from disparate sources. But as mash-ups became more ambitious, people quickly realised that governments were responsible for some enormous datasets, ripe with potential for mixing and viewing in different ways. The Creative Commons licenses had been eagerly adopted by Web 2.0 pioneers as a way to share data, and there were calls for governments to adopt the CC license for their data. The Australian Government stopped short of endorsing Creative Commons in their*response to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, but agreed in principle with the use of “open attribution” licenses.

Open Government Now

‘Open Government’ isn’t just government services accessed online; it isn’t just government institutions embodied in social networking sites; and it isn’t just government data made freely available. It isn’t just about a commercial relationship (services in return for tax), and it isn’t just about democracy (representation and policy input). All of those things play a part, but it’s about much more than just theimplementation.

In their*Declaration of Open Government, the Australian Govt based their “support for openness and transparency” on three principles: Informing, Engaging, and Participating. These three ideas aren’t new to participative democracy, but ‘Open Government’ recognises that new technologies assist in institutional reforms that support democratic principles.

Implementation

Supporting the*Declaration, the Australian Government have also been pushing through Freedom of Information (FOI) reforms that promote disclosure, and establishing an Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to oversee FOI. Work continues on*australia.gov.au and*data.australia.gov.au (formerly data.gov.au) to provide central access to government services and data.

At the agency level, implementation can be more difficult. The FOI reforms require agencies to publish a much larger amount of documentation than was required previously, including the publication of documents as they’re released with particular requests. This can require significant extensions to existing web publishing models to allow documents to be indexed and searched, without overwhelming a site’s IA so as to confuse the end user.

Agencies should also consider an appropriate level of engagement with the public. Few will find it appropriate to create Twitter accounts, but many will have existing communications channels that may be enhanced with different web technologies, or with integration with third-party services. Agencies that already deal directly with people may find that their existing service workflows may be improved or neatly complemented with a web component.

Next Steps

Talk to Gruden about:

• a*Content Strategy, particularly to support your agency’s FOI requirements, including workflow, publishing, searching, and integration options with your current site processes and IA
• a*Service Interaction Review, to see how online processes can augment your existing service offerings, considering all end-user touchpoints
• a*Social Media Strategy, reviewing existing discussions including or affecting your agency, and suggesting simple ways to start participating in those discussions

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