If you are not familiar with Tim O’Reilly, he may be someone worth looking into. He popularized the term Web 2.0 and helped rebrand “free software” to “open source.” O’Reilly has been a global leader in how we view and use the Internet and continues to influence a variety of sectors, including government.
When I first thought about what to title this column, Open Gov 2.0, it was with O’Reilly’s mantra of Government 2.0 in mind. O’Reilly theorizes that government today works like a vending machine; put taxes in… get services out, shake and kick it if you don’t get what you want.
“Participation is limited to protest,” says O’Reilly. “Essentially shaking the vending machine.” And whoever shakes the vending machine most, or most rigorously, wins.
What O’Reilly champions is actually a return to the original intent of democratic governance and its role in civil society, where Socratic engagement encourages critical thinking and the free flow of ideas. And the means to achieve this re-conceptualization of government is to deconstruct the vending machine model in favour of the notion that government is instead a platform.
So what does government as a platform actually mean, and how would it differ from the vending machine model of today?
The simplest way I can explain it to myself is to think about the development of the iPhone or the Android systems. Apple and Google develop the platforms: the phones and the operating systems. This platform is constantly reinventing itself and improving.
The fundamental aspect of their design is to be adaptive and “open” in order to maximize participation, transparency and innovation. The result is an ecosystem populated by millions of app developers who have taken these platforms far beyond what Apple or Google as organizations could ever imagine or achieve, and at a much more progressive rate.
So how do we parlay that analogy into a local government context when governments of today are all too comfortable with the predictable and “safe” outcomes of the vending machine? We do this by evolving into an organization that allows citizens to innovate, invigorate, drive efficiency and ultimately power volunteer efforts, progressive policies and economic initiatives.
This is where Open Data is perhaps the greatest harbinger; it’s an opportunity to harness the creativity of the collective because data is something governments have in abundance. The greatest challenge is that much of government’s data sets is not in easily searchable formats and will take time to become truly accessible and therefore useful. But the change is already happening and is profound, the possibilities of which we are only scratching the surface.
You can see it in the district’s GIS system (an award-winning one, I may add), which is a minefield of data for anyone to use and the potential of which we have just begun to explore. It’s evident in the new Enterprise system we are embarking on that will modernize our financial systems and development services first and continue to flow throughout the organization in the coming years.
The idea of open data/open government in the public sector is ever evolving. Its transformative potential is already beginning to shape our organizational culture and our readiness for this change. The result I hope for? A reimagined relationship between government and its citizens.
