Full program available at http://www.i-gov.org/index.php?article=9814&visual=1

1. Web 2.0 in government: why
and how
(18 months later...)
iGov session ADMINISTRAÇÃO 2.0
Lisbon, 25 March 2009
David Osimo
Tech4i2 ltd.

2. What I will try to answer today
• what is web 2.0?
• does it matter?
• why?
• what should government do?
2

3. So far ICT has not fundamentally
changed government
• 1990s: ICT expected
to make government
more transparent,
Supply Demand
efficient and user
oriented
• 2005+: disillusion as
burocracy not much
different from Max
Weber’s description
3

4. Many projects of web2.0 in public services,
but not by government
Source: own elaboration of IPTS PS20 project

5. Relevant for key government
activities
Back office Front office
Regulation Service delivery
Cross-agency collaboration eParticipation
Knowledge management Law enforcement
Interoperability Public sector information
Human resources mgmt Public communication
Public procurement Transparency and accountability
source: “Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How? www.jrc.es 5

6. Regulation : Peer-to-patent
6

7. Peer-to-patent: an inside look
• Eighty-nine (89) percent of participating patent examiners thought the presentation of prior art that the
received from the Peer-to-Patent community was clear and well formatted. Ninety-two (92) percent re
Usage and impact
ported that they would welcome examining another application with public participation.
• Self-regulated: need examiners want to see Peer-to-Patent implemented as reg
Seventy-three (73) percent ofcontrol
critical mass to participating
•
office “bad apples”
practice.
• 2000(21) percent of participating examiners stated that prior art submitted by the Peer-to-Pate
users
• 9/23 applications used
• Twenty-one
community was “inaccessible” by the USPTO.
by USPTO
• 73% of USPTO the
• The USPTO received one third-party prior art submission for every 500 applications published in 2007. Pe
examiners endorse
Patent reviewers have provided an average of almost 5 prior art references for each application in the p
project
• pilot being extended
and adopted in Japan
“We’re very pleased with this initial outcome. Patents of questionable merit are of little value to
anyone. We much prefer that the best prior art be identified so that the resulting patent is truly
bulletproof. This is precisely why we eagerly agreed to sponsor this project and other patent
quality initiatives. We are proud of this result, which validates the concept of Peer-to-Patent,
and can only improve the quality of patents produced by the patent system.”
— Manny Schecter, Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property, IBM 7

8. Service delivery: Patient Opinion
8

9. Citizens monitoring government:
farmsubsidy.org

10. UK, US: citizens providing detailed
insight into gov strategies

11. Why?
• Citizens and CIVIL SERVANTS already use
web 2.0: no action ≠ no risks
• Likely to stay as it is linked to underlying
societal trends
- Today’s teenagers = future users and employees
- Empowered customers
- Creative knowledge workers
- From hierarchy to network-based organizations
- Non linear-innovation models
- Consumerization of ICT
11

12. Why?/2
Because it does not impose change (e-gov 1.0) but
acts on leverages, drivers and incentives:
• building on unique and specific knowledge of users: the
“cognitive surplus”
• the power of visualization
• reducing information and power asymmetries
• peer recognition rather than hierarchy
• reducing the cost of collective action
• changing the expectations of citizens
12

13. “A problem shared
is a problem halved
...and a pressure group created”
Dr. Paul Hodgkin
director PatientOpinion.org

14. “it’s about pressure points, chinks
in the armour where
improvements might be possible,
whether with the consent of
government or not”
Tom Steinberg
director mySociety

15. Before
citizen
Government
15

16. After
information,
citizen
trust, attention
Government friends
friends of friends
public
16

17. A new vision starting to take
shape
o sum up, transparency, which enhances accountability and choice, can be a powerful driver, a catalyst and
flagship for “transformational government”, rather than for “eGovernment” only.
What is new? 17

18. Web-oriented government architecture
!quot;# $%&
UK Cabinet, “Power of information task force report”
'()*+,--.*/0)-*1-231*)+456*3-7489-(*):0-;<*=>-?@30-ABBCD
Robinson et al.: “Government Data and the Invisible Hand “
Gartner: “The Real Future of E-Government: From Joined-Up to Mashed-Up”
18

19. What should
government do?

20. 1 - DO NO HARM
• don’t hyper-protect public data from re-use
• don’t launch large scale “facade” web2.0
project
• don’t forbid web 2.0 in the workplace
• let bottom-up initiatives flourish as
barriers to entry are very low
20

21. 2. ENABLE OTHERS TO DO
• publish reusable and machine readable data
(XML, RSS, RDFa) > see W3C work
• adopt web-oriented architecture
• create a public data catalogue > see
Washington DC
21

22. 3. ACTIVELY PROMOTE
• ensure pervasive broadband
• create e-skills in and outside government: digital
literacy, media literacy, web2.0 literacy,
programming skills
• fund bottom-up initiatives through public
procurement, awards
• reach out trough key intermediaries trusted by
the community
• listen, experiment and learn-by-doing
22

23. Thank you
david.osimo@tech4i2.com
Further information:
Osimo, 2008. Web2.0 in government: why and how? www.jrc.es
Osimo, 2008. Benchmarking e-government in the web 2.0 era: what to
measure, and how. European Journal of ePractice, August 2008.
http://egov20.wordpress.com
23

24. Back-up slides
24

25. A new innovation model for
public services
• A new WAY to innovate public services
Continuous and incremental,
•
open and non hyerarchical
•
not only by government: civil society, citizens, civil
•
servants
• A new effective DRIVER to address the challenges
of innovating public services
citizens’ ratings and reviews: democratization of
•
voice where there is no exit possibility
more openness and transparency expected
•
wider availability of IT tools for innovation by
•
citizens, civil servants, civil society
25

26. Common mistakes
• “Build it and they will come”: beta testing, trial and
error necessary
• Launching “your own” large scale web 2.0 flagship
project
• Opening up without soft governance of key
challenges:
- privacy
- individual vs institutional role
- destructive participation
• Adopting only the technology with traditional top-
down attitude
26

27. Web 2.0 is about values, not technology:
and it’s the hacker’s values
User as producer, Collective intelligence,
Values
Long tail, Perpetual beta, Extreme ease of use
Blog, Wiki, Podcast, RSS, Tagging, Social
Applications
networks, Search engine, MPOGames
Ajax, XML, Open API, Microformats, REST,
Technologies
Flash/Flex, Peer-to-Peer
Source: Author’s elaboration based on Forrester
27

28. Are these services used?
• in the back-office, yes
• in the front-office, not too much: few
thousand users as an average
• still: this is much more than before!
• some (petty) specific causes have viral take-
up (mobile phones fees, road tax charge
schemes)
• very low costs of experimentation
28

29. Why? /2
• Citizens (and employees) already use web 2.0:
no action ≠ no risks
• Likely to stay as it is linked to underlying
societal trends
- Today’s teenagers = future users and employees
- Empowered customers
- Creative knowledge workers
- From hierarchy to network-based organizations
- Non linear-innovation models
- Consumerization of ICT
29

30. Is there a visible impact?
Yes, more than the usage:
• in the back office: evidence used by US Patent
Office, used to detect Iraqi insurgents
• in the front office, making government really
accountable and helping other citizens
• but there is risk of negative impact as well
30

31. Web 2.0 is a set of values more
than a set of technologies
User as producer, collective intelligence,
openness “by default”, perpetual beta, ease of
Values
use
Blogs, Podcast, Wiki, Social Networking, Peer-
Technology to-peer, MPOGames, Mash-up
Ajax, Microformats, RSS/XML
31

32. Reminder: citizens and
employees do it anyway
32