Paul Clarke - experienced with DirectGov, now works on 'causing trouble' Mark O'Neill DCMS also causing trouble in Govt IT
Paul Clarke and Mark O'Neill role play Govt IT vs Dabbler argument #mps09
http://twitpic.com/r07y8"We are not dabblers or social media experts soi dissant" we have a large and complex machine and what happens to the orphans - this is the argument used by the Govt IT machine
Clarke now asking for 'protecting the position of existing investments' - and therefore refusing to change - "can anyone ever think of that ever happening"
Participant says it's about not being 'seen to fail' so while they are passionate about trying to change things - this desire is obliterated by their fear of failure.
Now discussion of failure cost of IT globally - $500 bn is the number on the flip chart.
Scalability and sustainability is important "You can't get someone from a hack-day to build a mission critical health system."
Now participant who has experience in Government, Health and HEIs says we are missing the voice of the user - this is disregarded. "I wouldn't say they totally disregard the user" says another. "How many years have we been talking about accessibility and the web" she says
WE need to think about what Government can never be good at - and stop doing it. What's missing is the input of human capital (not the focus of activists). Example of careers guidance - 'we are trying to fit it through an eye of a needle". We need t liberate people to be human not just activists.
The user - in business the customer is king - but is that true for teachers or doctors. It's abiout the professional classes who do delivery - and they seem to know best. The professionals have the power to do this and they want the control.
It's anthropological - it's the white coat syndrome - I must be right more than you and they listen but from a position of power. Doctors don't like the internet - changes access to information.
Clarke says that channel costs are significant of putting the official and unofficial channels together.
If you take away all this government intervention and regulation away - how can you make sure that it all works? What other government actions might be needed to free data? "After 15 years the ground is not littered with good examples of how freeing up the data can result in service improvements"
But what data can be freed up and how does it work. Participants now arguing about whether 'fixmystreet' is able to lead to better services or is just a tactical response to navigating through the bureaucracy
Realtime data is potentially very important and open access to provide services might drive towards innovation.
Hadley says the debate is too polarlised - there's no point setting providers and government against each other.
Now looking at how the drive for profit can be used to generate better services. There is a dispute between the particpants as to whether this is true.
"In an ideal case you can get alignment between 'tax-payer vlaue' and shareholder" value says Mark. There is the danger of creating perverse rewards.
Third theme - that of the 'free economy'; and there's a lot of them here says Clarke. This is not sustainable he argues. Once people start to need to make money from delivering services then it's not about the 'free economy' - it's about making money.
'Technology-based entrepreneurship" is not the same as sustainable public services says Paul Clarke.
To try to build a public service infrastructure on the work of a small number of individuals is not likely to work. The use of government data may lead to a better way of people discovering the solution to the travel to work/house price cost and other issues as a service.
"There is an over emphasis on the release of public data as a way of doing service transformation" it may be great to free the data but it dosn't lead to transformation of services.
horsesmouth.co.uk - 83% of their messages contain deep links to government services.
It's what you do with the data that's important.
We extract ourselves from the human condition when we design govenment services. The challenge is one of mediation. "If you're involved in mediation, you're in big trouble - newspapers, media politicians" direct communication and user-to-user interaction (without formal mediation) is important.
How do we bridge the gap between informal user-mediated communication and expert services that need to work.
"Innovators are lovely people - but you need to fund entrepreneurs who can focus as a business model"
Governments can bring about the conditions where the various people can be brought together to delievr new things.
"There's a lot of invisible walls here - once you get into the power-broking area of how the system works you find a group of people who 'morph' into new forms of controlling groups as the environment changes - we forget that at our peril"
Next step - is to to to put together groups of people; government, geeks, businesses social media people to try to look at pilots and see what can be done by combining formal and informal modes says Mark, Paul Clarke says "You'll need a steering board!" [laughter] Mark says "Actually we think we'll need a whole new department . . "
by brian_condon via Twitpic 11/26/2009 2:06:11 PM
brian_condon
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