For the second of my none scientific posts about the adoption of gov20 I thought I would look at the progress that has been made by elected officials and government employees.

This is a little harder to take a single view on, I see dramatically different levels of adoption in different geographies. So, as this is an unscientific study I’ll take the liberty of generalizing.

As with the other segments I think there are a number of distinctly different tracks that we should think about;

  1. Politicians using social media to work with their constituents.
  2. Politicians and government officials who see the power of open data as a component of their policy making work.
  3. Departments and/or government officials who have embraced the idea open data as an important part of their ongoing projects.

pol and gov

My overall view is that it is early days on all three fronts, and some earlier than others.

There are a growing number of examples of politicians and senior officials using social media to engage directly with constituents, over the last couple years we have seen the technologies increasingly used as part of election campaigns, as well as a tool to carry on conversations after an election. Much of this activity has been between a political party (or a US president) and the electorate though, I still only see a handful of elected officials using these tools to perpetuate an ongoing and direct conversation.

Some of these innovators (I mentioned Senator Kate Lundy from Australia or Clare Curran, MP from New Zealand as examples yesterday) will set the stage for what comes next. Their success, or otherwise, with social media will help a broader bench of politicians calculate the risk of following in their footsteps.

I can only find a small handful of examples of my second point for this post, politicians who see the benefit of open data in their policy making activity. I have mentioned one of my favourite examples before on this blog. It comes from Bill English (NZ Deputy Prime Minister) when he talks about something he calls “inside out government”.

As an example, in a speech last year to The Institute of Public Administration in New Zealand, he said; (my highlighting).

A second concept for the future is “inside out government”.

Government holds a wealth of information.  Some of it – quite rightly – is sensitive and access should be strictly controlled – tax records for example.

But in other areas, I see no reason why we can’t turn government inside out, so to speak, and make the same data and information available to those outside of government.

Government can tap wider resources in the community to analyse and use government data to help solve problems and produce insights. A ministerial committee is exploring this concept.

Inside out government also requires government to be open to good ideas from business.

We want to see ideas generated in the private sector and NGO sector genuinely considered and appraised – not simply ruled out on the basis that these sectors might not understand all aspects of government.

To make this approach truly valuable it is important that we are able to analyse not only local data but also compare that data with other international sources. It would be powerful to be able to compare the costs of building a mile of road, managing a hospital bed, operating a prison cell etc. across jurisdictions and then to use the knowledge gained from that to optimize local policy in an informed way. Making this a reality will involve both an evolution in the way that policy makers think, and some solid work by the technology and standards communities to find common ways to evaluate published data.

Finally, while I know they must be out there, I’m struggling to find solid examples (from ANZ) of departments that have embraced the idea of open data as an essential component of their day to day projects. With the current public appetite for open data and the applications that we see spring up every time a new data set is published I am sure it is only a matter of time before we see the topic become an integral part of every departmental project planning process.

Overall, looking at governments use of gov20 technology I still see much of the activity as sitting in the “Innovator” segment of the curve. Lots of work to be done, and lots of opportunity waiting to be tapped.