Web 2.0 in government: why and how

(18 months later...)

iGov session ADMINISTRAÇÃO 2.0Lisbon, 25 March 2009

David OsimoTech4i2 ltd.

What I will try to answer today

• what is web 2.0?

• does it matter?

• why?

• what should government do?

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So far ICT has not fundamentally changed government

• 1990s: ICT expected to make government more transparent, efficient and user oriented

• 2005+: disillusion as burocracy not much different from Max Weber’s description

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Supply Demand

Many projects of web2.0 in public services, but not by government

Source: own elaboration of IPTS PS20 project

Relevant for key government activities

Back office Front office

RegulationCross-agency collaboration

Knowledge managementInteroperability

Human resources mgmtPublic procurement

Service deliveryeParticipation

Law enforcementPublic sector information

Public communicationTransparency and accountability

source: “Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How? www.jrc.es5

Regulation : Peer-to-patent

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Peer-to-patent: an inside lookUsage and impact

• Self-regulated: need critical mass to control “bad apples”

• 2000 users

• 9/23 applications used by USPTO

• 73% of USPTO examiners endorse the project

• pilot being extended and adopted in Japan

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Peer-to-Patent Report June 2008 6

Project Summary

Highlights of Pilot Results

From June 2007-April 2008, Peer-to-Patent has attracted well over 2,000 registered users and 173 items of prior art submitted on 40 applications by participants from 140 countries.

• Public submissions of prior art have been used to reject claims in first office actions coming back from the USPTO. The first 23 office actions issued during the pilot phase showed use of Peer-to-Patent submitted pri-or art in nine rejections, with all but one rejection using non-patent prior art literature. At least 3 additional office actions suggest that, while examiners did not use Peer-to-Patent prior art references in rejecting the application, they were influenced by Peer-to-Patent submissions in their search strategy and understanding of the prior art.

• Of the 419 total prior art references submitted by inventors during the pilot, only 14 percent were non-patent literature. In contrast, 55 percent of prior art references cited by Peer-to-Patent reviewers were non-patent literature.

• Eighty-nine (89) percent of participating patent examiners thought the presentation of prior art that they received from the Peer-to-Patent community was clear and well formatted. Ninety-two (92) percent re-ported that they would welcome examining another application with public participation.

• Seventy-three (73) percent of participating examiners want to see Peer-to-Patent implemented as regular office practice.

• Twenty-one (21) percent of participating examiners stated that prior art submitted by the Peer-to-Patent community was “inaccessible” by the USPTO.

• The USPTO received one third-party prior art submission for every 500 applications published in 2007. Peer-to-Patent reviewers have provided an average of almost 5 prior art references for each application in the pilot.

“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

Service delivery: Patient Opinion

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Citizens monitoring government: farmsubsidy.org

UK, US: citizens providing detailed insight into gov strategies

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 ICT11

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

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“A problem shared is a problem halved

...and a pressure group created”

Dr. Paul Hodgkindirector PatientOpinion.org

“it’s about pressure points, chinks in the armour where

improvements might be possible, whether with the consent of

government or not”

Tom Steinbergdirector mySociety

Before

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Government

citizen

After

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Government

citizen

friends

friends of friends

public

information, trust, attention

A new vision starting to take shape

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To sum up, transparency, which enhances accountability and choice, can be a powerful driver, a catalyst and a flagship for “transformational government”, rather than for “eGovernment” only.

6 What is new? Government transparency is by no means a new issue. It has been the subject of policy action for three centuries, and substantial literature has been written on the topic. The first laws on access to public documents were implemented in 18th century Sweden. Over the last 20 years, most OECD countries have adopted ¨freedom of information laws¨ that allow access to public documents as a fundamental right. “Open government” has been a buzzword for many years, and on a more light-hearted note, it was already a subject of irony in the 80s. For example, the first episode of the BBC comedy “Yes, Minister” was entitled “Open Government”.

However, it seems that policy attention is growing. “OECD countries are moving from a situation where government chose what it revealed, to a principle of all government information being available unless there is a defined public interest in it being withheld” (OECD 2005). In 2007-2008, the Council of Europe is debating a ¨European convention on access to official documents¨.

Why should we take transparency as key driver of government innovation today? There are some specific novelties that make transparency particularly important now.

a) the wide AVAILABILITY OF WEB TOOLS to elaborate on public data makes the impact of transparency much bigger. Just think of free publishing platforms such as blogs, mash-ups like GoogleEarth, visualization tools like ManyEyes, plus all the free and open source software used in web 2.0 projects to, for example, distribute the work of monitoring government activities between many people (crowdsourcing). These tools make public data much more relevant and understandable – and enhance the impact of transparency.

b) the concept of MANY-TO-MANY (Pascu, Osimo et al. 2007) changes the power relationship. Before, transparency was an issue of the individual citizens versus the government, and this limited the impact of the information obtained. Now, the first thing a citizen does when he obtains interesting information out of a Freedom of Information request, is to post it on the web – see, for example, what happened in Italy with the information on the cost of the Tourism portal. The refusal by the Italian government to disclose the information became a boomerang once published on IT blogs,4 and the bureaucratic answer became a monument to inward-looking government. Indeed, even Freedom of Information requests are now monitored by non-governmental services such as whatdotheyknow.com.

4 http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?i=2124310

European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 6 Nº 4 · August 2008 · ISSN: 1988-625X

Web-oriented government architecture

UK Cabinet, “Power of information task force report” Robinson et al.: “Government Data and the Invisible Hand “Gartner: “The Real Future of E-Government: From Joined-Up to Mashed-Up”

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What should government do?

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

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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

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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-doing22

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

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Back-up slides

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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

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

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Web 2.0 is about values, not technology: and it’s the hacker’s values

ValuesUser as producer, Collective intelligence,

Long tail, Perpetual beta, Extreme ease of use

ApplicationsBlog, Wiki, Podcast, RSS, Tagging, Social networks, Search engine, MPOGames

TechnologiesAjax, XML, Open API, Microformats, REST,

Flash/Flex, Peer-to-Peer

Source: Author’s elaboration based on Forrester

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

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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 ICT29

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

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Web 2.0 is a set of values more than a set of technologies

ValuesUser as producer, collective intelligence,

openness “by default”, perpetual beta, ease of use

TechnologyBlogs, Podcast, Wiki, Social Networking, Peer-

to-peer, MPOGames, Mash-up Ajax, Microformats, RSS/XML

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Reminder: citizens and employees do it anyway

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