Government 2.0 meets the wall

Now; do they smash it, climb it or just stare at the damn thing?

I have been relatively silent, in this space, on Government 2.0 over the past few months. Not because there haven't been some important things going on, but because I came back from the September summit with a lot to think on. I also wanted to see how time and the messy business of implementing those ideas would change the discussion. Lastly, I wanted to see what lessons the ongoing national political battles might offer on the obstacles facing broader reforms.

The Gov 2.0 event in Los Angeles wrapped last month. In its wake there have come the usual statements about the importance of "dialogue" and "the people." However, some interesting debates have also emerged, specifically around the role of the public in all this.

Andrea DiMaio has observed, in an excellent post, that the debates may signal Gov 2.0's descent into the "trough of disillusionment" possibly located next to the hangover of regret or the glass of water and two Ibuprofen of recovery. While I think Mark Drapeau was making a more narrow point (jargon's going to happen and might not always be a bad thing), the title, along with some of the pithier passages certainly hit a nerve, and it's provoked a larger discussion.

Many Gov 2.0 advocates, at least as I saw it, did see transparency as a holy grail capable of amazing restorative powers. With the reactions to Drapeau's question and the underwhelming response to the government's first data surge, and the suggestion that maybe the American people are just short on ideas. That illusion seems to be breaking. Improving government, as I've said here before, requires not just greater transparency but accessible political power for people — especially those who aren't affluent or well-connected — to make use of all that shiny information and for politicians to care about it.

So, with due respect to DiMaio, I don't see this as a trough. It's a wall. A big, old, hole-riddled, yet seemingly insurmountable wall. The question, then, is what's created this wall, and what to do about it.

True to the corporate backgrounds of many Gov 2.0 advocates, there are now suggestions that a PR campaign or a slick logo may do the trick. 

No. What Gov 2.0 needs is not more marketing. To overcome the wall, it needs to take a page from politics. It needs a base. Now.

It's worth defining what exactly created this wall that's now leading to so much frustration and, uh, troughing.

The first part of the wall are some blinders on the part of the Gov 2.0 crowd. These apply to government and technologists alike, but it's worth focusing on the latter for a moment. 

A lot of the now-shaken faith in transparency evolves from the technologist roots in open source, an admirable movement that doesn't always translate well to areas outside of programming and business. When dealing, for example, with developing an operating system, it's clear fairly quickly if it works effectively or not and open-source methods clearly make it easier to detect and fix problems.

This background is also accompanied by another faith: that of the marketplace. After all, if one program or service works poorly, people will switch to another that better suits their needs. 

From this background, many of the technologists exhibit both a rebel's belief in tearing down barriers and a business person's comfort in, well, business. This is sometimes an excellent combination, but it also leads to odd incidents like Gov 2.0 leaders tweeting about stopping "big business" (rightly, I should add) from trying to push through stranglingly restrictive intellectual property rules, while their conferences are sponsored by mom-and-pop firms like Microsoft.

However, open-source methods don't always translate so easily into the political realm (this post on the limits of political crowdsourcing is a must-read). Unlike the market place, you can't simply switch between government agencies. Transparency by itself doesn't have quite the same magnifying effect it does when handling technical matters.

Hence much of the disappointment. Despite the surge of information, politics and governance (and again, the two are inseparable) aren't software. So the technologists are staring at the wall, wondering why it's not crumbling, why the public isn't rushing in to make the world a better place. So the meme then arises that perhaps it's the public's fault, and Gov 2.0 is something better developed by experts, kept away until the masses can benefit from it, but not fuck it up (there's some messed-up assumptions there, but let's leave them be for today).

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the wall, much of the public doesn't really get what it's all about. A good example would be the exultations about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer meeting with President Obama. By contrast, much of the public just sees more rich people meeting with the President. Particularly acute members of the public might see, for example, Microsoft dodging its tax bills to cash-strapped Washington state and shutting down whistleblowers while it talks the talk about representative governance. They might then doubt if what it's pushing will do them an ounce of good (I know I'm hitting Microsoft hard here, but they're far from the only Gov 2.0 involved company that fits this pattern). 

Jargon may be, as Drapeau writes, inevitable, but with a dearth of able translators connected to other communities, Gov 2.0 all too often comes off as the inscrutable pet project of the elite. It will take more than a PR campaign to fix that.

The public sees, every day, brutal political fights in which it is made crystal clear that the opinions of millions, right or wrong, lack the clout of one entrenched Senator. Why bother commenting if it will be ignored, even if thousands are saying the same thing? Why bother putting forward an idea when you have little reason to believe any new ones will be implemented?

While some good tools are being developed (initiatives like this deserve a post of their own soon), transparency itself isn't enough. Government agencies may have increasing available data, but that doesn't always mean citizens can act on it. After all, transparency is, in many ways, already greater than years past. With five minutes in front of a computer I can access a degree of information about local, state or federal government that would have stunned my parent's generation.

Yet I've seen more than one person say pretty much the following after they get data from an agency: "Well shit, this is some great information, but my water's still contaminated, the bureaucrats spew jargon about process stages and nothing happens."

Transparency has to compel action. It does not do that by itself. The trappings of transparency (comment processes, info dumps) can in fact act to hide deeper problems, unless political pressure insures the changes are more than skin-deep and reforms are actually implemented.

The wall Gov 2.0 is facing right now seems to come from a lack of connection. Its current "base" is composed of technologists, some associated businesses and a few allies in government agencies. Beyond that bubble, it doesn't have a huge sway. Its debates are largely not part of the public dialogue.

The way to change that, to help the Gov 2.0 communities and the public, to both their benefit, is to build a political base behind transparency (and acting on it). The best way to do that might be to shift the focus from large government agencies, important as those are) to forming connections with community groups and political activists. More focus should be given to local projects in populations and areas. Many activists don't deal with politics 24/7 — they're too busy working their day jobs — and often have limited resources that leave them unable to take full advantage of the benefits of new technology. It would be fascinating to see some Gov 2.0 proponents pick an area or population in particularly dire straits and, collaborating with those who have faced such dangers for years, hit its problems with every improved governing and organizing idea they could muster.

At the same time, alliances with more activists and political organizations provide Gov 2.0 proponents with better connections to established networks of popular support and pressure, which can then be used helping to compel the adoption of better practices when they hit a roadblock. Such an endeavor would also help Gov 2.0 get out of its own bubble, giving it more exposure to ground-level political needs from parts of the population that usually aren't part of this discussion (and so could use better governance most).

There's some real opportunities here, as transparency sells well — few politicians are going to stand up and say they want government to be more closed — and so ideally it should be possible to gain allies on both sides of today's political issues. That's important, as true victory in politics occurs not when an idea is adopted by the side with the most power, but when all sides adopt it as consensus.

If Gov 2.0 pursues the current track, it will mostly provide fancier tools to do the same old things. In a decade bureaucrats will be sitting around the office, remembering Gov 2.0 as that time they went to a bunch of conferences, started using cloud computing and some tech companies made a ton of money.

The wall will have a fresh coat of paint, and the average citizen will be no better off than before.

Comments

[Adriel Hampton]

This is a great critique and call for action. However, I'm pretty sure that transparency is not the base for an effective Gov 2.0 movement (for some of the same reasons you articulate). Why vote on a Web page when you can't change anything even with the ballot box? Traditional politics is not the answer, either. The power of Gov 2.0 is to adapt to a new world of radical disintermediation and citizen empowerment. Citizen Empowerment - that must be the foundation of the movement. I've beaten myself bloody against that wall - enough of us, we will tear it down.

[Megan Eskey]

There is no wall..

[David Forbes]

Adriel: Thank you for the good words. I think transparency is an essential part of citizen empowerment along with, well, power (via better organizing).

I'd like to hear more of what you mean by "radical disintermediation" because partly I see the problem as a lack of structures and mediators to help all this new potential converge into a better political process for the average citizen.

But yes, enough of us realizing there's a wall and trying to tear it down, and we might see a better future out of this yet.

Megan: Like "There is no spoon?" If that's a Zen call to see past current difficulties, I agree. If it's an assessment of the situation I've outlined, well, the title speaks for itself, and I disagree. ;-)