Envisioning a fully web enabled government department/agency
Fellow Govloop'rs,
I need your help. I've been asked to articulate a vision of what a truly web enabled government agency looks like. It is in an incredibly broad and daunting task. I will not get into all of the mundane details about the agency I work for, they are largely irrelevant.
What I wanted to do was tap into the wisdom of the crowd - your wisdom - and see what you thought. I would encourage you to be as creative as possible. Generally speaking I would ask you to organize your thoughts around the following 5 themes:
Alternatively, if you have links to interesting resources I would love to see them.
Cheers, and thanks.
Nick
I need your help. I've been asked to articulate a vision of what a truly web enabled government agency looks like. It is in an incredibly broad and daunting task. I will not get into all of the mundane details about the agency I work for, they are largely irrelevant.
What I wanted to do was tap into the wisdom of the crowd - your wisdom - and see what you thought. I would encourage you to be as creative as possible. Generally speaking I would ask you to organize your thoughts around the following 5 themes:
- improved efficiency
- more effective public services
- more accessible public services
- greater citizen participation
- improved transparency and accountability
Alternatively, if you have links to interesting resources I would love to see them.
Cheers, and thanks.
Nick
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by GovLoop on -
Hmm...very daunting...let me think.
I think a lot of it revolves around multiple screens - both computer and mobile.
And multimedia - text, email, video, audio, podcasts, blogs, etc...
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Permalink Reply by Adrian Hall on -
I am with Steve 100%. However, government depts/agencies need to have a flexible governance model and it should be driven bottom-up.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Mosebach on -
Whatever is decided on should have the ability to be easily explained to citizens (what they can now do and why they should know about it). It should also be able to be passed down from the Federal level to state and local governments.
One simple idea would be to add RSS feeds to every government page. Let's say that the Census has population data that it updates frequently (this is just a hypothetical) and a certain business can benefit from knowing about the changes. Instead of having to check back on that page every few days to find updates to it, they can just check the feed along with their normal blogs w/ a RSS feed reader (like Google Reader). Just a thought.
A long-term goal would be to have more government meetings that are open to the public online w/ video. It would help with accountability if people knew that they were on camera and would allow for citizens to actively engage in what is taking place. Elected officials can ask for input/ideas in the meeting. Crowd-sourcing at a live level. This would also enable people who can't make the meeting to be up to speed on what actually happened. Instead of relying on minutes and what other people said happened in the meeting, they can see an unbiased account of what actually happened and they can make up their own mind (instead of relying on someone's biased opinion of what happened).
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Permalink Reply by alex stobart on -
Nick,
First of all, will there be government agencies in the future as we know them now ? I do not think so.
People in other countries are designing around people, processes and technology. The blue sky thinkers will have no paper, as few humans as possible, businesses built around processes and outcomes, and maximum semantics, logic driven decision making, collaboration etc...
They will not look like what we know today
If you replace current poor performance, with poor performance on the web, your department is still poor.
There might be a hub for transactions - all done as if we were booking an air-line ticket now. There might be a hub for people - based on Linkedin or ning. There might be cross-cutting stuff based on basecamp. wikipedia and crowd sourcing might play a role somewhere.
Fulfilment of transactions will be internet forms,
Improved efficiency - web based, fewest clicks possible for transactions
Who to build the design - today's 15 to 25 year olds and the 60 to 80 year olds. People in the middle will choose either of the two ends. The young and old can learn from one another.
Accessible - this will be VRM and the mobile phone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_Relationship_Management
Citizen involvement - this will be VRM and the citizen telling government, and anyone else, what they want them to know, when and why.
Government wastes a ton of money trying to second-guess the citizen, and serve them all the same. The public good is a waste, because lots of people don't take what has been built for them. Go for self-selection using VRM.
Transparency and accountability - completely impossible to achieve in a policy area ( we are talking politics, lobbying and national security ). Shades may be possible elsewhere, but humans love to hide.
Links - see what they are doing in Harvard
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEl3N2FxeHZFSHhuVTl...
I would tell you what they are doing in other countries but I cant.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Brantley on
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Permalink Reply by Bill Brantley on
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Here's another resource - http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/ATL%20Docs/Mar-Apr10/modigliani_mar-apr...
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Permalink Reply by Sterling Whitehead on -
Radical vision: 80% telework, 20% in office. (Office is leased and facetime is only done to develop and maintain relationships).
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Permalink Reply by Bill Bott on -
My caution is to not lose the customer focus in a rush to push technology. Where it can open access and move folks online vs inline - it doesn't make a lot of sense to do in areas where our customers have trouble keeping the heat on, let alone getting access...
That said - agencies that know their customers and use web technology where it is appropriate - I've seen it cut rework by autofilling forms, cut line time by letting people do things from home, and cut costs as the technology takes care of some of the manual processing.
Without the customer focus, we run the risk of automating things that just don't make a difference.
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Permalink Reply by Sterling Whitehead on
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My question is this:
in what agencies and general work areas can workers be 80% telework, 20% office without significantly decreasing the quality and/or quantity of results produced?.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Bott on
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Maybe procurement? They can do a lot of the bid reviews and research from anywhere...
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Permalink Reply by Sterling Whitehead on
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I'd be interested in this since I'm in that general field. Know anyone whose office would be open to it? (My contracts office is moving in that direction).
What customer service or call service agencies could implement this?
I also think legal may be able to implement this to an extent.
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