What are open gov behaviors and mental models in practice? (RE: April OGD Workshop @ USDA)
This question was submitted by one of the workshop participants:
My personal belief about Open Government with its components of transparency, participation and collaboration is that it can be a major change in the manner of governing, doing business and operating an organization. I have certainly seen this in terms of similar initiatives in the private sector and in pockets of the Federal Government. I encountered the potential extensive nature of the change involved in doing work to fulfill Vice President Gore’s goals of re-inventing government.
So, here’s my overall question:
How do we facilitate a change from existing behavior and culture to open government?
Are people making a connection between actions to engage and be open with the citizens and internal openness, participation and collaboration within their organizations?
In addition to requirements of making data available to the public, gaining the input of the public and carrying out related technology initiatives, do people understand the possible internal changes required?
These internal changes can include: Attitudes, behaviors, mental models, assumptions about governing and operating an organization, norms, management styles, organizational processes – explicit and implicit, modes of communication – formal and informal and general work habits. They changes can also require flexibility in personalities or generational outlook. Some of these factors are part of what we call the organizational culture.
Do you share my belief about the extensive nature of change that may be required? Do you see this belief being held at the various levels of government? If not, what is necessary to help people make this connection?
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Here are other questions for the April 28th Open Government Directive Workshop at the USDA:
(Feel free to add a question to this list by emailing info[at]opengovplaybook[dot]org; we'll post all questions anonymously.)Tags: OGD, gov, government, open, opengov
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bill Brantley on -
I did my doctoral research on questions similar to this question. In my research, I examined the link between the communication of a change vision (a special form of mental model) and organizational alignment to determine what constitutes effective communication in bringing about organizational change. I developed a case study of the merger of a city archives and a county archives into a single metropolitan agency.
Listed below are findings that might prove especially relevant to the questions:
1) There are two change visions: an internal change vision and an external change vision. The external change vision in this case is the one that is promoted from the Obama administration to the general public. This external change vision explains the benefits of open government and attempts to build support with the external stakeholders of the government agencies. The external change vision is detailed and extensively communicated through a wide range of communication methods.
In contrast, the internal change vision is the vision that is communicated to the employees of the affected agencies. This vision is often lacking in detail and is not as well-communicated as the external change vision. In many cases, there is little or no effort to gain support of the internal change vision. The internal change vision is imposed from the top-down with no input from the rank-and-file employees. There may be some discussion of the benefits from adopting the internal change vision but the main message is that resisting the internal change vision will harm or terminate the employee’s job.
2) Examples of poorly communicating organizational change to employees is to give little opportunity for feedback and abundant use of clichés. In the case that I studied, the employees attended mass meetings with the government merger team but did not receive specific answers to their questions. There was an intranet but none of the communications encouraged feedback to the announcements from the change team.
Clichés and “management speak” are especially pernicious because employees – already concerned about the organizational change – will interpret clichés and management speak in the most negative ways. In my case study, the change team talked about addressing the “lowest hanging fruit” first. The archives employees took this to mean that the less-essential, non-revenue producing agencies will be either shut down or drastically downsized. This was never said by the change team but the adverse perception was widely communicated among many of the employees.
3) The organizational change was still successful despite the poor communication of the vague internal change vision. I believe that this was the result of two factors. First, the professionals of the archives agencies have a mental model of how a professional archive should work and they used this mental model to fill in the gaps of the internal change vision. Second, there was a “change vanguard” or a group of employees who perceived the need for organizational change and took advantage of the vacuum created by the vague internal change vision to implement changes they wanted.
Kelman (2005) believes that it is a myth that people are resistant to change. Front-line employees are most familiar with the shortcomings of the organization and would like to change processes and operations but feel they don’t have the power to initiate the change. Once a leader signals their support for the change, the vanguard is emboldened enough to sustain the change effort. The change vanguard can be a great source of innovative ideas and help to motivate the rest of the organizational members in support of the change vision.
Thus, for OpenGov to be successful, government change agents should become aware that there is more than one change vision and that they need to spend just as much effort on the internal change vision as they do on the external change vision. Change agents should also realize the existence of change vanguards and work to recruit them into the change effort to help increase the possibility of success of change efforts. Collaboration, openness, and transparency in affecting organizational change in the government agencies will bring about the organizational alignment needed for OpenGov.
References:
Brantley, W.A. (2009). The effect of mental models on creating organizational alignment around a change vision (Doctoral Dissertation). Available from Dissertations and Theses Database (UMI).
Kelman, S. (2005). Unleashing change: A study of organizational renewal in government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
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