We have two challenges today. 1. The economy is in a funk and 2. We have too many organizational stovepipes So, why not convince the new administration to setup The Collaboration Fund. The fund would disburse awards to those government employees who were the best collaborators. The backbone of the program would be a government collaboration networking website like govloop, where civil servants could post their problems and others could seek to help them. They could then post the results of their collaboration, and other civil servants could rank them via a star rating process (5 stars means the best collaboration). All levels of government could participate. In other words, the funds could go to a city Mayor, or a DASD depending on how well they collaborated. The current organizational structures would not effect the disbursement. For example, if you had a boss who hated collaboration, he/she would have no impact on the collaboration award. It could come via a check in the mail, or electronic deposit. Private citizens could get into the act for forming groups that create solutions that help us all. Other ideas? What do you think?
Super big fan of this idea. The Collaboration Fund could even be run by a non-profit organization. I think a lot of collaboration is just providing the mechanism to collaborate and the incentive.
Top-down forced collaboration (every agency must use this financial systems) are harder to pull off.
We don’t focus enough on encouraging bottom-up collaboration. I love that idea of posting a problem and encouraging others to help them. I’ve seen that happen on GovLoop and would love to see more of it.
I would love to see more gov’t re-use. Sharing technology code. Sharing gov’t documents (you wrote a strategic plan let me leverage it).
Great idea. You might be interested in two examples from the UK – http://www.builidngdemocracy.co.uk and http://www.showusabetterway.com/
I think the NAPA should take this on as part of their Collaboration Project initiative. Thoughts?