I am drafting the report of the eups20 workshop. I would like to ask for your help.
First, I started drafting a list of differences which try to outline the gap between government and web2 initiatives. It’s just an initial list (I could post it only as a jpeg, sorry, original is here)
What do you think?
Also, for drafting the report, it would be great if you could add interesting quotes from the workhop in this file . Maybe you can get an inspiration from the videos here.
Many thanks!
Policy and technology: a "longue durée" view 
May 21, 2009 at 6:18 am
I miss the different approach towards the citizen. While GovIT initiatives are user-centric (all for the citizen without the citizen), grasssroot web 2.0 initiatives are user-driven (for the citizen by the citizen)
May 21, 2009 at 6:21 am
Another remark. I don´t think the comparison must be established between “Aim for efficiency” vs “Aim for transparency”. Instead of “transparency” I would use “empowerment”
May 25, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Thannks “Andres”, good points!
May 25, 2009 at 5:23 pm
What about “run by professionals” vs. “run by communities of professionals and amateurs”?
Another way to state the same is
“Clear division between service builders and service users” vs. “builders use the service they build, users contribute to its development”
Also
“Filter, then maybe publish” vs. “Publish, then filter”
June 4, 2009 at 9:48 am
I am not entirely clear about what you are comparing. Do bottom-up initiatives conme from employees, from the public at large or both? And are you referring to “web 2.0 in government” or more in general?
Some of the categories look pretty limiting to me (e.g. developed in-house may split into three or four different categories), some statements a bit questionable (“failure is normal”) and some a bit simplistic (small or no investment in tech… what about the TCO? and the cost of failures that you mention above?).
I wonder whether you are free to say whatever you like or need to reflect what people said at the workshop, in which case expectations need to be set a bit lower.
June 4, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Thanks Andrea for constructive criticisms. Blog entries are embryonic content, a bit cryptic and not fully fleshed out. I like to use the blog to share ideas in beta phase – and the mistakes are all mine while good ideas come from the workshop!
As per the post, this is a tentative list which aims at spelling out the key difference between the projects presented at the workshop, such as those of MySociety.org, and traditional government IT project, e.g. in the field of e-democracy. I am first making full list, then I will dig down in the specifics.
Regarding your specific observation, I think some important points are there:
– in-house: I mean today you need internal knowledge of what you can do with IT creatively. With one internal developer you can do more than with 1M Euro to procure. This is true for government as well as for civil society organisations
– failure: this is a key point, it’s the publish-then-filter approach of Clay Shirky applied to collective issues. It’s a common mantra of web2.0: fail fast
– small investment in tech: this is also a common issue coming out of the workshop, all these projects spend around 10/20K euros in hw and sw and most in human ressources to develop and maintain content – or often, to obtain and clean up government data.
I will flesh these points out better in the report anyway. I guess I use the publish-and-filter approach also in my blog!
Thanks again for stopping by
June 4, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I know this table is in beta but let me share some thoughts with second some of the things Andrea posted.
First, you might want to differentiate between gov IT initiatives and the general characteristics of bureaucracy. IN addition, the left hand side could be called “Web 2.0 type gov IT initatives”.
Second, some specific comments. What are you refering to? e.g. planned ex-ante…
Time: Long vs short…this is not true. This solely depends on the IT gov initatives. Just think of the German “cash for clunkers” solution. In addition, think of SIS II. That thing is a little more complex and bigger to be created on the fly and even though I like the Gov 2.0 idea I don’t think its fully applicable in a high security IT gov project.
Technology centred vs. Needs: Not fully true on gov side. They arise from a need in politics/policy and many times needs of end-users are considered these days. Provocative – may be a good think – but the typical stereotype.
Outsourced – in-house…Rephrase. Misleading. Sidenote. Certain gov agencies develop inhouse solutions. Moreover, an open source approach is “crowdsourced”or “outsourced” but definitely not in-house with a small team.
Results: Why are results unclear in government. You might want to be more specific again. (categories on the side might help: e.g. transparency of results)
Aim…web 2.0 have different goals or be very unclear – efficiency could be a goal
User involvement…in gov this depends on the project. Furthermore, you need to define user involvement. Are we talking about preferences? co-production? usability studies?….
June 4, 2009 at 5:08 pm
This is the beauty of lists, it makes debate so much easier! Thanks Alexander.
Of course this is a scheme and you should treat it as such. So don’t say “not fully true”. By definition a list or a scheme is a simplification.
On the title, I agree.
On planned ex-ante, I refer to typical e-government projects, with detailed WBS, gantt, pertt, top-notch risk management approach, and delivering little results, late. I always say that Tom Steinberg told me their difference with traditional e-democracy projects is flexibility. Most changes happen after the beta release. Lean software development: release often.
Timewise, most government projects last 3 years. I’m not saying this is bad in itself: it is well necessary in some contexts.
Tech-centred: of course it’s a stereotype but I disagree this is no longer the case. And the user-centric bar is being set higher: we live in the age of the iPhone!
Outsourced-in house: I disagree but it’s clear it needs to be better fleshed out.
Results: I agree this is weak. I compare the high transparency of peertopatent with non-transparent e-gov projects. But there are plenty of counter-examples.
So I fully understand your points, but I still have the perception that most of e-government investment in Europe falls in the left category. Of course there are good, excellent, flagship projects. But typical government projects, more or less, share most of these points.
Also I understand this is more the stereotype from the hackers point of view. In fact, in the report it is presented as the reason for the workshop, not as the results.
Yet the most important point is not draw a conclusion, but to qualify our statements. And this post proved to be very useful in spelling out some key concepts. THANKS!!!
November 4, 2019 at 1:08 am
A fascinating discussion is definitely worth comment. I think that you need to publish more
about this subject, it might not be a taboo matter but usually
folks don’t speak about such issues. To the next!
Many thanks!!