Basis for participative public services
How can IT help enable better, meaningful participation in public services (the bit Beveridge missed out, as Participle puts it)?
And what role should govt play - should it, for example, always look to take over when it sees the private sector providing new, innovative services? Or should it let those services flourish rather than bringing them inside the public sector?
In all this talk of customers, citizens, suspects it seems we've lost sight of the central and active role of the individual in -
- getting educated
- keeping healthy
- contributing to a safe society.
Government sees its role as benign and lawful, Michael Wills said in calling for the #CMRD. The obvious corresponding point is that most people are law-abiding, constructive taxpayers.
Obama on 2009 Christmas bombing attempt: "This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1950576,00.html#ixzz0bdGfO3Ty
Unlike the mainframe computeror the central database, the contempory Internet is inherently collaborative, co-operative and participative. How can public sector IT policy support people's active participation in healthcare, education, welfare and keeping society safe? Services formally co-created, and designed for participation and self-improvement must be a promising alternative. Is this wishy-washy aspirational twaddle, or a real possibility for savings and more effective human services?
The start point here is the work of the Design Council, exemplary service designers such as thinkpublic, the brightest graduates from Central St Martins and the LCC, and Michael Bichard's various communities and proteges.
Illustrating this may require an abundance of pertinent art.
Resources:
Dutch "Burgerlink" e-participation
Us Now (film)
[[http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1950576,00.html Time The Lesson: Passengers Are Not Helpless
Basics
Online services and other services seem to have somehow ended up separate - with online services an additional overhead, with an additional "e-services" helpdesk and so on. Public services need to be delivered smartly, using technology, through a range of channels, of which online is just one.Where next for the direct.gov portal?
Government consists of a wide range of separate organisations, which sometimes overlap and need to work with each other. Many of these brands are well recognised (the NHS for example or HMRC).Back in 1998/1999, a govt report suggested that the public sector should copy the popularity of private sector portals and set up a single portal for govt. After many years, many brand changes and a rumoured �200m+ spent, the current incarnation is direct.gov.
Is this the right approach? Or is it confusing things? More evidence is needed in this area. Do most people find NHS services or tax or welfare services just by using a search engine? Why do some adverts promote the new direct.gov brand and others promote the well-known brand (NHS, or whatever?) How does direct.gov fit with the model of innovation and enabling SMEs to bid for govt business, such as portals (if it is a single monolithic portal?) Where are the open standards and interfaces? More fundamentally, what is the rationale for direct.gov, and where is it headed? At the moment it is an incremental cost, but is it delivering commensurate benefits? If so, what are they?
Citizen centred participation
Online participation needs to be considered in the context of participation as a whole. In the main, for the forseeable future, online participation will be just one part of a wider mix. Particpation here is used to include participation by citizens with government, local government and institutional civic society.Citizen centred participation as the name suggests, is an approach that puts the needs, aspirations and wellbeing of citizens at the heart of participation. This contrasts with a more traditional approach which put the needs of organisations at the centre, often treated them as paramount, and sometimes as the only needs worthy of consideration.
Citizen centred participation in policy making opens up, to citizen involvement, both
* the design, practice and assessment of participation processes themselves, as well as enabling citizens to influence both
* the broad direction and the detail of policy.
* the broad direction and the detail of policy.
Open design specifically includes
* the scope and context of involvement processes
* any stages or processes necessary to synthesize participation responses
* any stages or processes necessary to synthesize participation responses
and where necessary
* conflict resolution processes
Citizen centred participation specifically involves citizens in building communities of interest relevant to policy making.
It also gives citizens a primary role in evaluating the involvement processes themselves. The test for success is no longer defined in terms of what success might mean for an organisation, but what success means to the citizens involved.
Such an approach both relies on, but also builds on transparency and open government. For example if there are reasons why organisational interests need to be given weight in the design of a participation process, then these reasons should be capable of standing up to public scrutiny.
The ethos underlying citizen centred participation is that of government as the enabler of the wellbeing of us all. Such a goal transcends the narrower focus of organisational self interest.
Opportunities for involvement are designed to be open to all interested parties, not just a favoured few. Opportunities for involvement recognise and value citizens being proactive not just reactive. Government recognises that some opportunities for involvement will be citizen-created and citizen-organised. Not only does government support and encourage such intitiatives but is also open to the idea of fully and appropriately engaging within them.
Citizens are enabled to influence policy in both direct and more subtle ways.
Participation as a whole tends to become an ongoing process, or at least a process which is always open. Online records are permanently open and kept permanently. Fully open and complete online records of involvement and influence, help provide recognition, reward, respect, trust, and, last but not least, learning and not having to keep reinventing the wheel. Government, along with and within communities of interest involved, learns to become a learning community in its fullest sense.
Link to refs
Back to CTPR Ideal Government IT Strategy home page
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