Can Social, Participatory Gov 2.0 Work?

The headliner at last week's NASCIO conference was federal CIO Vivek Kundra. But one of the more interesting presentations during the conference was Dr. Beth Noveck's speech on what the White House is doing to turn social networking tools into an outcome-oriented platform for the Obama administration.

Noveck is the deputy director for Open Government within the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Her efforts stem from President Barack Obama's memo issued on the first day of his administration calling for more transparency in government. But promoting transparency is proving harder than it seems.

Noveck got right to one of the points that has troubled me a lot about social networks as tools for civic engagement: they create a lot of "noise" but don't necessarily lead to collaborative ways to solve government's myriad problems.

"We see examples of civic participation, but it's divorced from government itself," she said. "We see example of how government responds to complaints...but they don't engage people in the process, nor do they track progress."

In other words, the marriage of social networks and government has been pretty much a one-way street so far. Lots of "noise" coming in, but very little in the way of collaborative solutions, based on citizen participation, coming out.

Noveck mentioned several efforts underway to resolve this new conundrum, including Harvard University Group Brain Project and the U.S. Patent Office's Peer-to-Patent Project, which is designed to reduce the enormous backlog of patent reviews that is costing the government huge sums in litigation costs. The Peer-to Patent project is attempting to link volunteer scientists, using social networking tools, with patents under review to speed up the application process.

Noveck has a sterling resume for leading the the trasparency program at the White House. She is the director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and a recognized expert on the impact of information on public institutions; she has taught courses on e-government and has just authored a forthcoming book, called "Wiki Government".

She spoke forcefully about how collaborative efforts have the benefit of generating new solutions and ideas that would never be found by a single person, and that networks of problem solvers can mobilize action. Most importantly, she said "collaborative innovations drive performance."

But she recognizes that government's current approach to developing feedback mechanisms via social networks aren't well managed in terms of converting citizen input into outcomes.

Meanwhile, as government ramps up its use of social networks sites, privacy groups are speaking out with growing concern about government and social networking, especially in regards to the personal information it will get access to as it tries to create greater transparency. The charge towards Gov 2.0 is in danger of falling off the tracks if done incorrectly.

Noveck believes it can be done correctly and that CIOs must play a major role in helping their government embrace social networks for outcomes. Here are my (somewhat raw) notes from her multi-point principles on creating greater transparency without all the noise:

• Ask the right questions.
• Ask the right people: make sure to create opp for the right people to participate. (examples: CityScan, Peer to Patent)
• Design process for desired end: Do you want a Wiki style or a Digg-style design for collaboration?
• Design for groups. When you engage people as individuals you get individual responses. Instead create processes that use the wisdom of the crowd. Use the community to moderate, thereby increases efficacy of democracy.
• Use the screen: Mashups that create meaningful and powerful. Make data real and show people they are part of the process.
• Roles and tasks.  If we show people what the job is we want them to do, you can get people to self select (rather than toss up any idea for consideration).
• Reputation: there are tools for ranking ideas up and down. They help manage large scale influxes of information. These tools can turn feedback into something manageable.
• Make policies rather than websites. Example: Getting feedback from employees.  TSA has one. State Dept has one. Have to create some kind of feedback loop, otherwise it goes to waste. Need a process to manage feedback. Obama campaign had policy networks in moderated listservs. You need to channel expertise so it can be used and useful.
• Pilot new ideas. NASA's XPRIZE program; Get people to submit innovation that exceeds the cost for the prize. Another example is Kundra's "Apps for democracy" project.
• Focus on Outcomes: don't spend too much time measuring the inputs. Need to focus on what to achieve.  You have to rethink transparency and collaboration to what end. What does better performance actually mean?

In closing Noveck said that it's up to public CIOs to bring their perspective to this unfolding process. "We need common platforms," she said. "We need CIOs to use their bully pulpit to push innovation to overcome resistance to experimentation while keeping in mind [public sector] obligations. We need to...champion the people are successful and innovative in engaging citizens."

Ok public CIOs. Your job continues to grow in importance as government transforms itself.