I agree a one-size-fits-all approach will never fit for the organization as complex with as many diverse interests as any level of government.

I’m trying to put some of my thoughts together concerning Government 2.0 at the following,
http://innovationsinpublicsector.blogspot.com/2008/06/online-collaboration-making-first-move.html

Feel free to post any comments or insights would be welcome.

It’s a pity, really … and for those of us who have been around organizations, especially large ones like the gov’t, it’s unfortunately all too predictable.

In a sense you can’t blame a substantial aspect of their approach, because some kinds of “innovation” might be very counter-productive to providing effective government services.

On the other hand, in societies where the complexity of providing services to citizens and constituents of all types is increasing, the government needs all the pertinent, useful and actionable knowledge that distributed social computing, less rigid structures and more open organizational culture(s) could provide them (the various depts).

The Webby world will affect gov’t services and government work just as much as it affects business or media or entertainment .. and trying to manage it and control using the mindsets and processes of the current decision-making and management frameworks is likely to be increasingly ineffective.

I’m guessing this “integrated” system will be problematic. To be fair, I think we could see how using social computing to work with the appropriate aspects of existing service processes and compliance requirements (I use the word “service” because the gov’t isn’t really a business and I’ve never agreed with the wholesale businessification of gov’t services … some yes, for the right reasons .. all just because it’s supposed to be more efficient, no).

However, what I think will lead to all sorts of problems and spending more time and $$$ training people is the phrase “within the context of an organization’s broader ECM strategy“. In other words, I think it’s an attitude / org culture type of thing, and I don’t think this will help change things much for the better.

tell you what .. let’s keep an eye peeled for some one of the big-league business journals (like HBR or Sloan Mgt Review) or a firm like Forrester or KPMG or Deloitte to write something in the next 2 – 3 years about how this kind of approach doesn’t work, for some of the reasons expressed above in the comments and post.

If we find one, we’ll find somewhere to have a virtual beer

“Open Text’s plans to help organizations take full advantage of social collaboration tools, such as wikis, forums, blogs, tagging, communities and real-time chat, while managing related content within the context of an organization’s broader ECM strategy, including business processes and compliance initiatives.”

- http://www.opentext.com/blogs/ecm_briefs/2008/03/ecm_brief_the_time_is_right_fo.html

But it’s typical of a government approach to be concerned about standardization, stability etc. However, it’s also easy to argue that it’s way to soon to define a “2.0″ approach to a wide range of different types of work, information flows, service-to-citizens and so on. And that said .. one of the major problems facing government (IMHO is the relative rigidity of the way(s) it defines, designs and structures work.

So, all things considered .. it probably won’t change things much. As I said in the post, there’s likely to be lots of “that goes in this category” and “this goes in that category”, and “these are the 2.0 tools you must (or if they are being flexible, are recommended) use …

I suspect that this decision will go down into the annals of another wrong-headed government decision ..

I’ve been doing a number of presentations to various levels of government, (mostly Ontario provincial) relating to government 2.0, and I have been keen to stress that starting with a number of tightly scoped, incubation style prototypes is the way to go.

Focus on a couple of “lab experiments” with some eager adopters and focused on creativity, and learning by doing, there is a lot to figure out concerning government and Web 2.0 solutions before widespread adoption of any technology should be considered.

Notwithstanding the fact that no “one” solution is going to be an answer to Web 2.0, there’s just too many different types of needs and requirements out there…

Jeff Anderson

The first line of the newspaper article states:

“The Canadian government is getting a Web 2.0 upgrade”.

I may be mistaken, but I think that the Open Text deal is about providing Canadian government departments with access to the Open Text collaboration platform which has Web 2.0 tools and capabilities embedded in it.

and,… a 7-year contract? Oi. That is an eternity^2 in the so called “web 2.0″ world.

On three occasions the solution I proposed was based on Drupal, meaning no license fees, quick set up and a broad tech community to support it. The Drupal solution was only a fraction of the cost of the in-place proprietary, monolithic platform.