Can greater collaboration improve the state of e-government?

This is certainly the goal of movers and shakers in this space, as explored in FastForward’s recent blog-hosted Webcast with Andrew Rasiej of the Personal Democracy Forum and Beth Simone Noveck, US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government.  Greater collaborative and social networking services present new opportunities to not only open up government and make it more accessible, but also facilitate greater information sharing for addressing complex issues.

But we still have a way to go, as McKinsey and Company recently spelled out in a report that looked at the state of progress of e-government initiatives. McKinsey found that despite spending enormous amounts on Web-based initiatives, government agencies often fail to meet users’ needs online.

The report’s authors, Jason Baumgarten and Michael Chui, say that to succeed, e-government needs new governance models, smarter Web investment, and greater user participation.

There have been some impressive benefits seen from the early days of e-government in terms of services such as being able to file taxes electronically, responding to RFPs, or managing benefits online. But there has not been notable progress beyond these early efficiencies. “Many new e-government initiatives have neither generated the anticipated interest among users nor enabled clear gains in operational efficiency,” the report states.

Baumgarten and Chui recommend greater efforts in terms of adoption of new tools and methodologies, such as blogs, wikis, and social networking or collaborative platforms. In addition, government agencies need to develop capabilities in critical areas such as marketing, usability, Web analytics, and customer insights. Agencies need to proactively get citizens, businesses, and other agencies involved in contributing or creating applications and content.

Where can a well-governed highly collaborative e-government lead us beyond online drivers’ license registrations?  Opening up innovation to outside sources is a powerful tool. For example, the District of Columbia municipal government staged an “Apps for Democracy” contest to encourage developers to create applications that would give residents access to data such as crime reports and pothole repair schedules. Forty-seven applications were created in 30 days. McKinsey notes that “hiring contract developers would have cost approximately $2.6 million, whereas the cost of running the contest was a mere $50,000.”