I posted yesterday about my remarks to the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Malmo, Sweden.
The first wave of democracy established elected and accountable institutions of governance, but with a weak public mandate and an inert citizenry. Citizens listened to speeches, debates, and television ads. They gave money and voted. But when it came to having input into policy and real decisions, citizens were relegated to the sidelines.
Today’s democracy should be characterized by strong representation and a new culture of public deliberation built on active citizenship. This is appropriate for the new world and a new generation of digital natives that I call the Net Generation.
Aged 13-30, the Net Generation are the children of the post WWII generation, and are the first generation to come of age in the digital era. These young people expect to collaborate with everyone – including politicians. They want to be involved directly: to interact with them, contribute ideas and scrutinize their actions, not just during elections but as they govern. And they will insist on integrity from politicians; they will know very quickly if a politician says one thing and does another.
We need major initiatives to re-invigorate democracy. For example,
- As a step towards Democracy 2.0, each government leader should create bold citizen engagement initiatives, beginning with a three-day ‘citizen jam’. All citizens would be invited to join an online discussion of an important issue. This will lead to other programs to engage citizens in solving important issues such as the economic crisis, climate change, corruption, or other issues on the global agenda. This is not direct democracy: it is about a new model of citizen engagement, policy development, collaboration, mobilization and learning.
- A Digital Marshall Plan. World leaders should launch a global initiative to take broadband to every corner of the world. This infrastructure is essential to collaborative innovation and the new business models required for economic development. It is also essential to modern government and the new models of democracy. It would give us better warning systems for problems in the global economy, and would enable new forms of global cooperation and governance. The costs would pale in terms of the benefits.
Absolutely! The formative years of most current politicians preceded the participatory digital environment, so they often under-estimate the capacity and appetite of people for contributing to the debates that govern society. At the same time expert knowledge has occupied a privileged position in bureaucracies for many decades.
We need to be driving change in this area, fast, right now. It is imperative that government (both politicians and bureaucrats) change their model of engagement with citizens – and increase the range of modes for this engagement.
The capacities and tools for citizen engagement are widespreading right now*
Going forward expert knowledge will remain vitally important, but can now be used together with socially agglomerated knowledge to provide a much richer foundation for decision-making. Governments need to change their mindset from consultation to conversation – and beyond this, they need to rethink who has to initiate and organise the conversations. As well as setting up open discussion places and inviting citizens to come to them, governments can also go to where citizens are having these conversations for themselves and join in as participants – not as convenors or controllers.
And yes – integrity will become crucial. Alongside the now familiar notions of personal integrity and corporate integrity, we will need a third dimension of integrity – “integrity of practice”, where there is no separation between what is done, why it is done and how it is done – a complete integration of process, principles and purpose. Engaging with citizens in ways that claim, but do not allow full participation will no longer cut the mustard.
The Secondary Futures project (the New Zealand arm of the OEDC Future of Schooling initiative) was an experiment in a different way for government to engage citizens.. A reflection on some of the project practices and lessons in the paper “A Question of Voice” at http://www.secondaryfutures.co.nz/pdfs/AQuestio…
Although the nationwide conversation was focussed on the future of Secondary Education, the model could be used for engagement on any issue – and be integrated into the social media tools that appeared during the lifetime of the project.
N.B. The project has ended: the website is still up but the e-mail contacts are no longer connected.)
*The use of ‘widespreading’ as a verb is deliberate – to describe the perfusion of change through systems and societies when it’s gone beyond the early adopters, but is not yet ubiquitous.
Absolutely! The formative years of most current politicians preceded the participatory digital environment, so they often under-estimate the capacity and appetite of people for contributing to the debates that govern society. At the same time expert knowledge has occupied a privileged position in bureaucracies for many decades.
We need to be driving change in this area, fast, right now. It is imperative that government (both politicians and bureaucrats) change their model of engagement with citizens – and increase the range of modes for this engagement.
The capacities and tools for citizen engagement are widespreading right now*
Going forward expert knowledge will remain vitally important, but can now be used together with socially agglomerated knowledge to provide a much richer foundation for decision-making. Governments need to change their mindset from consultation to conversation – and beyond this, they need to rethink who has to initiate and organise the conversations. As well as setting up open discussion places and inviting citizens to come to them, governments can also go to where citizens are having these conversations for themselves and join in as participants – not as convenors or controllers.
And yes – integrity will become crucial. Alongside the now familiar notions of personal integrity and corporate integrity, we will need a third dimension of integrity – “integrity of practice”, where there is no separation between what is done, why it is done and how it is done – a complete integration of process, principles and purpose. Engaging with citizens in ways that claim, but do not allow full participation will no longer cut the mustard.
The Secondary Futures project (the New Zealand arm of the OEDC Future of Schooling initiative) is an example of a recent experiment in a different way for government to engage with citizens. A reflection on some of the project practices and lessons can be seen at: http://www.secondaryfutures.co.nz/pdfs/AQuestio…
Although the nationwide conversation was focused on the future of Secondary Education, the model could be used for engagement on any issue.
N.B. The project has ended: the website is still up but the e-mail contacts are no longer connected.)
*The use of ‘widespreading’ as a verb is deliberate – to describe the perfusion of change through systems and societies when it’s gone beyond the early adopters, but is not yet ubiquitous.