9. Customisation “ MOTOBLUR – streams your emails, conversations and friends right into your phone and syncs them all with continuous updates and back ups. No logins or apps to open, and your data’s always safe.” “ MobileMe is a service that pushes new email, contacts and calendar events over the air to all your devices. So your iPhone, Mac and PC stay in perfect sync.”
Living in a communication revolution – social media and web 2.0 new challenge for eGov We know what happened to French Aristocracy when it didn’t keep up with pace of change Question for us today – what are the risks and opps of the new social media revolution for government and service delivery
with.
US election – epitomised the change – between old vs. new ways of engaging with the electorate: Hilary – messaged fundamentally boiled down to ‘Trust Me’ Obama – message was ‘Yes We Can’
We all know that ICT is dramatically driving and changing cultural expectations. The rapid rise of new social media technologies means more and more we expect two-way interaction and dialogue in everything we do – from: Communication – Facebook - Social networks Collaboration/Co-creation – eBay feedback Customisation – Amazon personalisation
Communication – Facebook - Social networks – growing way of how we communicate with each other both personally and professionally. Today's 18-24 year olds think that email is old fashioned – Forrester Research
Collaboration/Co-creation – eBay feedback Many good examples in the Private Sector of companies like Dell, Microsoft and HP of going to customers, asking them how they should improve, acting on it by building feedback into their products and then marketing the fact.
Customisation – Amazon personalisation It used to be WOW Amazon, but now our car keys can tell its us, open door, adjust seat to our personal settings – internet of things – services being built around us now iPhone – practical applications all synced for me. Moto Blur – all my social networks and communication devices synced and made easy Disconnect with government, as everything fits around us – yet have to spend precious time surfing through pages and pages of website to find the one piece of info I need (i.e. School application process)
In terms of the 3 C’s, its relatively easy to find examples of Central Government around Europe starting to use and make real efforts to come to terms with the new tools. For example the UK appointing a Social Media Tsar Digital Britain Agenda Forthcoming Power of Information Report The problem is engaging with citizens is still defined/thought of as top-down, getting your message across process. It’s often seen as ticking the boxes. Immediate feedback from a 20-something – “isn’t supposed to be about talking with us, not at us”
Ironically, in trying to research really good examples of Government using social media holistically, almost always came back to the US. Whether it was for disseminating information for federal emergency disaster or getting ideas from citizens on how to solve California’s budget deficit. However, even in the US we are not finding examples of co-creation leading to customisation. Hard to find at a Pan-European level Looking at private sector examples we know that these tools allow us to tap into a rich, virtually unlimited source of creativity and ideas, that can even potentially save a lot of money. And better yet, create stronger and better relationships with citizens, marred by growing political disengagement. Maybe it takes a crisi to really open the doors…
The tools exist to quickly, easily and cheaply engage widespread citizen feedback on ways to improve service delivery in Europe. But, its not yet happening…
Part of it of course, is that Government is traditionally resistant to change, risk adverse and in terms of communication at least retains quite a few of ‘control freak’ tendanancies. Its too easy to blame Gov for this, but as Richard Wilson has been arguing for quite some time now, we all in civil society have a responsibility to overcome the ‘gotcha’ culture that puts a break on people being willing to take risks. We haven’t learned to not let Government be less than perfect. ie. The UK Prime Minister tried to use You Tube and was widely mocked and ridiculed.. Even by his own Minister in the media
Part of it of course, is that Government is traditionally resistant to change, risk adverse and in terms of communication at least retains quite a few of ‘control freak’ tendanancies. Its too easy to blame Gov for this, but as Richard Wilson has been arguing for quite some time now, we all in civil society have a responsibility to overcome the ‘gotcha’ culture that puts a break on people being willing to take risks. We haven’t learned to not let Government be less than perfect. ie. The UK Prime Minister tried to use You Tube and was widely mocked and ridiculed.. Even by his own Minister in the media
Someone challenged me recently on what were the top 30 things you would do in terms of government and social media... The truth is, I don’t have the answer. We could all come up with some pretty obvious things... Make the content relevant... But, what I think we can all safely say, in a Century that is a disaster for control freaks, Government has to start by Letting It Go. In this revolutionary era you really have to ‘Let It Go’. If Government doesn’t tweet it someone else will.