GSRM for Digital Service Delivery?

Posted on August 30, 2018 by ThomK

Public Service Reference Model circa 2006 (original image by Neil Levette).

This is a quick post to share some work that was done by the Enterprise Architecture Division of the Chief Information Branch of the Government of Canada back in 2006. I became aware of it at a conference entitled Transforming Government – better outcomes for citizens, and in a way, it is directly responsible for my interest in working for the feds.

This is no longer really my space but chatting with some folks I realized that if you are involved in the current wave of digital service transformation you should at least be aware of it – building on what came before, avoiding reinventing things, and all that.

The thing is called GSRM (Government Service Reference Model) and at it’simplest the idea is that all of Federal Government services can be distilled into one of 17 or so basic service types. For each service type, there can be a library of patterns covering variations. All services are described and architected using a common lexicon.

Now I don’t know about you, but the Enterprise Nerd in me gets pretty excited when I think about the implications of such a thing. Common service architecture would presumably enable better data management, security, evaluation and potentially even my current fantasy of intelligent policy that evolves based on data. Sorry, I digress.

To be clear, I had nothing to do with the development of any of this. I became involved with the GoC originally to try and sell the idea to departments and agencies because I wanted an efficient, responsive government. At the time there was a team of very smart people who are now mostly retired working on GSRM as part of a bigger project called BTEP (Business Transformation Enablement Program). Unfortunately, in 2007-10, through a series of unfortunate events the Federal Government never really managed to adopt the standards. But others across Canada did, in fact, if your city offers 311 services it probably has its origins in the municipal version of this idea.

The upside of the failure to adopt the standard was that we pursued the idea of using a wiki for a collaborative architecture library which morphed into GCpedia which evolved into the GCTools and the first government-wide collaboration platform.

Ok, back to GSRM and the purpose of this post. I rummaged through my old files and put a few documents in this google drive.

The quick note will give you an overview while the service types document outlines the 17 service patterns. The other two folders contain some related material if you want to dig deeper, including a foray into applying GSRM to knowledge policy.

There is likely more documentation hiding somewhere on the internet. Let me know if you find any of this useful or if you already have something better.

Happy Transformations!

Thom

Government as a platform eh?

Posted on June 18, 2016 by ThomK

I came across this draft post from when I attended the 2009 Gov2.0 Summit in Washington. It was just after Obama became President and the excitement in the air was like that in Ottawa recently with our new Prime Minister.

Reading it again, it occurred to me that it might be useful input into the conversation about what digital means to the governments of Canada.
Gov20summit There was lots of talk about government as
a platform on the first day of the summit and I must admit that I came to Washington a little unclear on the topic. There are multiple “layers of abstraction” and no doubt those who build hardware and software have a more detailed understanding, nonetheless I will share with you what I took away about one of the big themes of the conference.

platform for change

A data platform for services
By sharing data in open machine readable ways, the government can enable industry to create social and financial value by building services on top of that data. The dominate examples had to do with GPS and GIS data, (location, maps and details). There were impressive examples from the battlefront in Afghanistan to the streets of LA. The Obama administration has taken a bold step towards embedding this behavior in the bureaucracy with its Open GOvernment Directive.
A social platform
With its power to convene and consult with groups of citizens the government can be a powerful catalyst for civic action. With much of the credit of Obama’s election win going to the power of the internet to mobilize voters, the administration is very interested in how to involve Americans in taking action to solve their problems. By using modern internet tools the government could fulfill the promise of Jeffersonian Democracy it seems.
An economic platform
Finally with its power to invest the government can initiate market moves and affect the direction of the economy. The feeling in the room was that if government investments in infrastructure good things will happen.

There are probably many more ways you could describe Government as a platform. Gosh, I even heard a sidewalk referred to as a platform for social interaction. (Depending upon how you design and build it, you will get different behaviors. Add a bench and people sit down. Make it narrow and people walk on by.)

The thing about Government as a platform is that it provides a new perspective on the old problem of making government more effective. As I believe that genus with the funny hair said:

” you can’t solve old problems with the same thinking that created them”

New perspectives are a good thing.

There are many ways you can think of Government as a platform. The take away for public servants is to use this perspective to create new forces for good. To create policy and programs that will address the real problems the world faces today.

There you have it. My thoughts, such as they are. Feel free to comment, correct or elaborate, express whatever you want, just be polite about it ok?

You can change culture now: 3 essential truths for public service leaders

Posted on February 20, 2016 by ThomK

stick man on stairs square The Canadian federal public service has been trying to change its culture for a few years with initiatives like Blueprint 2020 and the Innovation Hubs. Now we have a new federal leadership that wants to adopt a new and more collaborative approach to governing. One might wonder what is keeping us from our goal…

I am not a millennial, but I am a pretty hip, late baby boomer who has been part of the interweb since close to the beginning. My career has been a little eclectic and I have had the opportunity to observe and participate in a wide range of transformational activities. I am telling you this, because it is that experience that has provided the fodder for the observations that follow.

A few years ago I was deep into an analysis of how governments could realize the potential of collaboration and social technologies. As I was mulling over how to synthesise all of the data into a sound bite that could be easily consumed by a busy executive, I was also thinking about how it connected with what I had learned from working in advertising and teaching consumer behaviour. In a rare moment of clarity while waiting for a red light I scribbled down three truths that seem to me to be both obvious and profound.

1. Sharing is good

Sharing is the activity that fuels successful collaboration, knowledge management and communication, which in turn are fundamental to a “capable and high performing” organization. By sharing we become authentic to those around us, sharing preserves hard earned knowledge and makes us more productive, telling stories makes us real, and helps to build the common purpose which is so important to successful change.

Most of the major research firms agree that the biggest challenge organizations face in implementation of social technologies within the enterprise is creating a culture that supports information sharing. Having been involved with over a dozen enterprise collaboration efforts I can say that my personal experience supports those findings. Culture, as the saying goes eats strategy for breakfast, apparently it also eats technology, and probably has a taste for deliverology as well.

Many people don’t share because they are afraid of making a Career Limiting Move (CLM), while others, (kudos if you are one), consider sharing part of their responsibility. Unfortunately too many seem to equate sharing with a CLM, and ultimately we need to institutionalize ways of rewarding sharing and punishing information hoarding. Maybe we can make sharing part of management accountability accords, it is pretty easy to count contributions to sharing platforms like GCpedia and GCconnex…

2. Ego gets in the way

By ego I mean an unhealthy focus on self. We have all come across individuals that try and withhold information, and manipulate those around them for personal gain or promotion. When combined with a lack of emotional intelligence I believe this is one of the most destructive forces in the public service today. We need to get our self-worth from something other than the size of our empire, we need to get emotional and career points for collaborating. We need to recognize the common purpose, (serving Canadians anyone?), as more important than our personal gain. Not only is the, “I only do what is good for me” attitude, bad for the organization, its beginning to look like it may be bad for your career as well.

I have worked on enough horizontal files to have come across this issue more than once. No matter how you structure a collaboration, the people involved can always sabotage it. While researching the horizontal governance issue sometime in the early 2000’s, I came across an Auditor General’s report examining the lack of progress on the climate change file. Without much reading between the lines it was obvious that the real problem was that the primary departments involved could not find a way to collaborate, mostly because the Deputy Ministers did not like each other. Now I am not pointing fingers at the senior ranks, you see this kind of behaviour at all levels. I suppose we should not be surprised, given the competitive, individualistic socialization most of us have grown up with. But humanity’s greatest capacity is to learn, and I like to think that we can learn to work together despite personal differences—if we set aside our ego once in awhile in favour of the common goal.

3. You can’t communicate too much

“You can’t communicate too much”, I posted this comment on twitter during a conference once and it quickly became one of the most re-tweeted updates, so it seems the sentiment hit a nerve.

Back in my advertising days we used to spend a lot of money on media buys and printing, and one of the worst things that could happen was for a print run or advertisement be published with a mistake. When it did happen it was an expensive and embarrassing lesson. After the first time we began to repeat instructions, in different languages if necessary, we would draw pictures, leave notes on the artwork, call the publisher, even attend press runs to make sure all was understood. Later in my career I worked with a Product Line Manager at a major telecom who told me that for an idea to get traction you had to say the same thing over and over again in as many different ways as you could think of —when you are sick of saying the same thing, it’s time to say it again— you can’t communicate too much.

In today’s information intense and dynamic workplace, trying to get the attention of information inundated executive ranks will take more than a little repetition. Going the other way, management can’t communicate too much with staff, especially during times of change. The mushroom school of management (keep them in the dark, and feed them sh*t), simply has no place in an agile and high performing organization— you can’t communicate too much.

In dynamic times, perfection is the enemy of communication, waiting for a complete and crafted message simply leads to speculation and fear, while communicating often and openly, even admitting you don’t know everything, leads to trust and understanding. Having a clear and common purpose is more important than knowing the details of how you are going to get there— you can’t communicate too much.

Conclusion

Changing the culture of something as big as the public service is a daunting task, sometimes compared to turning a supertanker. But the public service is not a ship, it is an organization made up of people, and it’s people who make the culture. The three truths that I have shared can and should be applied from the top down, but more importantly they can be applied by individuals regardless of rank, when you think about that, it means you have the power to change culture.

What are you going to do with that power?

Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triskele-Symbol-spiral-five-thirds-turns.png

Editorial Note:

This post is adapted from one of two posts that was written for a GTEC 2013 blog series exploring what it means to be an Agile, Open, Collaborative and Mobile Government. The original post was entitled “Three truths to help you change the culture of the Public Service.” My focus in the series was on the Cultural, Organizational and Policy Infrastructure that provides the foundation for public service culture.

The Importance of Open

Image

Over the years I have had the chance to reflect upon lessons from quite a few successful and unsuccessful projects. One of the more significant things that I have been lucky enough to be involved with is helping to bring the Government of Canada GC2.0 Tools (GCPedia and GCConnex) to life in 2007. Since then, I have continued to work on enterprise collaboration and knowledge management efforts including several environmental scans of best practices world-wide.

One of the more important insights I have gleaned from this research and experience is that when it comes to an enterprise collaborative solution, open is important. According to McKinsey and others, achieving the potential of enterprise collaboration requires a culture of sharing, and sharing is a characteristic of open.

Open Door

Any solution that claims to be enterprise must be available and open to all employees, anything that imposes silos or mirrors existing hierarchies degrades the potential for emergence by limiting the number of participants. This is not to say that there cannot be private spaces, only that the creation of private spaces should require a business case if you are serious about open by default.

Open Information

Secondly, the information architecture needs to be open so that users can discover content and other users, both intentionally through search and serendipitously by accident, this enables the self-organization and relationship components of a complex adaptive system. Open information also means that you have to classify responsibly, declaring everything confidential is usually wrong and significantly decreases the value of the information assets.

Open Source

Using open source software is important because it allows a small internal team supported by a global volunteer network, to quickly adapt the technology to changing needs as they arise.

Outsourcing solutions means buying into someone else’s product roadmap and the cultural paradigm that goes with that roadmap. This might make sense in a mature market with global best practices like finance or human resource systems, but web-based collaboration is young, and governments are still learning what they need.

As government reinvents itself we cannot predict what will be required. Using open source software allows the organization to remain agile in a sustainable way. Keeping the expertise to develop and maintain low cost, light weight technology also serves the innovation agenda in ways that outsourcing never can.

Open Innovation

In the Government of Canada we are entering an era when outdated systems are being replaced by outsourced solutions. In many cases this is a good thing, but Enterprise Collaboration is one space where I believe this strategy would be a mistake. The reason is not technical but cultural. The GC2.0 Tools (GCpedia and GCconnex) should remain, low cost, open source, internally managed collaboration tools. Their very existence speaks to the innovation and skill of the public service. Attempting to replace what passionate public servants have collectively built with a third party solution clearly sends the wrong message.

@thomkearney

p.s. Writing this post, I am reminded of a favorite quote, “A mind is like a parachute, it only works when its open” – Frank Zappa, (according to the internet).

This post also appeared in the Canadian Government Executive Blog, November, 10, 2013.

Collaboration Tools the Shirky Ladder

Posted on September 3, 2013 by ThomK

This post originally appeared as part of the GTEC 2013 Blog

Collaboration is a word you hear a lot these days, and its one of GTEC13’s theme words. In the Government of Canada (GC) Public Service context, the Chief Information Officer, Clerk of the Privy Council and the President of the Treasury board have all called for increased collaboration between departments in the service of Canadians. A few years ago when I had the title Senior Director of “Collaborative Tools” I set out to understand the word better. The short form of the definition I came away with was that collaboration is a group of people coming together to solve a problem.

Of course, there is more to it than that.

Three Levels of Collaboration

One of the most cited books on the impact of the Internet on group dynamics is “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” by Clay Shirky, 2008. Shirky describes three levels of collaboration: sharing, cooperation and collective action. These levels exist on a ladder of increasing commitment, risk and reward. Understanding the levels reveals important nuances in meaning that have significant impacts in making the most of collaboration tools.

1. Sharing is Easy

The first level is sharing. Sharing creates few demands on participants. All you have to do is make content available where others can find it. When I tweet a link or update my LinkedIn status I am sharing. Sharing is a happy by-product of working transparently, and can take very little effort but have a profound impact when a connection is made. My criteria for sharing is that the information be safe and potentially useful to others. Sharing broadly, across departments, is important because it creates a critical mass of information connections that allows for serendipitous discovery and cost-effective re-use of information assets. Sharing also sets the stage for the more advanced levels of collaboration by establishing some common knowledge and awareness of individual interests and experience.

Responsible sharing is the single most important thing each of us can do to realize the potential of our collective knowledge and begin the journey to a more collaborative culture.

2. Cooperating Means Change

Cooperating is the second level and it is harder than sharing because it means “changing your behavior to synchronize with others who are changing their behavior to synchronize with yours” (Shirky,2008). When we agree to meet and make the effort to accommodate busy schedules we are cooperating at the simplest level. Co-creating a document is a more advanced form of cooperating. Cooperating creates community, because unlike sharing you know the individuals you are cooperating with. There is a degree of shared risk and reward. Conversational skills are important because we need to understanding both the shared goal and who is going to do what. Cooperating means adhering to some mutually agreed upon standards while remaining flexible. Cooperating between departments in particular is a competency that we need to grow if we really want a more agile government.

3. Collective Action is Hard

Collective Action is the third and rarest level of collaboration. Collective Action is when a group of people truly commit themselves to a shared effort, it is an “all in” kind of thing with shared risk, reward and accountability. In an organizational context, (think Westminster silos), shared accountability can be extremely challenging because of the lack of enabling and enforcing mechanisms between departments. All too often good intentions are lost in a tragedy of the commons as individuals become motivated by personal gain over collective good. Collective Action may be rare but it is a worthy aspirational goal for those that have mastered Sharing and Cooperation.

Different Tools for Different Levels

In the world of IT systems, vendors and advocates for particular solutions sometimes use the word of the day to help sell their product, and “collaboration solution” is a recent example. When we view collaboration in the light of Shirky’s levels, it makes it easier to understand the value that different tools bring to the equation.

To share widely you need open enterprise wide tools like GCpedia and GCconnex that can be accessed by everyone in the Public Service. For formal cooperative projects you may require document security and management work flows that proprietary tools provide. For collective action, we need changes to the mechanics of government before tools can hope to have much impact.

As the GC gears up for more horizontal collaboration, agility and mobility, it is important to remember that collaboration is not a tool—collaboration is an iterative social process. Collaboration is people, (you know the soft squishy things walking around in the office), working together, often in a very dynamic and ad hoc kind of way.

At its most basic, a collaboration tool’s job is to make it easier for a group of people to find each other and come together to solve a problem. The design paradigm behind the tool can have a profound impact on the types of collaboration that are possible – some are oriented towards sharing, while others are more about control. A single enterprise collaboration solution may be neither practical or desirable, rather an ecosystem of tools, connected by standards, may be the only way to enable the full range of collaborative behaviours the future demands.

The First Step is Simple

Collaboration can be formal and structured or it can be organic and come together in an informal way. Collaboration can mean sharing, cooperating or collective action. Achieving the highest levels of collaboration is hard, but fortunately the first step is pretty easy, simply do what you learned in kindergarten and remember to share.

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Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Books.

Image credit: iStockphoto, Illustration File #4549099, contributor Mightyisland

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The Culture Table – Request for input

Posted on August 10, 2013 by ThomK

The purpose of this post is to share something I am working on in the hopes of receiving some feedback from people like you.

Back in April I wrote a post entitled “Hold your breath, it’s going to go deep” about the fact that I was presenting a paper at the World Social Science Forum in October, well the deadline is approaching and I am now trying to write the thing. The paper is to examine the cultural and governance implications of horizontally enabling tools like GCpedia. As part of that I would like to have a culture table that compares the two cultures with a focus on the divergent points of potential conflict.

To provide a frame for analysis of the conflicting cultures I have elected to use Schein’s three levels of organizational culture. The draft comparison follows.

Table 1: Points of Conflict

Levels of Culture

Gov2.0

Gov 1.0 (2007-2010)

Artefacts

Visible structures and processes

Observed Behaviour

Principle based guidelines

Loosely coupled networks

Communication based on need and interest (not hierarchy)

Collective learning

Constructive debate

Habitual knowledge sharing

Roles and Histories

Respect shown in disagreement

Prescriptive policy and web of rules

Departmental, Westminster system with legislated silos

Vertical communication patterns

Some cooperation amongst the willing

Territoriality

Established methods that have worked for decades

Respect shown by unquestioning agreement

Generic Job Descriptions

Espoused Beliefs and Values

Ideas, Goals, Values Aspirations

Ideologies

Rationalizations

Open by default

Trust and respect

Wisdom of the crowd

Experiment and learn

We is stronger than me

Authenticity

Design to “Fail fast”

Values and Ethics Code:

Respect for democracy
Respect for people
Integrity
Stewardship
Excellence

Share when ready

Non Partisan truth to power

Stay off the front page of the news

Design for “fail safe”

Basic Underlying Assumptions

Unconscious beliefs and values that determine behaviour, perception thought and feeling

Responsible autonomy is best

Deference to the most respected

Shared sense of purpose

Free information is powerful

Mistakes are learning opportunities

Beg forgiveness

Hierarchy is best

Deference to authority of the position

Entitlement to my job and benefits

What the boss wants

Information Is power

Mistakes are career limiting moves (that end up in the news)

Ask permission

Working for Canadians
(it’s a calling not a job)

This is just a draft and it is based on my perceptions. What do you think, am I being unfair to the Gov 1.0 or too Pollyanna with the Gov 2.0? Maybe something important is missing?

You can comment here, or you can comment on this Google doc version that I will be using as my working copy.

Thank you in advance, I look forward to your input.

Thom

[polldaddy poll=7312241]

Three truths to help you change the culture of the Public Service

Posted on June 26, 2013 by ThomK

This is one of two posts for the GTEC 2013 blog series where we are exploring what it means to be an Agile, Open, Collaborative and Mobile Government. My focus will be on the Cultural, Organizational and Policy Infrastructure that provides the foundation for public service culture. This is a great time to be discussing these topics as the Clerk has recently announced the Blueprint 2020 initiative with a call to action for all Public Servants to participate in shaping the vision for the Public Service of the future.

Recently I was deep into an analysis of how Governments could realize the potential of collaboration and social technologies. As I was mulling over how to synthesise all of the data into a sound bite that could be easily consumed by a busy executive, I was also thinking about how it connected with what I had learned from working in advertising and teaching consumer behaviour. In a rare moment of clarity while waiting for a red light I scribbled down three truths that seem to me to be both obvious and profound.

1. Sharing is good

Most of the major research firms agree that the biggest challenge organizations face in implementation of social technologies within the enterprise is creating a culture that supports information sharing. Having been involved with over a dozen enterprise collaboration efforts I can say that my personal experience supports those findings. Culture as the saying goes eats strategy for breakfast, apparently it also eats technology.

Right now, in the Public Service many people don’t share because they are afraid of making a Career Limiting Move (CLM), while others, (kudos if you are one), consider sharing part of their responsibility. Unfortunately too many seem to equate sharing with a CLM, and ultimately we need to institutionalize ways of rewarding sharing and punishing information hoarding. That kind of change will probably take decades, so maybe in the meantime maybe there is a need for some responsible anonymous input to Blueprint 2020? What do you say, should we throw a Blueprint 2020 Chatham House Party…err… Workshop?

2. Ego gets in the way

By ego I mean an unhealthy focus on self, we have all come across individuals that try and withhold information and manipulate those around them for personal gain or promotion. When combined with a lack of emotional intelligence I believe this is one of the most destructive forces in the public service today. We need to get our self-worth from something other than the size of our empire, we need to get emotional and career points for collaborating. We need to recognize the common purpose, (serving Canadians anyone?) as more important than our personal gain. Not only is the, “I only do what it good for me” attitude, bad for the organization, its beginning to look like it may be bad for your career as well.

I have worked on enough horizontal files to have come across this issue more than once. No matter how you structure a collaboration the people involved can always sabotage it. While researching the horizontal governance issue a few years ago I came across an Auditor General’s report examining the lack of progress on the climate change file. Without much reading between the lines it was obvious that the real problem was that the primary departments involved could not find a way to collaborate. Now I am not pointing fingers at the senior ranks, you see this kind of behaviour at all levels. I suppose we should not be surprised, given the competitive individualistic socialization most of us have grown up with, but human’s greatest capacity is to learn, and we can learn to work together and set aside personal differences if we set aside our ego once in a while in favour of the common goal.

3. You can’t communicate too much

“You can’t communicate too much”. I posted this comment on twitter during one of the conferences I attended recently and it quickly became one of the most re-tweeted updates, so it seems the sentiment hit a nerve.

Back in my advertising days we used to spend a lot of money on media buys and printing, and one of the worst things that could happen was for a print run or advertisement be published with a mistake. When it did happen it was an expensive and embarrassing lesson. After the first time we began to repeat instructions, in different languages if necessary, we would draw pictures, leave notes on the artwork, call the publisher, even attend press runs to make sure all was understood. Later in my career I worked with a Product Line Manager at a major telecom who told we that for an idea to get traction you had to say the same thing over and over again in as many different ways as you could think of —you can’t communicate too much.

In today’s information intense and dynamic workplace trying to get the attention of the information inundated executive ranks will take more than a little repetition. Going the other way, management can’t communicate too much with staff, especially during times of change. The mushroom school of management (keep them in the dark, and feed them sh*t), simply has no place in an agile and high performing organization.

Conclusion

Changing the culture of something as big as the Public Service is a daunting task, I applaud the sentiment behind Blueprint 2020 and encourage everyone to get involved. But it is also important to remember that an organization is people, and an organization’s people are who make the culture. The three lessons that I have shared can and should be applied from the top down, but more importantly they can be applied by individuals regardless of rank, when you think about that, it this means you have the power to change culture.

A final note:

I am writing this on Father’s day, 2013 and as it happens this date is also the anniversary of my father’s passing at the age of 89. A child of the depression and a jet setter of the 60’s he lived his life with an ethos of “doing the best you can, with what you have”. In these uncertain times it is easy to blame others for inaction, but I say, do what you can, with what you have.

What do you say?

Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triskele-Symbol-spiral-five-thirds-turns.png

“Dreams of a digital nirvana don’t come true, but all is not lost.”

Posted on June 7, 2013 by ThomK

https://nusum.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/reflections-of-a-participant-observer/ 746px-Tesla_colorado

When I was asked to write a post comparing technology and tools across time, I was intrigued because I believe that the tools and technology we choose shape the culture of our workplace.

Twenty pages of draft text later, I decided that the topic was more suitable for a book than a blog post. So instead, here are a few reflections on technology and collaboration from someone who has been around a bit.

Collaboration to me, means a group of people working together towards a common goal. Technology helps or hinders us in that collaboration by finding the people to collaborate with, in sharing stuff we are working on, in co-creating stuff and in measuring our progress towards a common goal.

The past

Before the existence of writing, collaboration was strictly a face-to-face affair and probably centred around survival. About 5000 years ago writing came along, and information could now be preserved and shared independent of a human to remember it. For the next 45 centuries written information was the domain of the elite.

When the printing press was invented, rooms full of scribes were gradually replaced with new technology – machines that could accurately reproduce information at an accelerated rate. Ideas could now spread further and faster than ever before. Collaboration over distance was possible although it took a long time. Information was very physical and real.

Around this time, Information geeks the world over began a quest for the ultimate classification system. Every great power had a great library.

More recently, the Cold War and quantum physics research produced the internet and the web. The “interweb” changed everything if you wanted it to. Information could now be in more than one place at once, and it could literally travel at the speed of light. Physical artifacts became digital—making it at once more accessible and more vulnerable. Everything became miscellaneous. Digital networks evolved into complex adaptive systems, and Digimon appeared in popular culture.

The web was a new frontier, unregulated and exciting, a new crop of 20 something techno wizards rose in business fame. Apple was born. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written and there was a boom in tech stocks. At the end of the millennium we panicked over a couple of missing digits (Y2K), and spent billions correcting the short sightedness of the previous decades.

In the GC, Government On-Line occurred and the Funding Fairy provided the means for departments to put their information on-line. Canada became a world leader, but the paper-based mentality that prevailed caused many to completely miss the opportunity presented by hyperlinks and digital logic, instead “brochure-ware” prevailed.

At the top of the hype curve, the tech bubble goes pop and we are reminded that gravity works. After the crash, the Web was reborn as Web 2.0 with user-created content and social networking taking centre stage. The Long Tail made its appearance and command and control hierarchies began to sense a threat, while the educated masses saw opportunity.

Government CIOs scrambled to keep the information plumbing from backing up while Amazon and Google raised the bar of citizen expectations for on-line service.

Tagging and folksonomies entered the vocabulary of information professionals, curating became something anyone could do. Librarians and archivists struggled to catalogue and preserve some of the exponential growth while the cognitive surplus emerged to build things like Wikipedia—making human knowledge more accessible than ever before. CIOs were either bewildered or excited at the possibilities.

GTEC played an important role by bringing together examples and people. It became an annual, milestone event. It was at GTEC 2007 that Ken Cochrane announced that the GC was going to build a “Collaborative Library” and it was at GTEC a year later that we launched GCPEDIA —bringing people and technology together.

Today

High speed wireless saturates the urban environment and ubiquitous network access is a reality. Digital natives experience continuous instant communication as part of everyday life while Government workplaces seem antiquated by comparison. The web and the collective forces that it enables are transforming all parts of connected society. Recorded information is produced at an accelerating rate.

Open source software matures and becomes a viable option for enterprise applications. Governments around the world join the Open Government Partnership, in Canada the Federal Government publishes the Open Government Action plan.

Holistic User Centred Design begins to challenge solutions approaches to designing technology. Humanists and engineers are learning to work together.

The digital divide becomes a social issue, web accessibility becomes law and massive resources are assembled to ensure all GC organizations become compliant.

Bureaucracies built to manage people, work and information over the last couple of hundred years are beginning to show their age. New groups emerge in the evolutionary sea of information we know as the internet. Powerful forces compete to control the new territory – Anonymous becomes an entity.

The GC invests heavily in GCDOCS, SharePoint and other technologies designed to manage/control documents. The idea of knowledge as a product of interconnected networks and not just documents takes shape. Social innovation tools appear in pockets. GCPEDIA, GCFORUMS, GCCONNEX and other grass roots tools struggle for institutional support while gaining users.

Examples of the power of social in communicating across silos and traditional boundaries accumulate. The idea of social networks in government becomes acceptable – as long as we call them “professional networks”.

Future – Sometime after tomorrow

There is no Web 3.0, but something else emerges— a diverse, complex adaptive system, no, a network of complex adaptive systems.

Control of information becomes less important, the cultural default is to share knowledge. Government is a platform and publicly funded data is routinely visualized by an army of professional and amateur big data analysts.
In the GC, Shared Services Canada provides reliable infrastructure, we share one email address across government, secure wireless is everywhere, non-government partners can easily and securely collaborate, the government cloud is a reality. Departmental CIOs become focused on transition and business improvement—information plumbing is rarely an issue. The government-wide technical architecture focuses on standards and interoperability, a diverse range of technologies and tools work together in relative harmony, vendors with “lock-in” strategies are shunned.

GC Ideas is in constant use, the GC App Store is the first place departments look when they need software. Government developers routinely contribute to open source projects. The Open Knowledge policy is promulgated across governments around the world. The Marvelous Mistakes page on GCPEDIA competes with the Fabulous Failures page for most valuable lessons. Risk aversion all but disappears in an organizational culture that embraces experimentation and sharing lessons learned.

Tablet computers are everywhere, briefing binders disappear. The Golden Tablet program maintains a knowledge connection with departing employees. The GC20 suite of tools is adequately funded.

Dreams of a digital nirvana don’t come true, but all is not lost. Networks of people who are comfortable connecting virtually emerge and disperse continuously. The definition of Public Service changes as the lines blur between indeterminate employees and partners. The GovCloud becomes a reality. Agility is an operational requirement, and government organizations re-invent themselves.

Leadership learns to work with the nebulous “crowd.” Connections are made and governance structures adapt to include interfaces to the crowd. The focus shifts from one of command and control towards engaging with self-identified stakeholders.

Serendipity becomes a business principle, the internet of things emerges, power

shifts to those who control the algorithms but a balance is maintained by the digital collective. The Virtual Government Network is an international network 200,000 members strong where new and innovative methods are shared. Public Servants feel more connected with each other, and with the publics they serve.

Global government becomes possible as a global consciousness emerges. The collective intelligence gets a handle on our wicked problems. Technology serves the three Ps of Profit, People and the Planet. Yes, life is good in my fantasy future.

Conclusion

The Government Organizations and leadership types we have today are a product of the technology and tools of the past. The challenge now is how to incorporate things like ubiquitous network access and dynamic peer networks into serving a self-organizing public.

In times like these it is important that executives demonstrate a willingness to experiment and learn. We are lucky these days to have a disruptor like @alexbenay in the CIO chair at the GC, but he is only

Collaboration is a popular word these days. But collaboration is not a technology or a tool. Collaboration is people working together towards a common goal. Collaboration is more about values than it is about tech. We should be discussing exactly what those values are, here are four that I can think of, what do you think?

Open and continuous communication
Shared understanding of purpose/vision
Commitment to the greater good
Freedom from fear – respect and tolerance

New technology can open doors to new behaviour, but it is the people who share the value of collaboration who will deliver the outcomes.

Technology in and of itself will not save us. But if we take advantage of the opportunities it presents and if we shape the tools we choose to use in a way that reflects the values of collaboration then I believe anything is possible. What do you believe?

Thom Kearney can be found on the internet or in the crowd at GTEC.

This post originally appeared as part of the GTEC 2012 conference blog, I have updated it a little bit for 2017.

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PS Engage Resources

Posted on January 18, 2013 by ThomK

psengage-overview-600ppg

This post is to document all the resources produced as part of PS Engage 2011 and 2012

Call for expressions of interest PS Engage 2012

Posted on April 29, 2012 by ThomK

Do you care about making the Public Service better? Would you like to participate in the planning for PS Engage 2012? As you may recall PS Engage 2011 was our Public Service renewal conference last year with the theme of a Tapestry of People and Ideas. Based on the overwhelming positive feedback and interest, we’re now gearing up for the 2012 event!

We’re currently developing this year’s theme but I expect it will have something to do with frugality and working across boundaries. There are a number of ways you can take part, some of which are listed below. If you are interested and have a little time to dedicate to a worthy and fun event, we would love to hear from you, simply reply to this message with your preferred coordinates and good times to meet, and we will arrange a virtual get together.

PS Engage 2012 Planning Committee Roles

These are the roles that have been identified, they may be performed by a single person or a small group. You can volunteer to lead or participate in any of these activities.

Sponsorship

Develop sponsorship package with communications, develop pricing and marketing strategy. Manage target list and sales funnel. Prepare and sign contracts. Make presentations. Arrange for sponsor material for web site, and day of distribution.

Program & Speakers

Articulate the theme, plan the daily program, arrange for speakers, take part in developing promotional material. Coordinate with speakers. Create conference overview document and later versions as it evolves.

Communications

Develop promotional plan, create communications material, write and produce web site, design logo and promotional cards. Manage web cast and twitter feed. Develop and produce posters, manage distribution. Evaluate web analytics, prepare and conduct post event evaluation.

Prepare and distribute regular emails. Manage list on SalesForce.

Floor Manager

Plan sponsor physical presence, manage floor space on the day of, coordinate with venue and suppliers.

Stage Manager

Work with Program group on content and manage stage the day of.

Logistics

Coordinate with speakers, make travel and accommodation arrangements, manage all vendor contracts, act as single point of contact. Arrange for meetings and take notes.

Volunteer Coordination

Manage volunteer list and assignments. Manage volunteer meetings.

Delegate Promotion and Sales

Work with communications on web site and other promotional material. Manage registrations.

Other

Whatever we have forgotten.

The bigger picture

PS Engage is a conference, PS Leader is an emerging non-profit organization with the mission:

To facilitate and advance collaboration, learning & innovation across all levels of government and geographies in support of connected, efficient, and open government.

If you think PS Leader is a good idea and would like to be part of the development of the organization drop us a line and we will invite you to the formation meeting.

PS Leader will engage in a number of activities in addition to PS Engage such as #GovChat , PS Leader Blog, Training, and the Virtual Government Network. If you are interested in participating in any of these specific initiatives, please let us know.

Thanks, we look forward to your interest and participation as these initiatives proceed.

Thom