The Elephant and the Mouse:will web 2.0 change public

services?

Local Government e-leaders Forum

David OsimoTech4i2 ltd.

David Osimo - Open Days 2008 -

So far ICT has not fundamentally changed government

• 1990s: ICT expected to make government more transparent, efficient and user oriented

• 2005+: disillusion as ICT failed to drive real change in government

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The e-ruptive growth of web2.0

70 M blogs, doubling every 6 months

YouTube traffic: 100M views/day

Wikipedia: 2M articles

Source: Technorati, Alexa, Wikipedia, Cachelogic

Peer-to-peer largest source of IP traffic

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What I will try to answer today

• ADOPTION: is web2.0 applied in e-government?

• USAGE: do these applications encounter high take-up?

• IMPACT: do they make a difference?

• BIG PICTURE: a new vision for e-government?

• SO WHAT? some concrete suggestions

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Viral adoption in public services, but not by government

Source: own elaboration of IPTS PS20 project

Relevant for key government activities

Back office Front office

RegulationCross-agency collaboration

Knowledge managementInteroperability

Human resources mgmtPublic procurement

Service deliveryeParticipation

Law enforcementPublic sector information

Public communicationTransparency and accountability

source: Osimo 2008 “Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How? www.jrc.es6

Regulation : Peer-to-patent

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Peer-to-patent: an inside look

Governance• Self-regulated: need

critical mass to control “bad apples”

• 2000 users• 9/23 applications used

by USPTO• 73% of USPTO

examiners want the project to become mainstream

• pilot being extended and adopted in Japan

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Peer-to-Patent Report June 2008 6

Project Summary

Highlights of Pilot Results

From June 2007-April 2008, Peer-to-Patent has attracted well over 2,000 registered users and 173 items of prior art submitted on 40 applications by participants from 140 countries.

• Public submissions of prior art have been used to reject claims in first office actions coming back from the USPTO. The first 23 office actions issued during the pilot phase showed use of Peer-to-Patent submitted pri-or art in nine rejections, with all but one rejection using non-patent prior art literature. At least 3 additional office actions suggest that, while examiners did not use Peer-to-Patent prior art references in rejecting the application, they were influenced by Peer-to-Patent submissions in their search strategy and understanding of the prior art.

• Of the 419 total prior art references submitted by inventors during the pilot, only 14 percent were non-patent literature. In contrast, 55 percent of prior art references cited by Peer-to-Patent reviewers were non-patent literature.

• Eighty-nine (89) percent of participating patent examiners thought the presentation of prior art that they received from the Peer-to-Patent community was clear and well formatted. Ninety-two (92) percent re-ported that they would welcome examining another application with public participation.

• Seventy-three (73) percent of participating examiners want to see Peer-to-Patent implemented as regular office practice.

• Twenty-one (21) percent of participating examiners stated that prior art submitted by the Peer-to-Patent community was “inaccessible” by the USPTO.

• The USPTO received one third-party prior art submission for every 500 applications published in 2007. Peer-to-Patent reviewers have provided an average of almost 5 prior art references for each application in the pilot.

“We’re very pleased with this initial outcome. Patents of questionable merit are of little value to anyone. We much prefer that the best prior art be identified so that the resulting patent is truly bulletproof. This is precisely why we eagerly agreed to sponsor this project and other patent quality initiatives. We are proud of this result, which validates the concept of Peer-to-Patent, and can only improve the quality of patents produced by the patent system.”

— Manny Schecter, Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property, IBM

Intellipedia, the Wikipedia of 007

• Based on Wikipedia software: information sharing and collaboration on joint reports.

Governance• Used by 16 US security agencies – on a super-secure intranet (not public)• Flat, informal cooperation. • Risks: too much information sharing. BUT it’s “worth it”: "the key is risk

management, not risk avoidance.“Usage: fast take-up, two thirds of analysts use it to co-produce reportsImpact• Reducing silos effects (joined-up government)• Better decisions by reducing information bottlenecks• Main tool used in drafting key intelligence reports (Nigeria, Iraqi insurgents

using chlorine in explosives). •

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Service delivery: Patient Opinion

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Patient Opinion: an inside look

Usage: 3000 comments in first 9 months, 38 health providers subscribedBenefits of ratings/reviews• Enabling informed choices (for citizens)• Understanding users needs (for hospitals)• Monitoring quality compliance for service improvement (for health

funders)• “Does feedback actually work”?

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Source: PatientOpinion blog

Citizens monitoring government: farmsubsidy.org

Spinea, Italy: citizens monitoring as management tool

Why?

Because it does not impose change (e-gov 1.0) but acts on leverages, drivers and incentives:

• building on unique and specific knowledge of users: the “cognitive surplus”

• the power of visualization

• reducing information and power asymmetries

• peer recognition rather than hierarchy

• reducing the cost of collective action

• changing the expectations of citizens

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“A problem shared is a problem halved

...and a pressure group created”

Dr. Paul Hodgkindirector PatientOpinion.org

“it’s about pressure points, chinks in the armour where

improvements might be possible, whether with the consent of

government or not”

Tom Steinbergdirector mySociety

It’s not about “total citizens”

Source: IPTS estimation based on Eurostat, IPSOS-MORI, Forrester

4.Providing attention, taste data

3.Using user-generated content

2.Providing ratings, reviews

1.Producing content

100%3% 40% of Internet users (50% of EU population)10%

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David Osimo - Open Days 2008 -

A new vision?

Gartner: “The Real Future of E-Government: From Joined-Up to Mashed-Up”From providing services online, to exposing web services for re-intermediation

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A new flagship goal of eGovernment?

INPUT: IT investment

IMPACT: Better

government

high

high

low

low

eGov2.0 Reusable data

eGov1.0 Online services

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SO WHAT: some suggestions and lessons learnt

• Open your data, make them available for re-use

• Start from back office: knowledge intensive, collaborative culture teams

• Evaluate existing usage by your employees

• Partner with civil society and existing initiatives

• Provide governance, but soft: policies and guidance

• Listen and follow-up on users’ feedback

• But no ready recipes: experiment!20

Common mistakes

• “Build it and they will come”: beta testing, trial and error necessary

• Launching “your own” large scale web 2.0 flagship project

• Opening up without soft governance of key challenges:

- privacy

- individual vs institutional role

- destructive participation

• Adopting only the technology with traditional top-down attitude

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Web 2.0 is about values, not technology

ValuesUser as producer, Collective intelligence,

Long tail, Perpetual beta, Extreme ease of use

ApplicationsBlog, Wiki, Podcast, RSS, Tagging, Social networks, Search engine, MPOGames

TechnologiesAjax, XML, Open API, Microformats, Flash/

Flex, Peer-to-Peer

Source: Author’s elaboration based on Forrester

Thank you

Further information:Osimo, 2008. Web2.0 in government: why and how? www.jrc.es

Osimo, 2008. Benchmarking e-government in the web 2.0 era: what to measure, and how. European Journal of ePractice, August 2008.

http://egov20.wordpress.com

david.osimo@tech4i2.com

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Back-up slides

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Are these services used?

• in the back-office, yes

• in the front-office, not too much: few thousand users as an average

• still: this is much more than before!

• some (petty) specific causes have viral take-up (mobile phones fees, road tax charge schemes)

• very low costs of experimentation

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Why? /2

• Citizens (and employees) already use web 2.0: no action ≠ no risks

• Likely to stay as it is linked to underlying societal trends

- Today’s teenagers = future users and employees

- Empowered customers

- Creative knowledge workers

- From hierarchy to network-based organizations

- Non linear-innovation models

- Consumerization of ICT26

Is there a visible impact?

Yes, more than the usage:

• in the back office: evidence used by US Patent Office, used to detect Iraqi insurgents

• in the front office, making government really accountable and helping other citizens

• but there is risk of negative impact as well

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Web 2.0 is a set of values more than a set of technologies

ValuesUser as producer, collective intelligence,

openness “by default”, perpetual beta, ease of use

TechnologyBlogs, Podcast, Wiki, Social Networking, Peer-

to-peer, MPOGames, Mash-up Ajax, Microformats, RSS/XML

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Reminder: citizens and employees do it anyway

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