As of 2008, the war for good jobs has trumped all other leadership activities […] The lack of good jobs will become the root cause of almost all world problems that America and other countries will face. – Jim Clifton Jobs and economic security. These are the most important issues on the minds of Americans [...]

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Innovation and Transformation

Last week, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think-tank based in Washington, DC, hosted From Small Innovations to Social Transformation, a panel discussion on public sector innovation in support of the Center's Doing What Works project. Accompanied by the release of two new reports, "Capital Ideas: How to Generate Ideas in the Public Sector" and "Scaling "New Heights: How to Spot Small Successes in the Public Sector and Make Them Big", the event featured the reports' authors Jitinder Kohli (CAP) and Geoff Mulgan (The Young Foundation, UK), as well as panelists Willam  Eggers (Deloitte), Judith Rodin, (Rockefeller Foundation), and James Shelton (US Department of Education).

New Social Compact For Innovation

Public sector innovation matters. It's not about about government adopting new set of best practices, but about fundamentally renegotiating the roles of government, business, philanthropy, and civil society – transforming how we govern ourselves, share the commons, and construct a sustainable foundation for future generations across the globe.

The panel offered a torrent of highlights:

• The unapologetic assertion that government has a role to play in innovation, that progressives should quick to embrace it. (G. Mulgan)
• The US government did play an important role in the creation of the American (private-sector) innovation system, which was been the envy of the world for many decades.
• Key industries poised for growth in the coming years include those in which government plays a key role – health and social care, education, and energy and infrastructure, for example.
• The demand for public services so far exceeds the resources available to provide them (and increasingly so – see California's current budget woes) that incremental productivity improvements or marginal budget-cutting will be enitrely inadequate.
• The case that problems are too complex and interdependent – and the stakes are too high – for the old model of philanthropy-as-social-venture-captial and government-as-scaler-and-funder-of-programs to be effective over time. (J. Rodin)
• We need a more systems-based approach where every sector (business, government, philanthropic and non-profit, and citizen) innovates where it can, intentionally connecting, sharing, and leveraging assets and insights on an ongoing basis.
• We need not just product-based innovation aimed at the solutions to a particular problem but also process innovation that will help all sectors find better solutions to all kinds of problems (and build an evidence base) over time.
• We can also take advantage of our vastly increased connectivity to emphasize recombinant strategies - taking existing innovations and mashing them up in new ways to create new value out of them in business, government, or communities across the globe.

Resources for Change

The reports themselves are easily accessible, genuinely informative, and directed at those in and outside of government.

Go ahead. Watch and read for yourself – and share with every innovator, innovation champion, and change agent you know.

[Full disclosure: I worked with Geoff Mulgan in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in 2001 and have followed his work (and adventures since). I am an unabashed and unapologetic fan, but I would (and do) champion good ideas wherever they come from.]

While public officials from President Obama to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal continue to emphasize BP's responsibility for the disaster - and the cost of cleaning it up - Americans expect the US Government to respond. And it does, naming Coast Guard commandant Admiral Thad W. Allen to oversee the federal response, including the efforts of Environmental Protection Agency Admininistrator (and New Orleans native) Lisa Jackson; Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar; and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Science Administrator Jane Lubchenco, among dozens of state and local agencies and emergency services.

While this event is extraordinary, Government faces many challenges like it - so-called "wicked problems" characterized by their complexity, scope, scale, and resistance to narrow solutions. Unemployment, the credit crisis, climate change, food safety, economic revitalization, the competitiveness agenda - these are difficult issues that citizens expect their Governments to address, even as Government options for managing them are limited.

Why the expectations gap?

Donald Kettl, author of The Next Government of the United States, argues that in the US, this gap stems from the "vending machine" view of Government most citizens hold: the idea that we pay-in (through taxes) and in return, we expect specific solutions (legislation, resources, agencies, regulations, programs, etc.) for which we can hold Government accountable.

This (mechanistic) approach is highly efficient (and appropriate) for simple, predictable, work - processing passports or unemployment claims, for example. When it doesn't work, we 'bang it around' (like the vending machine) by complaining, protesting, or calling our Congressional representatives. But for most of what Government does, this model is not only inappropriate, it's an inaccurate reflection of how actually Government functions.

First, Government services are often aimed at wicked problems and increasingly provided through vast networks of contractors (private for- and not-for-profit organizations) as well through cost-sharing agreements with state and local agencies. This makes many Government services hard to discern on the ground, providing a possible explanation for protest signs like this one:

Second, Government typically sets standards and then relies on the participation of citizens, residents, firms, and communities to meet them, and to report exceptions. The US Food and Drug Administration's approach to food safety is a good example of this. The Government  does not test every vegetable for bacteria before it is shipped to  grocery stores or restaurants (nor could it). But when hazardous bacteria are found and reported, Government establishes bans, announces recalls, and exercises its power to prevent further damage and expose the causal chain.

Third, and increasingly, Government coordinates, even collaborates, with citizens directly to generate ideas and partner on solutions to shared challenges. While new and experimental, social technologies are beginning to reconnect people to Government in ways that set the stage for new models of Government - more transparent, more participatory, more accountable, and sometimes, unexpected, as in this suggested grassroots approach to cleaning up the Gulf oil slick:

This meme, the evolution of Gov2.0 and the remaking Government and public policy, will be a regular topic here at Networked Publics.

Wikipedia identifies 20 different varieties. A Google search returns over 180M results. The word, derived from the 16th century French platte-forme meaning map, first made itself known to me in the form of a pair of (tall) shoes, and later, as a technology environment in which to learn and experiment.

In today's public policy environments, "platform" is the new black. Platforms connect voters and candidates (John Kitzhaber for Governor), government agencies and citizens (US Department of Labor on Facebook), community based organizations and volunteers (VolunteerMatch), neighbors and neighbors (PortlandNeighborhoods), and so on, with the Web serving as the underlying operating system for new modes of interacting. (Incidentally, if you are reading this, you are arguably sharing a platform with me and the Smart + Connected Communities initiative right now).

The Nature of Platforms

In January, JP Rangaswami named four dimensions of platforms at the DGREE 2010 Summit.

1. Purpose. Whether an airport, the stock exchange, or Facebook, platforms maintain a clear purpose that attracts people with an interest in that purpose.
2. Standards. Because a platform brings people together, it employs  standards so that activities performed by the crowd work better for everyone. In an airport, we all have to pass through security with our  appropriately-sized carry-on bags. In a social network, we share  information about ourselves in order to access people and information important to us.
3. Participation of different kinds of entities (with different business models). A platform enables a range of activities in which different  kinds of organizations and entities participate. A conference is a kind  of platform, for example, where some people attend as individuals, while  others attend on behalf of firms - probably paying different rates based on when they registered, whether they are sponsoring, or what they  plan to do during the conference.
4. Action enabled by but independent of platform itself. Social networking  platforms that encourage community-level action demonstrate the power of this kind of leverage everyday.

At its core, a platform is a foundation upon which we build or do other things. It's an enabling system for people to not only interact with their governments, and participate in the delivery of government services, but to actually "[reconstitute] what is a government."

Increasingly, platforms connect people (from across agencies, sectors, and geographies who might not otherwise meet), data (from anywhere or anything), services (that help people share, learn, act and measure, collaboratively), and possibility.

And that makes platform a perfect (if evolving) metaphor for the kind of foundation we need to tackle our most critical challenges and find ways to realize sustainable prosperity in communities all over the world.

Reinventing Our Government

Sadly, we were not able to attend last month’s Gov2.0 Summit in Washington, DC. I did contribute the to “What does Gov2.0 mean to you?” video contest, with this, but I really liked Andrew’s (@Krazykriz), which I embedded above. However, thanks to social media, the community that did attend let us in on some of the action.

• News coverage and links to presentation files
• Summit videos (blip.tv)
• TwitterStream

Other Gov2.0 Resources

• GovLoop (Ning network, just purchased by GovDelivery)
• Sunlight Foundation
• GovFresh
• You2Gov

Gov2.0 Expo May 2010

Next up? Gov2.0 Expo, May 25-27, 2010 (DC). Sign-up for information here. Word on the street is that the May event will offer more relevant content for state and local government folks.

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