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Socialised government: the rise of micro public service uninstitutions

Personal Democracy Forum

This post brings together two chapters of the recently published report Social by Social: a practical guide to using new technologies to deliver social impact.

Commissioned by NESTA, it provides a collection of tools to engage communities, offer services, scale up activities and sustain public service projects both from inside and outside government. It also gives insight into some real world examples of the use of social technology in making change happen, two of which I draw on here – Will Perrin‘s take on ‘What this means for government‘ and my article on ‘What this means for public services‘ as a whole.

“If you’re interested in using social media in your organization, and you should be, Social by Social is the real deal.”Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist

Whatever digital engagment, We.Gov or Gov20 means to you, there’s no doubting North American and European government has come a long way over the past 18 months in better understanding and implementing social technologies for social change.

Reaching the wider collective consciousness for the first time in the UK back in March 2008 on release of the interim Power of Information Report, social tech came of age during the course of the 9 month Power of Information Taskforce. As the Taskforce itself said at the time of publishing its final report, “the Taskforce brought together a group from government, industry and the third sector who all share a passion for using ICT to enable better public service delivery.”

As in the US, led by inspiring organisations such as the Sunlight Foundation, much of the review focused on what is seen by many as the foundation of open and social government – the release of public data for transparency purposes. As Will says in his Social by Social article:

Citizens are taking control of public sector information and repurposing it in a process known as data mashing. Clever coders are getting better and better at bringing meaning and clarity to vast quantities of incomprehensible information... Political leaders’ interest in what was an obscure geeky area has been redoubled after the expenses scandal, where very large quantities of previously unpublished data were unexpectedly made public and analysed by journalists. Changes to Freedom of Information and the 30-year rule as well as 21st Century interfaces such as Whatdotheyknow.com will bring more and more data out for analysis. The 2011 Census will even have its own API. Data mashing and the new semantic technologies will create far more transparency and analysis by machines for non statistical people.

Widespread data mashing will be a step change in transparency. The public sector needs to engage with people who might mashup its data and be prepared to respond to unexpected outcomes. In America Obama has seized the agenda with data.gov and in the UK, the Cabinet Office has brought in Sir Tim Berners-Lee to advise on opening up government data. But both countries face a huge challenge to bring data mashing to the entirety of the public sector.

Coupled with the release of data for transparency and (online) public service improvement purposes, online social media have brought about a change in how citizens in the UK have been able to interact with government. While again facing the same issues as laid out by Will above (ie not widely known about or used), steps are being taken in pockets of government to pilot new approaches to online engagement around public services and public policy. The recent Digital Britain report exemplifies the possible, published in a variety of formats including a commentable version, providing a forum for discussion and a range of communications channels including a Twitter account.

However what none of this does is fundamentally address the current (gaping) power inbalance between the government and its citizens. These initiatives, while a step in the right direction, remain very much on the government’s own terms, merely allowing citizens to comment on late stage policy documents published in incomprehensible and unengaging English. As such, many of the well documented cultural challenges (whether weak leadership, complex procurement or a lack of incentive to take “risks”) remain barriers to true and system wide change. Policy making remains very much the preserve of the ‘expert’, in the main only drawing on online tools for PR and political purposes to give a sense of listening and engagement at a point in the process which is too late for any true change to be made.

Thankfully this painfully slow and measured top down change is being challenged and turbo charged by truly disruptive, rapid and needs driven change from outside of government. While data may be the foundation to open government, Gov20 means technology that disrupts from both inside and outside of government, working hand in hand to make change happen. As I put it in Social by Social:

For many the speed and scale of this change is not enough and outside of government change is taking a very different form. Change is emerging from the bottom up, with citizens coming together around shared needs and interests and self-organising to resolve the challenges they face together… Communities of purpose (whether by geography or common cause) are coming together to take on what may have previously been seen as the role of the government in public service delivery, or otherwise acting to publicly hold the government to account on its service delivering… Enabled by the power of the web, public services are beginning to be rebuilt from the bottom up, formed around real rather than perceived need and with people speaking for themselves in their own words and through their own experiences and passions.

These nimble micro public service uninstitutions, from School of Everything to Enabled by Design to Patients Opinion (given a helping hand from iniatives such as Social Innovation Camp and Talk about Local), are redefining public services as we’ve come to know them, socialising them in the true sense of the word.

Without any shadow of a doubt, change is happening at an ever quickening pace driven by the power of the Internet. Whether driven by The Gov or We .Gov:

The web provides limitless possibility in every direction and it is now up to the government to work out how best to shape and support ‘public services 2.0’ – and define its own role within it.

via personaldemocracy.com

Posted via web from 3BL Media’s Posterous

Japanese Women Reassess Gender Equity

This blog entry follows Devin Stewart’s visit to Japan.

The Japanese are one big family, it is often said. Small trends and changes in the family mood are amplified and exaggerated in the press–no matter if the trends are real or imagined. In fact, there is a whole industry, involving TV commentators, the print press, social scientists, and small businesses, that taps into these blips. One of the most salient trends I detected during my recent trip to Japan (visiting Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kushiro) was a subtle shift in the attitudes of young women toward gender equity.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about a new trend in Japan–again whether it is real or imagined is debatable. The article (titled “With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts”) said that some women are choosing to become hostesses in order to survive during the recession and that the image of hostessing as a job has gained some respectability. The article’s sensational photo featured a single mother who works as a hostess (oh no, Japan’s mothers are becoming prostitutes!).

I asked a Japanese friend, who is an MBA candidate in Japan, about this article and she said that the deeper issue is that single women in their late 20s and 30s are kicking up their search for financial stability. This drive includes doing previously shunned jobs or searching for husbands by engaging in “kon katsu” or “marriage hunting,” which includes the use of websites that help women find men. Given the U.S. media’s fondness for exoticizing Japan, what are we to make of this new trend? During my recent trip, I was eager to find out.

After talking with many people during this trip, my view is that this trend is both much ado about nothing and much ado about something very subtle, but not necessarily what one would expect on the surface. Keep in mind my view is based on conversations only, not quantitative analysis.

In one regard, this story is about nothing much or at least something that has been going on for a long time in Japan and in the world. Men and women need ways of finding spouses in all countries. Given Japan’s ostensible shy culture, its society has developed indirect methods of match making. In the past, it was arranged marriages (“omiai”). In the recent past, it was singles parties at restaurants (“gokon”). In today’s digital world, the newest version of this method is match making websites and other services that facilitate marriage hunting. No big change.

But in another regard, something else is going on here. Women seem to be reassessing gender equity. To understand, we have to go back about ten years. During the middle of Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s and early 2000s, economic growth was weak and companies were trying to respond–as was the government. Policymakers and businesses appeared to have found a mutually beneficial solution: tap into Japan’s under utilized resource–its women’s human capital. From the policy community, this idea was captured by my former boss and former MITI official Nobuo Tanaka in his essay “Girls, Be Ambitious,” published in the early 2000s. Here is his essay’s sober conclusion:

Encouraging women to enter more fully into the labor force will increase competition for jobs at a time when Japan’s unemployment rate is at a post-war high; salaries for male workers could suffer as a result. But two working family members instead of one, which is still more or less the norm in Japan, means more income for the household. Also, it could encourage the sharing of housekeeping chores and child-rearing, tasks which are really much more tiring than office work, as a famous female ex-MITI official once said.

One of our recent speakers, Goldman Sachs Japan Chief Strategist Kathy Matsui, remarked that she was surprised to discover it is not only Japanese labor conventions that keep women from participating more fully in the workforce, but a tangible lack of career aspirations among Japanese women themselves. In her investigations into the economic implications of Japanese women in the labor force, an area that she calls “Womanomics,” she notes that fostering career ambition is something that must be addressed as well.

It is difficult to say whether this can, in fact, be addressed through policy: it may be an educational, or even simply a child-rearing, issue. But ambitiousness and career aspirations are very much a desirable characteristic in the upcoming generation of Japanese young women. There is no doubt that they can make a significant contribution to the economic restructuring of Japan, something that we, as well as all of you outside of Japan, are anxious to see emerge.

Meanwhile, from a businessman’s perspective, this idea seemed appealing in that women could be hired part-time, thus the birth of another trend in Japan–the furita and arubaito (part time workers). It seemed to be a win-win-win situation–policymakers found a new resource for Japan’s economy, businesses found new flexible labor, and women found a new role in the workplace and a new sense of equity. In fact, women could pursue a dream of becoming career women. But how did it turn out?

For some women, the dream was fulfilled–they found careers. For others, the dream was ephemeral–they found drudgery in part time work with no social safety net and no stability. The current recession is hitting these women especially hard as they are seen as expendable–thus the New York Times article about women trying previously undesirable types of professions. As my MBA friend put it, women are doing whatever it takes to find financial stability, whether it be in becoming hostesses or trying updated versions of the age-old match-making practice in Japan. Women are also re-thinking gender roles.

My sociologist friend puts it another way. There are two successful types of couple equity: (traditional) complementary relations where the man does certain tasks (say working full time) and the woman does other tasks (say shopping and raising children); and equal relations where both the man and the women pursue the same tasks (say careers, shopping, and raising children). For centuries, Japan has favored the complementary type of relationships and thus its society has been structured to facilitate it. The newer, equal relationship has had some negative consequences: some women chased their careers and now find themselves alone; or in some cases, raising children and pursuing a career has just proven untenable in Japanese society. As my friend put it, women’s expectations and goals have changed and they are therefore reassessing what fairness means between the sexes.

Does this mean the drive for gender equality has failed in Japan? Was the push for women to chase careers misguided? It is too soon to tell. But all of this raises a subtle question. Equity, equality, fairness, and well-being are all virtuous goals for a society. Equality between the sexes and the dream of raising children in a happy home are reasonable goals. But as the Japanese case shows, they can be mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, these trade offs are not unique to Japan either. In a recent phone call back home, I learned about the struggles of Washington’s career women in their 30s. Loneliness has driven them to use the dreaded match-making websites. Is this a unavoidable byproduct of modern living?

Devin Stewart’s original content can be found at Fairer Globalization