Citizen Collaboration for Public Services

Norm Jacknis | April 27, 2009 - 12:15am | ShareThis | Email This!

With this first post, I'm pleased to be able to blog on techPresident.com and Personal Democracy Forum. I've been very impressed by the work of Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry. The daily digest is one of my best sources of ideas. I hope I can help add to the body of new ideas for everyone else who reads it. And, I also hope, you can help me clarify and improve my ideas.

I spent more than ten years as CIO of Westchester County, New York and about a year ago joined Cisco's pro-bono strategic advisory unit/think tank, working with government leaders.

This has enabled me to look at the use of technology through the eyes of elected chief executives - governors, mayors, county executives - who are often more open to personal democracy than are those at lower levels of government. For many of these elected officials, the kind of communications that can occur now is a necessity to govern. Without that, they, like average citizens, can be limited by the inertial tendencies of well entrenched bureaucrats. These elected officials may hold office, but their ability to govern will be constrained.

So in today's New York Times Business Section, there was an article that relates to an idea that I have been discussing with these officials for some time - that government leaders can use the technologies inherent in the Web to facilitate collaboration among citizens themselves to deliver, at least the first line of, public services. This goes beyond the idea of getting citizen "input" to creating citizen action.

The Times article, titled "Customer Service? Ask a Volunteer", describes the way that Verizon uses unpaid volunteers to supply customer service - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26unbox.html. This isn't new. Among other companies, ATT has done the same thing for awhile at http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/.

What these private companies have learned is that people who do not work for the company are often more credible with other customers than employees. When these companies use these public forums, of course, they need to have a certain tolerance for criticism. Looked at the right way, though, this criticism is a form of free market research and can alert a company early to a brewing problem before that problem gets completely out of hand.

That same logic applies to government.

Moreover, there is a pattern in the use of technology that makes this timely for government. A little background: when information technology was first introduced in business quite a while ago, the first obvious consequence was that it diminished the intermediary role of middle management. With technology widespread among the general public now, we will begin to see the same disintermediation in the public sector. Now some services that the government used to have to spend lots of money on - for paid civil service or outside contractors - can be delivered by facilitating collaboration among citizens themselves.

I'm working with a large, innovative, county government that is facing a dramatic decline in revenues over the next few years. Given their fiscal outlook, citizen collaboration may be the only way that some public services can be adequately sustained in the future.

I suppose that Verizon, which arguably does not have the greatest reputation for customer service, feels that it cannot do any worse with volunteers. That Verizon can get people to do this is a marvel to me. It should be much easier in the public sector, since people have a direct interest in the success of their community and government.

And government can start with some basic services where the only necessary expertise is having gone through the process once yourself. So, a senior who has gone through the process of applying for “meals on wheels” or para-transit can help a senior who hasn’t done so yet. Similarly, a parent with older kids can be the one who can explain how to another parent with younger kids how to enroll for Parks Department programs. What examples can you add to this list?

And what do you think of the idea in general? Thanks – I look forward to the conversation.