Obama’s web 2.0 strategy: from campaigning to governing, part 2

In my last post I started posting my initial thoughts on how Obama can tap into the same grassroots energy and organization that propelled him to the White House to address the major challenges that await his administration. A few readers have posted their thoughts and I’d like to highlight one from Justin Thorp.

Well he doesn’t seem to be utilizing any of the web 2.0 tools that he had in the campaign.

His Twitter account has gone quite stale over the last 6 days, just like what happened with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Do you think he’ll update it? Did he ever actually update it? It looks just like an RSS feed of events that he was broadcasting live from.

Also… the blog on Change.gov looks like a mechanism for glorified press releases.

So, no signs thus far that he’s going to use any of the grass roots community building Web 2.0 tools that he used in the campaign to actually reach out and touch the American people during his presidency.

Justin makes a good point. Now that the campaign is over it would all too easy to figure that the job of engaging the public is over until election time rolls around again in 2012. But it’s also a bit early to rush to judgment so let’s give Obama a few more weeks to get settled.

In this new post I’d like to emphasize the importance of reaching outside the traditional boundaries of government institutions to leverage the skills, knowledge and resources that civic and private sector organizations can contribute to the design and delivery of public services.

Here’s the rationale: In our increasingly networked world, issues and problems easily and quickly spill outside the organizational and even geographic boundaries of governmental institutions. While collaboration technologies have evolved at an incredible rate, the application of these technologies to assist governments in dealing with problems is completely dependent on institutional and organizational learning that is proceeding at a snail’s pace.

So I’ve argued that there’s a growing imperative to seize the new function-rich infrastructure of the Web 2.0 to open-up the government’s approach to public policy-making and service delivery. Rather than have agencies manage everything in-house, public services could be provided by any combination of public agencies, the private sector, a community group, or citizens, using the Web as a mechanism for collaboration, innovation and engagement. And, rather than treat citizens as inert consumers, recipients of government services and benefits could become prosumers – shaping the policy and the structures of program, benefits and services for their individual needs. This in turn will lead to better outcomes that better map onto the needs and behaviors of the people that use them.

As my colleague Maryantonett Flumian put it “The big question is, what roles and responsibilities will government, citizens, not-for-profits and business assume in a society where knowledge is everywhere, where hierarchies are anachronisms, and where “the state” is no longer king of the jungle, but part of an ecosystem energized by mass collaboration?”

Take education, health care and social security, for example. In most public sector “marketplaces” governments maintain a monopoly on service provision and most services are delivered one-size-fits-all. Even in the shift to e-government, many agencies have largely replicated physical world distribution systems on the Web, thus ignoring one of the most powerful implications of the Internet—the ability to create new forms of value by focusing on and transforming core competencies while creating partnerships for non-core activities. By assembling networks of citizens, private firms, non-profit organizations and other agencies on a Web-based platform, governments can offer greater innovation, choice and variety to citizens. In some areas, it could be advantageous to go one step further by offering citizens a basket of services and providers to “purchase” with their tax dollars and many other possible business models that emphasize choice in service venues, providers and options.

We haven’t see too many great examples of this in government, but the British National Health Service (NHS) recently respond to public demand for choice in health care by implementing what it describes as a “dramatic expansion in patient choice.” The introduction of free choice means, among other things, that patients referred to see a specialist are themselves able to choose where they are treated from any hospital that meets NHS standards (whether publicly or privately operated). Patient choice, in turn, introduces an element of competition that should encourage poor facilities to improve as patients seek out practitioners in the best hospitals.

Obama has called for more creative delivery strategies for public services and emphasized the importance of choice in education and health care. Give me your thoughts: Where else could choice make a difference and how could the Obama administration use the Web to enable a more collaborative and user-driven approach to service delivery?