Most of my talk was about the role of mass collaboration could play in driving the success of small and medium size enterprises. While the focus in Washington has been on organizing bailouts for large enterprises to provide short-term damage control, I argued that it’s more sensible over the long-term to provide stiumlus for SMEs given the critical role they play in innovation and job creation.

What really seemed to intrigue the audience, however, was the few minutes I spent discussing the potential for using prediction markets to make smarter forecasts and decisions. I used intrade’s prediction market for the presidential election as an example. But what the audience wanted to know, more than anything else, was whether a prediction market could help them forecast the end of this economic nightmare.

Well, there is no such prediction market (at least not on intrade.com) but there are plenty of indicators to suggest that the intrade community sees little hope in the months ahead. At todays rates:

• Probability that the US economy will be in recession in 2009 — 90%.
• Probability that the DOW will close on or above 11,000 by December 31, 2008 — 0%.
• Probability that the unemployment will be greater than 5% in December, 2008 — 100%
• Probability that the US economy will go into depression in 2009 — 15%

All of these predictions seem rather obvious now (though one would have done quite well had they bet back in August 08 that the economy would be in recession in 2009) and I don’t see anyone willing to go out on a limb to predict when all of this might end. Given the current state of flux, such reticence is understandable. Maybe someone in the reader community would care to make a prediction? Perhaps you’d like to provide some solace to my friends in Kansas City ;-).

While we’re at it, is there a role for mass collaboration in getting us out of this economic mess. What do you think about the merits of bailing out failing automotive giants versus a longer-term emphasis on stimulating the small and medium size business sector? Or given that large and small enterprises are so intertwined through supply chains, etc., should we be trying to protect both?

Organizations like Peter Gabriel’s Witness traveled deep into the jungles of eastern Burma to document the military’s persistent attacks on ethnic minorities. Now Gabriel has launched his own platform called the Hub, a rallying point for human rights activists who can upload photos and videos to document abuses (see demo here).

Check it out — the site has got some nice functionality and it looks like they have plans for a lot more.

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?

As Obama has noted, there is a steep hill ahead to climb. Think of the challenges: renewing government and democracy; fixing the economy, education and health care; accelerating scientific discovery; fighting climate change and providing global security, to name a few. And he must do all of this with diminishing financial resources.

Obama needs to assemble a real A team of leaders and we’ll be hearing more about his cabinet choices today. But his only real hope in dealing with the tremendous challenges the country (world) faces will be to harness the collective ingenuity of citizens on a massive scale. In other words, he must enlist a level of participation in generating and acting on innovative solutions that has no obvious parallel in history.

Obama has already built a vast network of committed supporters. He has the inherent charisma and intelligence to lead. The questions now is how will Obama mobilize his supporters to affect real change? Will he “open source” government much the way thousands of dispersed Linux programmers converged on the Internet to develop one of the world’s leading computer operating systems? What mechanisms will he deploy to channel citizen input into policy-making? How will he engage all sectors of society in carrying out much-needed reforms in sectors such as education, health care, energy and finance?

Over the next few days and weeks I would like to offer a few Government 2.0 strategies for the Obama administration to pursue. I’ve got dozens of ideas but I would not want to spoil the fun by releasing them all at once!

So, here’s today’s first idea: Set up a series of citizen councils, organized around key policy themes, and equip users with an Ideastorm. At first these communities might look and feel a lot like Digg.com, the popular technology news aggregator. Users post policy suggestions and the community votes so that the most popular ideas rise to the top. Ideas are harvested from a broader spectrum of the population and the user-driven idea filtering process eases the burden on staff resources by harnessing “the crowd” to sift through mountains of feedback.

Dell Computer’s IdeaStorm provides a useful (albiet imperfect) template for the administration to follow. Less than a week after Dell’s IdeaStorm was launched, users had contributed over 1,300 ideas that were voted on more than 120,000 times. Many of the ideas contributed by Dell customers have already been translated into product and service innovations and customers can discuss these ideas directly with Dell’s product developers. Herein lies the critical peice. The administration will need to demonstrate that the ideas the community generates will be considered in the legislative process and acted on quickly if they receive support from democratically elected representatives. Easier said than done, of course, but there will be much more to come on this later. Stay tuned!

Normally, if you are a guitar player and you want to play music with people, you put a classified ad out or you look for someone to jam with in your immediate environment. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up schedules to play with other people and get together with all your gear, so you limit your search to only those people who are the best match for your age/taste/style/genre.

With online collaboration, finding other players is much easier, and so people are more flexible in their boundaries. We have 16 year old metal fanatics playing with 60 year old blues guys and both are having a good time at it. So we are not only crossing geographical boundaries, we are crossing generation gaps, genre rifts, style canyons, etc:)

Makes me want to restring my telecaster and start jamming.

So it turns out that ChaCha is a mobile answer service for people who need information quickly on the go. Let’s say, for some reason, you want to know how many seconds there are in a decade but your math skills aren’t up to scratch (apparently there are either 315,532,800 or 315,619,200 depending on whether the decade contains two leap years, or three). Or maybe you want to know who scored the winning goal in the 1966 World Cup clash between England and West Germany (it was Geoff Hurst, the only player ever to have scored three times in a World Cup final).

You text your question in conversational English to the ChaCha system (you can also leave a voice mail). Your question is routed to a specialist in the ChaCha network (mostly Internet savvy teenagers) who provides an answer within minutes. If you want to impress your friends and associates with your wit and sense of humor, ChaCha will also send you jokes!

On average, ChaCha specialists make between $3 and $9 an hour, but the most proficient Internet researchers can make a lot more (compensation is determined by one’s speed and accuracy in answering questions). My driver’s daughter is apparently one of them. He says all of her friends collaborate with one another to find answers fast, coordinating their searches using IM. Sounds like a decent day job for a high school student, at least until artificial intelligence makes all of this redundant.

Having already launched a number of innovative projects that are increasing the transparency of the US government (including MapLight and Congresspedia) the Sunlight Foundation foundation believes it can help increase participation in the legislative process by providing a forum where all legislation proposals can be subject to open public review in real-time.

Some will argue that the legislative process in the US already invites input through a variety of channels. As our collaborator Beth Noveck notes in a forthcoming report for nGenera (not yet published, but watch this space):

Corporations participate through lobbyists and notice-and-comment rulemaking. NGOs funnel information to government through think tanks and their white papers and publications. Interest groups lobby and enlist their members to respond—usually with postcards and email—in rulemaking and legislative policymaking.

The problem is that the traditional “notice and comment” process tends to favor an entrenched machinery of lobbyists that represent well-connected and often deep-pocketed interests. How many ordinary citizens are even aware of the “notice and comment” periods and how many of those citizens will find the time and resoucres to make formal submissions? I’m guessing that the answer is very few.

So what is different about the more open and collaborative process that the Sunlight Foundation aspires to create with PublicMarkup.org?

One, it provides a neutral forum in which to debate policy issues. Two, by collecting legislation, summaries, resources and commentary in a single linkable location, it makes participation in the legislative process more accessible to citizens. Three, PublicMarkup.org could conceivably evolve into a more robust platform for wiki-drafting, complete with tools for collectively filtering, rating and analyzing evidence, discussion forums for deliberation, and a wiki for drafting recommendations. Finally, by establishing a granular division of tasks (e.g., adding links, tagging and rating content, posting comments in a forum, drafting and editing recommendations, etc.), a collaborative process helps ensure that citizens with a limited amount of time can still make meaningful contributions to the process.

It’s the group dynamics that ultimately set this new collaborative approach apart from the traditional processes for rulemaking. In a conventional rulemaking process, atomized and often competitive groups submit comments that they hope will influence the legislative outcome. There is no incentive to compromise and there is often no dialogue whatsoever among the interest groups. When the period for comments is closed, it’s then up to a small group of public officials to sort through the commentary and reach a decision.

With a collaborative process, some of the burden of collecting, sorting, analyzing and drafting shifts to the public, leaving public officials in a position to steer and referree the process. An opportunity space opens up for deliberation, reflection and perhaps even compromise among multiple stakeholders.

Here’s how Noveck put it in her forhcoming report:

In a collaborative government, public participation is not pro forma. Though the recommendations made by private citizens are not binding, they are taken as serious contributions to the decision-making process. At the same time, collaboration assumes that stakeholders are qualified to make useful contributions to the subject- or industry-specific work of the agency. As such, a government agency that solicits public feedback employs a system to evaluate the input of the self-selecting private citizen. Only it is not the government agency that initially evaluates public feedback. Initially, ratings and recommendations remain in the hands of private citizens. Their recommendations are vetted by groups ancillary to the government agency. These groups comprise the very individuals who have volunteered their expertise in the first place. This alleviates some of the burden that participation outside of organizational boundaries creates for government officials.

Will PublicMarkup.org attract a critical mass of participants? And, will members of the US Congress actually pay attention? It seems unlikley that the latter will happen this time, but if the site evolves into a vital hub for policy debates with a diverse group of participants, then politicians will ignore forums like PublicMarkup at their peril.

The event was keynoted by Dave Weinberger (author of Everything is Miscellaneous and Small Pieces Loosely Joined and co-author of the infamous Cluetrain Manifesto). Having followed his work for some time, it was great to finally see him live.

NDU Government 2.0 symposium (image: http://www.rialtas.net)

I served on a panel, along with David Wennergren (DoD deputy Chief Information Officer) Bruce Klein (Cisco, US public sector) and Mike Bradshaw (Google, federal sector). Several bloggers have already produced excellent reports on the symposium (see here and here) so I won’t reinvent the wheel, but I will emphasive one point.

Government 2.0 is about much more than blogs, wikis and social networking. It’s about how the government sources expertise and how it orchestrates capability. It’s about marshalling the collective intelligence of society to address big issues like climate change and fiscal reform. It’s also about delivering services like education, health care and social security benefits more effectively by treating citizens as co-innovators rather than passive, inert consumers.

Social media has a role to play. But the hard problems relate to the people and institutions. A complex machinery of government has grown organically over the past century with multiple levels of government, hundreds of agencies, and overlapping lines of accountability. The complexity makes it difficult to implement reforms and change in the public sector is almost always slow and incremental.

Don’t get me wrong. There are a number of exciting web 2.0 projects in government (we’ve blogged about most of not all of them — check our Gov 2.0 tag). But the tendency is to sometimes assume that if an agency has a wiki, then it’s well on the road to Government 2.0. I guess the message I wanted to leave people with is that we have a long hard road left to travel.

If you haven’t heard of or experienced an ARG, check out Wikipedia’s comprehensive entry. The essential nugget is that an ARG is an interactive, Internet-based narrative where large numbers of game players collaborate to solve plot-based challenges and puzzles. Unlike a tightly-scripted game or media production, the outcome of an ARG is determined almost entirely by the players and their interactions.

Most, though not all, ARGs to date have been tied to product promotions (e.g. I love bees was a promotion for Halo 2) and televisions productions like Lost (see the Lost Experience). World Without Oil is one of the exceptions.

The premise of World Without Oil was simple and provocative: What if an oil crisis started on April 30, 2007 - what would happen? How would the lives of ordinary people change? Players were invited to imagine how their lives and communities would be different and how they would cope if the world’s oil suddenly dried up. The “plot” unfolded dynamically. First, the players read the “official news” and what other players were saying. Then, using a combination of blog posts, videos, images and even voice mails, they told their own stories of the challenges they were facing. As the crisis continued, players updated their stories with further thoughts, reactions and solutions.

The game ended after 32 days, having engaged thousands of players around world and woven the fabric of 1,500 stories into what Ken describes as “living breathing mega narrative that presented some eerily plausible scenarios, complete with practical courses of action to help prevent such an event from actually happening.”

Herein lies the key point. World Without Oil presented players with an engaging, interactive structure in which ordinary individuals could collectively imagine how the world would respond to what we all know is an inevitability: sometime in the near future (and perhaps sooner than we might expect) we will all live in a world in which we can no longer rely on fossil fuels to power our daily existence.

There is a tendency in public policy circles to assume that issues like climate change are sufficiently complex that the average citizen has little to contribute to the debate about appropriate solutions, so the job of coming up with solutions is therefore best left to the experts. To some extent it may be true that the “non-expert” might have little to say about the intricacies of a cap-and-trade system. But the average citizen is an authority on their daily lives. Ken points out that “When we were asking people to talk about what’s going on in their neighborhood, we were deliberately focusing on something which they are experts at.”

“With just a little bit of narrative structure,” says Ken, “people could post their story and say what they wanted to say without the fear of being kind of contradicted or shouted down. Because we’re talking about an alternate reality and in a way we’re kind of talking about the future.”

Ken notes that the narrative structure encourages “peer learning.” “The game becomes this incredibly enriching experience, with people learning from other people, joining a community, learning new skills, getting access to novel data and information and then using the game experience to make real changes in the way they conduct their lives.”

There is no doubt that fighting climate change will require a massive worldwide effort that could dramatically alter much about the world as we know it today. We need more than just smart public policy. And we need more than a comprehensive retooling of industry and our infrastructure. We all need to give up our oil addictions and that, in turn, will require us to make some pretty profound changes in our daily lives. Alternate reality games like World Without Oil could play a vital role in engaging the public in making those vital changes.