WRITTEN ON March 24th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Ideal government IT strategy, Uncategorized

First presentation of our crowdsourced “ideal government IT strategy” #idealgits work was yesterday to Rt Hon Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform.

Jim is tasked with all digital aspects of the Smarter Government policy.

He couldn’t have been more welcoming, attentive or delightful. Fresh from a spate of announcements the day before, the Government is still keen to achieve more clarity and direction on digital strategy, not just in remaining weeks but on the basis there will still be a job to do for years yet. The first thing Jim said was he wanted to listen, and specifically to expert input from outside Government as well as to the civil service.

This is the main – perhaps the only – problem that ever really needed fixing to start to get ideal e-enabled government right. Perhaps the courteous and mutually respectful dialogue #CMRD is all that was ever needed.

Jerry and I whizzed through:
– why it makes sense to crowdsource a government IT strategy (just as DWP itself has done under James Gardner)
– history (eg the 2004 idealgits) and where we were now
– the #idealgits process with blogs, wiki and commentable versions, weekly beer meets

Then we went through two specific examples:

– governance and architecture: how we need to heal the split between IT strategy and real work public-services issues
– identifiers and personal data: how to restore dignity and control to individuals with a VRM agenda

We had a great discussion after (with their workload and at such a time, where does a Minister like Jim get all that alert brain power from?) Whatever happens next, we left with a bouncy spring in our step and faith in democracy in fine fettle.

Many thanks to: Harry Metcalfe and The Dextrous Web for running the blog, wiki and commentbale versions; Andy Millar for designing and hand-binding the #idealgits booklets (limited edition of six); David at BCS for hosting and helping with the heroic editing day; above all to everyone who has contributed, participated and commented to date.

#idealgits continues: the commentable version is here, and is far from done.