Opening up the Interior

Putting public service transactions online is very nice – over time they will become increasingly lovely, and useful, and enhanced by intermediaries, and perhaps cheaper, and so on. I include the provision of uncontroversially “factual” information in this category. These interactions will necessarily employ some navigational logic or another, and that might be improved over time. Perhaps there will be some plateau where this process of improving online services will stall, until more radical changes are made to the delivery machinery of government – some of them prompted by the process of fitting for e-delivery itself.

BUT

What I want is government made navigable. By “navigable” I mean in the internet sense, but also… understandable – explained – guided through - without prejudice to whether I want to get (or offer!) services, transactions, knowledge, help etc, or to exercise my democratic functions as a citizen. By the last of these I don’t particularly mean some kind of electronic voting in elections or even referenda - I mean being consulted and sticking my oar in about how things can/should be done - and not just me but people who are a bit less intenet savvy and argumentative, and generally middle-class, than me.

There’s an element of the ‘life episodes’ logic in there - but in comparison to the range, inventiveness and penetration of views into government and public bodies that I want to see made navigable in this way, life episodes are the first mudskipper hauling itself up the beach and then realising it’s a bit dry and hot out there.

Of course - I want to see this guide concentrated around a single, well known and well used, rallying point.

I want to be able to find out and understand who does what, where, why and how and for who. I want this to be easy, irrespective of your prior knowledge, and I want to be able to get in there any number of ways without finding dead ends. I want the “what” in particular to be in plain english and to relate to real lives as well as to global politics. Of course the public service, and transaction, and information, providers can then hang their own links and materials off this map, as much as off any other, to their hearts’ content.

I want government made navigable - central, local, quasi… the lot

I suspect that were this project to happen, the people who set about making it navigable would suffer so much in the process that (preferably nearer the beginning than the end) they would go back to Whitehall and say - “Look - if we do this diligently it’s going to be an expensive and tortuous nightmare, and it’s in danger of portraying you lot as the custodians of the administrative equivalent of a favela” You’d better start making some changes before people come in and see this.

I think this navigable government might otherwise be achieved by a sort of Lewis and Clark expedition ‘up the government’ to make maps, collect samples, draw sketches, keep diaries and put it online – to pursue the analogy I’d like to see volunteers come and help in their wake (in wagon trains, towing cows and carrying seed and ploughs). So maybe it’s more like this. Government could fund this expedition themselves and open up the interior, or somebody can do it for them… {and thus be exposed to the temptation of inviting Mark Thomas to be the “warm up man” ...}

I’m talking about keeping it simple - who deals with what, who do they report to, who are they accountable to, who ulitmately delivers their services, who are their ‘partners’, who do you complain to…? By keeping it simple, by concentrating on purpose and communication and responsibility and control – the ‘navigable government’ project would sidestep that particular species of internal politics, and ungainly big money programmes, associated with the development of actual online service delivery per se. The navigable government project should travel light, and could manifest a classic internet light touch, where the knowledge and structure themselves constitute the accumulated value and not, for once, the technological infrastructure and the big transactional databases.

In keeping it simple (if only in the sense of saying nothing about the actual policies or rules or rights and wrongs) the project would concentrate on organisation and structure as laid bare by navigational and taxonomic principles... and, most importantly, on where the democratic institutions touch the executive and the operational arms.

In a phrase - I WANT GOVERNMENT MADE NAVIGABLE… nothing else… ... yet.

Published by Uncle Buck on 27/09/04 at 8:08am

Comments

Maybe it’s more like this...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Reply by on 10/11/04 at 5:10 pm
We’re paying for the damn thing so we ought to be able to understand it - is that it?

Reply by W on 03/30/05 at 3:36 pm

Next entry: How does e-enabled help get those who most need it?

Previous entry: What we have here is a failure to communicate

Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

Comment

Anyone is free to comment. Or mail with an article if you want to be an author. I'll post it up and send you a password. This whole thing is supported by Kable.

Authors

Member List

Sign up for new articles

Opening up the Interior

Comments

Ideal Government

Categories

Comment

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics

Opening up the Interior

Comments

Ideal Government

Categories

Comment

Sponsor

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics