Today I attended the inaugural “Gov 2.0 Meetup” presentation, taking place at City Hall. This is a summary of my reflections.

Gov 2.0 is not Government use of Social media;

The event’s speaker, Wayne Chu, Research Manager at Samara Canada presented what amounted to be a preview to a research paper to be released next month from Samara about political discussions in social media, illustrating the disconnect between legislations and the occupy movement. Yeah, I wasn’t all that clear about the relation to Gov 2.0, but it seemed clear having asked him what the link was, Wayne Chu equated the work of government with politics, political engagement, and political discourse, which is not tangential to the work of government. That’s like saying road deaths are due to the automotive industry. Sure the car hit the pedestrian, and sure that car was built to go fast, but saying that the Ford Motor Company is responsible for the pedestrian’s death is tangential. You’d have to make a leap to that conclusion after rendering the driver, urban planning, and even the pedestrian as responsible. Read more »

You have less bricks. So build smaller walls that line paths instead of walls that block.

Subtitle: What if 10% in cuts mean a public service that is 10% more collaborative and innovative?

Let me get into a very touchy topic for public servants: their jobs. It’s not a popular point to make that so many public servants need to be employed to the work of government. Isn’t there room for cost-cutting, job-slashing and re-structuring? What if this could be done while improving public services?

To cut the deficit and avoid raising taxes, the conservative government is looking at slashing federal government jobs. More than 10% are slated to be cut, with the unions reacting saying it will result in reduced quality of services from the federal government. Firms studying the issue are concerned for the possibly 22’000 jobs possibly cut from the National Capital Region alone, with others arguing the public is not concerned for the jobs of overpaid public servants while the country’s economy is facing challenges of its own.

Let’s get into the reasons why I think the cuts may not be a bad thing:

More public servants does not mean better services

It’s no secret that the public service has empire-builders who grow their teams to expand their sphere and influence. As clerk of the privy council 2006-2009, Kevin Lynch grew the public service to towering heights. Did the quality of services increase?

Throwing people at a program, problem or project doesn’t improve it. The public service doesn’t work like an assembly line. In fact it can do the very opposite, adding delays to an already mired bureaucracy with endless unnecessary reviews, meetings, and administrative costs. Check out “the mythical man month” for more information on this concept.

The role of the public service isn’t to keep public servants employed

The role of the public service is to support government. To do that, the public service needs the best people who can do the job. Like with any organisation, there are great workers and not-so-great ones. But it could be very difficult to explain to unemployed Canadians that tax dollars are spent to have public servants keeping their jobs instead of other options.

Let’s take this to further extremes: What if the work of government could be done by 1 person? Would this be a good thing? Or 1 million? Your answer may depend on a difference of cost. Mine does. And lacking more ambitious goals for this government, I do think the work of the public service can be done with less people.

Finding opportunity in cuts

Times of cost-cutting provides a silver-lining for productivity and collaboration. As governments have to do more, or even the same, with less money, they’ll be open to different ways to do this. And this may involve working together, cooperating, sharing, heck, even working openly with the public to increase capacity (a not-so-novel idea called Open Government).

Moving forward

The cuts are inevitable. That much is certain. Jobs (or “boxes” as they’re called in government parlance) will be cut, and people with them. And people will be kept. Some in their jobs, some moved around. The most important part right now is the measure to be used by executives to decide who stays and who goes. And even executives are not immune to the cuts either.

There’s an opportunity to remake the public service, into a modern, efficient, innovative public service. An example of thinking innovatively when working with less is Wikipedia, born out of the tech bust. With venture capital all but gone, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales pursued opening up the world’s encyclopedia – all of it, editing, the tech support, administration – all of it – to the community. The potential here for Canada’s public service is just as grand.

Government executives are going to need to think very hard about the public service they want to end up with. This is the time to envision that. If executives seek merely a smaller version of its former inflated self, then 10%-15% across the board is a straight-forward decision. But if executives can envision a better public service, I have a few ideas.

3 Tips for executives looking to make their cuts in the public service

Know that you will need to change. You will need to think about new ways to do your job, and get it done. The old way of doing things will only carry you so far. The metrics, benchmarks and deliverables are going to change. Your success is now about having the team that can go beyond “getting it done” until the next round of cuts, it will be about having the team that is:

• resilient, adaptive, connected (instead of just knowledgeable with focused expertise);
• driven, engaged, (instead of just influential and well-spoken from 8 to 4);
• skilled with technology and tools (they learn anything, and the tools may get innovative);
• innovative, creative, out-of-the box thinking (instead of risk-aversive who keep you out of trouble).

Here is a strategy to do this.

Identify those you can no longer afford

Non-collaborators are expensive. Sure they get the job done, but some employees can be expensive, each and every time they get it done. Their hording of information helps very few, and when it does help, it helps because of a culture based on empire-building. If government is going to get open and productive, these employees will drag you down while others rise.

Do not get non-collaborators confused with the brazen advice given by disgruntled engaged and driven innovators. Driven collaborators are not easy to find if you don’t have much collaboration happening anyway. And these people will shine and be a powerful force with less barrier-builders.

Do keep your core group of barrier-busters, the collaborators, community supporters and innovators

These are the employees who are productive enough to cover the cut employees. They get the job done, and bring everyone up with them. They don’t horde information: they share it for everyone’s benefit. They plug expensive gaps, the bridge divides in talents, and link collaborators to find answers. You can’t always measure the value of these collaborative gnomes, but when it’s easier to measure a massive fail in productivity in your group, it’s because you don’t have enough of these kind.

Feed innovators, innovation, and innovative ideas

This idea costs executives exactly $0 to do. The innovative types can think outside-of-the box. You may already have them; they tweet, they blog, they attend events related to their job without expensing it. Getting their ideas isn’t hard: ask. Ask individually. Note the ideas. With less executives above you as well, you may be in a position to consider them.

*Update! Thought of 1 more:

Identify those with multiple talents, horizontal experience

Your team probably has those who have worn other hats in their public service career. Maybe you have a policy analyst with programming expertise, a programs officer with HR experience, a statistician with RFP writing skillzzz. Just because the classification system was introduced in the 60s doesn’t mean your team has to work in industrial era stovepipes (silos). These people with multiple hats are a boon for productivity:  it can be a lot of work to get a statistician up to speed for their little chunk of the work than just letting the programs officer do it and get reviewed by one. And a more trimmed-down public service will need to be more open about sharing the work.

Finale

That’s quite the silver-lining I’m painting on a gloomy cloud of cuts to the public service. I don’t wish job-loss on anyone not in a position to bear it; it’s a sucky situation for many to face, as is the stress that comes with it. I see much potential from the many hard-working and driven public servants I know. And from challenge comes opportunity, even the impending cuts. I’ve always said “I always prefer a room with half-as many people being twice as engaged.” I hope this will be realizable in the time ahead. And who knows, maybe Open Government will become more of a reality, because it sure hasn’t before.

Yesterday, Treasury Board President and Member of Parliament Honorable Tony Clement spoke yesterday about Open government, open data and and open dialogue at a Third Tuesday event in Ottawa. This page has a great summary of the event.

Tweeted photo of Tony Clement talking about Open Gov't

Clement is very knowledgeable about innovation, technology and open government, and certainly demonstrated it.  He underlined the importance of having a “productive, efficient and responsive public service, to deliver services with less resources” like using collaborative tools. These are words I can support! “The greater risk is to ignore it. We have to manage the risks, but the greatest risk is standing still.” Clement made mentions of the irony of some public servants being able to do more at Starbucks than at their desks. Although what isn’t clear is whether he is aware that public servants can be found doing actual work work at Starbucks because it can be impossible at their desk.

Sure, this is a lofty goal, and things take time. What has worried me for several years is that the government may be going in the opposite direction, which I will argue is worse than standing still. As society gets more complex, demands from citizenry get more pressing, and technology advances, here is a government that in practice is further blocking access of public servants to the internet. Unless public servants work harder and longer hours and miraculously more talented, they are becoming less productive, inefficient and certainly less responsive to the public, as access to the information and the tools to do their job becomes harder and even impossible.

I decided to ask Hon. Tony Clement about it. Paraphrased, here is the question I asked:

“I’m glad you mentioned you support a more productive and efficient public service. Of course we know alot of hard-working creative public servants, but increasingly they have to work harder and harder and be more creative with their work to get around blocked internet. I’m glad you pointed out how the new guidelines for the external use of social media support public servants’ use of social media, however before we had them we had more access to the net, and now that we have them we have more blocked internet. I’m interested to know if this trend is going to continue. I’d like to know what advice you have for public servants who want to support your endeavours with Open Government, who want to be more productive and efficient in their work to support Canadians.”

How I could’ve asked the question more honestly:

“How can public servants support you in your endeavours for Open Government if they have blocked access to the net? At my organisation, even the webpage promoting this event was blocked, as are tweets about it. Is it not a slap in the face to public servants who want to do better work to support the public and their ministers are blocked from accessing the very information they need to do their job?”

Unfortunately Clement’s answer wasn’t substantial. I paraphrase again:

“Now that we’ve got a report on how to implement Open Government, it’s still very early. My personal thinking is that the consequences need to be weeded out. We’ll ask staff for process, what the learning is and review.”

That’s quite a non-answer, a very typical “we’re managing it and will manage it further” kind of answer. His answer actually gets me more worried. Not only did he not answer the question (there’s no advice!), but there may be more troublesome times ahead. Will the internet be further blocked? Will more public servants have their internet blocked? Is Starbucks wi-fi going to need locations in government towers? Does Clement see Open Government as an engagement for only the public, not public servants?

I don’t know. And I don’t think I’ll be able to ask him the same question again and expect an answer. All the same, I appreciate the talk.

He did close with an interesting word:

“Reasonable people can disagree, but reasonable people can also change opinions”.

Mind you, there he was talking in defense of the scrapping of the long-form census.

More on what I’ve desperately written about Internet blocking:

1. The GoC can get on-board to Web 2.0 by first unblocking access to Web 2.0
2. Thought-experiment: What if public servants’ telephones were blocked?
3. Strategy to get your Internet unblocked

This photo from 2008 tells it all: Jerry Yang (center) hangs his head while talking with Google's co-founders. He had just turned down a very valuable buy-out offer from Microsoft.

I always find it interesting to follow the development tech companies. More than any other sector, the tech sector is a microcosm of accelerated time; you can witness their growth, assimilation and death within a matter of years, months even. It’s hard to write the case studies because before you think you’re beyond the shadow their success (or even death), there they are again, possibly in free-fall, or resurrected.

As the tech sector matured, developing greater rigour and discipline, we have seen digital companies sprout up from its auspices,  still with the same fervour for innovative approaches to engaging employees, creativity for meeting client demands, and capacity to redefine the rules of business. How much of this can you say for other sectors, like textiles, accounting, food & beverage, or consulting?

I was not surprised to hear about Jerry Yang’s departure from the company he co-founded, Yahoo. I’m all for companies taking bold leaps and chances, but the proof is in the pudding, and Yahoo was compromising its decision-making too often. The disturbing part is how often Yahoo could never get a break, either going against the grain and repeating the same mistakes as other companies (such as rebranding itself as a media company after it failed for AOL-Time Warner, sticking to its guns as a directory of the web after Google got out of that business, creating a portal after they had long passed become passé…) or even executing successful practices from other companies (such as becoming a “walled-garden” social network a decade before Facebook, absorbing GeoCities, refusing buy-outs as Facebook has, a Steve Jobs-like second act for Jerry Yang as CEO…). Despite its meteoric rise during its heyday, it just can’ t seem to get a break. But that presumes luck could win out against poor decision-making.

Not only was Yahoo faltering in the execution of its strategies, internally it’s been smoke and mirrors for a long time. Yahoo was well-placed to capitalize on Internet advertising, when the industry was lacking big enough players with the breadth and scope that only a few companies had: there was Microsoft’s MSN, Google and a handful of niche search engines (then called “web crawlers” or “web portals” like Excite, Alta Vista, GO.Com). It was the tech boom, and big media giants and fellow startups were throwing money to get screen space; they had to spend it to get more of it, or save it and lose it. The best time for Yahoo was when the Internet was getting good: in 1998. The best piece to read about this is from former Yahoo programmer Paul Graham, who wrote very candidly back in 2010 about his time with the company when it was very much like Google before Google was.

What can be learned from this? The vital importance for companies lacking strategy to listen to its most valuable resource: its employees. As the book gets written about the tech industry and digital media companies, the patterns remain strong, the players and familiar faces are surprisingly few, and the pace of change continually accelerating. Internal dissent is the canary in the goldmine. Techies love to work at companies they are proud, with uncharted success. They love to be engaged, and they are intelligent and informed not only for their work, but about the sector. They know their craft intimately, and the tech they work on. No single CEO or executive can know everything all the time about their work, internally and externally to the company. If there’s a memo going around, the writing’s on the wall. If you read it (sent anonymously or not),

We haven’t seen the worst of Yahoo, or its best. But Yang’s departure marks a turning point and bold break from the old.

The next shoe to drop will be Research in Motion (“RIM”, the makers of Blackberry). Already an anonymous memo was circulated,  purportedly from an executive writing very boldly and insightfully about the change that is needed. The memo was foretelling of the worse days ahead for RIM, as it faced a network outage, lacklustre sales of its Bold line, and a delay of its launch of its next operating system and refreshed line of smartphones. The canary chirped a long time ago.  I predict we’ll still see much worse days ahead for RIM. And it will be a story very few of us will likely read on Yahoo.

But again, be sure to read Paul Graham‘s piece about what happened to Yahoo.

Logo for "Occupy Toronto" happening on Saturday

Last Friday I participated in a “General Assembly” for the Occupy Toronto demo happening on Saturday. Discussions and debate led late into the night about political theories and the relevance of capitalism. All throughout I kept wondering; How is this relevant to Canada? It isn’t. Let me tell you why. Read more »

The easiest part is putting the ballot in the box.

Last Thursday I worked as a “Deputy Returning Officer” in the provincial Ontario elections, district 15, poll 88. Despite the boredom and gruelling hours, I appreciated the introspection it provided into the electoral process at work in Canada. And just how needlessly complicated and archaic it is. With voting levels approaching all-time lows, pollsters are pressed more than ever to consider means to improve the accessibility and appeal of voting. I present 3 suggestions to drive up voting and improve the process. Read more »