GovCamp shows new spirit of public sector innovation

t’s imperative that all levels of government get up to speed on using “social tech for social change”, said Lisa Torjman, who launched Net Change Week to help organizations use communication tools to become more effective in their work. GovCamp is the fifth of 10 Net Change week events held at Toronto’s MaRS Centre. GovCamp, like the other events, focused on the phrase “social tech for social change”, despite the prevalent government culture that, attendees noted, often works against this sort of change.

Despite the hurdles that lie ahead, governments in Canada are on the forefront of open data initiatives, according to Microsoft Canada national technology officer John Weigelt. “Canada is a leader in open government, in open data, and in transforming those relationships and conversations, and that is being seen around the world.”

Among the first cities to roll out open government strategies have been Nanaimo, BC, Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa had all. These have since paved the way for municipalities such as London, Edmonton, and White Horse, which have all stepped up and opened their data to the public.

At the provincial level, BC has, for instance, appointed a minister of open data, and Ontario minister of research and innovation Glen Murray is working on a provincial data portal. While these achievements stand as a testament to the work of some early adopters, there is a lot of resistance to change.

According to OPSpedia head Tom Sommerville - @misterscience (pictured), there is a culture of secrecy where government and the public sector workers fear that opening up data will cause trouble for them. Sommerville said a main underlying difference between the public sector and the private sector (in which he has worked for many years) has been “the intense public scrutiny that we endure in government.” Showing a headline about the eHealth scandal, he said, “We’ve probably all seen things like this, and those of you who are in government know that this is exactly what you want to avoid at all times.

“That definitely has a chilling effect on our behaviour in government,” he said. Other problems Sommerville cited were the toll of elections and changes in government on the internal workings of the public service, the development of leaders from within the government when things like team building exercises are thought to be an extravagant use of public money, and the bureaucracy that limits the government’s agility.

Despite these difficulties, which make government initiatives like open data a headache to implement, Don Tapscott, perhaps best summarized the reasons to care about opening up government to the public in a video recorded for GovCamp. “A lot of people, when they think about open government, they think of freedom of information, but it’s much much more,” Tapscott said. “I think that open government is the biggest change in the sort of deep structure and architure of government, and how we create public value.” Different than governments that simply collect tax dollars from citizens, and, in turn, provide services, Tapscott’s conception of the new, open model of government means that “government can be a platform, in the sense that there’s all this data inside of governments that’s locked up -- thousands of categories... if this data were just made available to be public, raw data, what will happen is that people will self-organize. The four pillars of society will use this data to create public value.” The four pillars, he explained, are private companies, civil society organizations, other governmental agencies, and, now, individual citizens.

How will this “public value” present itself? Tapscott used the example of releasing data on bicycle accidents. Within 48 hours of releasing data, he said, someone will make a mashup showing a map of the most dangerous places in the city to bike. “You’ll be saving lives within weeks; it won’t cost a cent.”

Open government advocates hope that this sort of public value outweighs the risks that come with the release of government data. When shown the ways citizens use this data to improve their lives, it’s hard to fathom why more citizens don’t demand this information from their governments.