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Exploring Gov 2.0 — A Brainstorm

Derek Alton
6 min readSep 27, 2019

The point of this blog really isn’t to present any new ideas. To be honest, I don’t think any of these ideas are new*, but rather to help me organize my own thinking and help me find others who are thinking along the same lines.

Modelled after Web 2.0 work by Tim O’Reilly.

Web 2.0

Internet as a Platform

  • Platform is the concept of a middleman that enables producers and consumers to find each other easily and enable resources to flow (e.g. roads, telecommunication, the internet)
  • Internet replacing Windows as the dominant platform. (In government we still use the Windows suite for most applications, while rest of the world has migrated to Google or other web-based apps)

Harnessing Collective Intelligence (of their users)

  • The real value of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google is user content
  • In the case of government, it is all about harnessing the collective intelligence of citizens (Think about Uber — harnessing gig economy/leveraging peoples own resources)

Data as the currency of the future

  • Give free access to products and services in exchange for data — users become products to these companies
  • Power of algorithms

End of software release cycle

  • Things develop iteratively. Now instead of a bi-annual replacement/upgrade, things constantly upgrading
  • Benefits from real time testing and improvement

Gov 2.0

Gov 2.0 represents a paradigm shift from Gov 1.0. Like Web 2.0 lead to new types of relationships and interaction through the internet, Gov 2.0 represents a new types of relationships and interactions that are:

  • Dynamic — constantly in flux
  • Iterative — building and evolving
  • Participatory — involve actively engaging with and shaping the world

Likewise, this paradigm shift also shifts how power works and the role of the different actors

Public servants

Gov 1.0

Support team for the elected body. Our job is provide them good information for them to make decisions and then implement their decisions to the best of our ability (“fearless advice, loyal implementation”). We rarely — if ever — interact with citizens, and if we do, they are either “experts” to gather intelligence for shaping our advice, or at the service delivery end. Neutrality is central to our identity.

Gov 2.0

Support team for society, serving as facilitators between citizens and the decision-making body (the elected office). Our job is still to provide the best advice, but this advice is now public and to everyone. It is also iterative, constantly evolving as new information is gathered. We also support implementation but often this is in more of a facilitation/coordination role as many sectors and groups are involved in implementation

Citizens

Gov 1.0

Passive consumers. Yes, we get to vote once every four years or so but most citizens would argue that our options are spoon fed to us and that we often do not have much choice. Between elections, we are passive consumers of government programs, policies, and laws. There are some mechanisms at our disposal (courts, representatives, appealing to the masses, protest) but they are challenging to leverage and often not very effective.

Gov 2.0

Prosumers. We not only use (consume) government services, we also play a key role in developing (producing) and implementing the policies and programs that impact our lives. To enable citizens to play this more active and participatory role it will be important for government to leverage web 2.0 technology. This means developing digital public squares where people can connect, share ideas, develop, debate and test solutions.

Elected Officials

Gov 1.0

Representatives. Since it was previously impossible to have everyone at the table, we choose people to be our representatives, to create, and act on our behalf.

Creators. Historically, politicians are the main creators of government policies and programs.

Gov 2.0

Sober second thought. With citizens now play the role of content creators of policy and programming, what does that mean for the traditional content creators in Gov 1.0, politicians? They still have an important role to be a check on the populace. You see, unlike citizens who represent themselves, politicians represent their whole riding. They therefore play the role of 1) ensuring the policy is consistent with the values of the society and 2) that it is fair and beneficial to everyone and not simply the people who created it.

Communicators and champions, raising the profile of issues and helping get people plugged in to these dialogues.

* Gov 2.0 has its roots in the early 2000s through a group of tech and open data activists based primarily out of California (including the above quoted Tim O’Reilly). Another related term that developed at this time was Citizen 2.0. All of this energy lead to a couple conferences on the term (Gov. 2.0 Summit 2000, Gov. 2.0 Expo and Gov2.0LA). The term has since faded (see notes below) but from its embers has risen the “Code for America” (which spawned sister groups in countries around the world) and “Civic Tech Movements.”

Related articles:

Notes:

What happened to Gov 2.0?

  • On the heels of the rise of web 2.0 in the early 2000s came the creation of the gov2.0 movement. It really hit its stride around 2008 with a conference and explosion of writings. It peaked under Obama’s first presidency. At this time you also saw the creation of Code for America as a champion for this space. But then it seems to have faded into the background. Most of the blogs and groups built around gov 2.0 seem to disappear after 2013. The key drivers also stopped writing (with the exception of Tim O’Reilly), at least about the topic of Gov 2.0, many shift into different fields of tech, moving into cyber security, and social media marketing… What happened??
  • The one exception is Code for America which continues to grow, though mostly at the local levels (though has also spawned a national movement). Code for America now mainly focuses on 2 aspects: 1) building tech literacy in government through their fellows program (a version of which has recently been launched in Canada among other places), and 2) leveraging open data to create apps that improve citizens lives. Don’t get me wrong these are great, but to be honest it feels like they fall short of the vision and ambition of early gov 2.0 thinking. They focus on digitizing service delivery instead of the idea of creating the infrastructure for a more participatory democracy, for government as a platform providing the digital infrastructure to revolutionize the next generation of our society. … So what happened?

Homework:

Read up more on gov 2.0 movement.

Send out a tweet to talk to these people:

UPDATE:

A couple people responded to my inquiries. Apparently the short answer is Obama. The Gov 2.0 movement (at least the one I researched) was mainly based in the USA. Many of the key proponents of the movement joined the government under Obama, some of them forming 18F a team that revolutionized how the US government used tech. In the UK, similarly they joined their government and formed the famous GDS (Government Digital Service) team.

Side Note: Apparently in academic spaces, Tim O’Reilly’s concept of GaaP got some strong pushback as naive and simply a new way of privatizing government (using open data to create a marketplace for entrepreneurs to take over the service delivery arm). More research required here, I am intrigued to jump in deeper (Check out Amanda Clarke — @ae_clarke to learn more)

Government
Gaap
Civic Punk

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Derek Alton

Written by Derek Alton

56 Followers

Community Animator, Democratic Reformer and Social Innovation Experimenter. Currently working for the Digital Collaboration Division in the Government of Canada

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