web24gov

Photos by appaloosa and fabuleuxfab

I am very grateful to all those who contributed to the web24gov workshop at CLG on Thursday (19/6/08) especially those who did so on a purely voluntary basis - I owe you one!

The workshop brought together the cognisenti in the application of new technologies (aka Web 2.0) keen to learn about the government's Community Empowerment strategies and civil servants keen to know more about new technologies. And there were one or two people who usefully straddled both camps. The snappy 2-hour session was delivered in perfect pitch by David Wilcox.

A more detailed report of the outcomes will follow but I just wanted to draw attention to one remark that struck a real chord with me.

It seems unfair not to credit the person (but Chatham House Rules is Chathame House rules!) - he will have to claim credit elsewhere. The comment went something like "Government should be the wholesaler not the retailer of information and services".

The more you think about this wholesale/retail metaphor the more powerful you realise it is. The idea behind the comment is that Government should concentrate on gathering, storing, quality checking, developing information and services but not consider itself as the only route to market for such information and services. It should enable, encourage, empower others to act as retailers. So, for example, under the 'Tell Us Once' policy for registering the birth of a child, that service should not only be available on some central Government site somewhere, but also on all the websites where parents already gather such as the the 'NetMums' websites for example.

Going around the thinking loop again . . . . you can buy a banana from anywhere: from an out of town supermarket or in a little cornershop serving a small inner city community. In the cornershop the other things you can buy will have been carefully chosen by the retailer to match the needs of his/her customers. The same applies for the supermarket - same product in a different setting for a different set of customers in a different place.

And finally (for now), if Government saw other online communities as retailers, or routes to market, for targetting, tailored Government services this would help us develop precisely the sorts of relationships we need to take advantage of the empowering new technologies we now have at hand.