Fostering innovation as a requirement for transforming government

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Miriam Lips

Miriam Lips is Professor of E-Government at Victoria University of Wellington. Her Chair is jointly sponsored by Datacom Systems Limited, State Services Commission, Cisco New Zealand Limited, and FX Networks Limited. Her research interests include use of information and communication technologies in the public sector, and their implications on citizen-centric government, e-participation, government 2.0, personalisation, and digital citizenship.

Fostering innovation as a requirement for transforming government

"E-government has succeeded in promoting change and harnessing technology – using network technologies has become part of the day-to-day business of government. The challenge now is to maintain this momentum and seize the opportunities technology offers to transform the way government works with and for New Zealanders."

This quote from the NZ E-government Strategy's third update (2006) refers to a very ambitious goal, namely to enable the transformation of NZ government. Transformation, or fundamental change, is not something you do overnight and, quite rightly, the NZ government has decided to achieve this ultimate aim by 2020. An important progress review question however is now, and will continue to be 'what will be achieved by 2020 and how' (see also Rose O'Neill’s contribution on Transformation: the Future of Public Management in New Zealand).

The first 2007 e-government milestone is that ICT will be an integral component of all government service delivery as a precursor to realising the 2020 milestone of people's engagement with government being transformed as a result of increasing and innovative use of network technologies. Innovation and transformation are key to this ambitious endeavour of the NZ government; the first concept perhaps even more so than the latter, as transformation is nothing if it is not innovation. Activities should be concentrating primarily on fostering innovation in the NZ public sector as a driver for fundamental change in government, therefore. It is there that we need to seize opportunities offered by technology, I believe.

History however shows us that innovation is a process as well as a product. Sir Peter Hall's observation on the typical reaction to the societal introduction of technological innovations over time is highly relevant for us today: "We already know in essence what is happening to us, but we do not know exactly where it will lead" ⁱ. If we look into the 'rear mirror', we may conclude that major technological inventions, such as the automobile, the fixed line telephone, the mobile phone and nowadays the public Internet, became remarkable social innovations quite some time after their introduction as technical artefacts. More closer to home for governments in European countries nowadays is the introduction of the smart card, such as the London Oyster card which, after its introduction as a replacement for a paper-based London Transport ticket, became an important customer relationship management application in, for example, providing a range of discounts for Oyster card customers and more recently a banking card through a strategic alliance with Barclays Bank.

Generally, we can distinguish three development phases towards innovation. First, new technological applications are used to 'automate' existing routines and activities. This automation phase is followed by a development phase of experimentation, and finally by a phase in which a reconfiguration of applications will take place. The automobile for example was originally used as a 'carriage' with the expectation of making life easier on farms. Cars gradually became used for transport over longer distances, however. This development was then further supported by building and maintaining highways. In general an important learning curve can be observed in this development process towards innovation: "learning by using" is gradually replaced by "learning by doing"².

How then to facilitate this learning curve in the NZ public sector? What lessons do these historical examples teach us for enabling transformation of public engagement with government by 2020? First of all, having achieved the phase of automation with the 2007 milestone, we need to facilitate the next development phase towards innovation: experimentation. How can available network technology be used differently in the NZ public sector, so that in the end we may learn how to do things differently? From this point of view the current work of the State Service Commission's E-Participation team in, for instance, using a wiki for collecting and sharing knowledge on e-participation, creating a community of practice on e participation, and draft e-participation guidelines, is of highest importance for this experimental phase.

But we may want to look for more, as the transformation of government and its engagement with the NZ general public should not be restricted to the State Services Commission and its community of practice; nor should it be too much focused on the technical opportunities. It should also take into account organisational and societal opportunities for establishing innovation and transformation. For example, how can we facilitate 'learning by using' and 'learning by doing' across the NZ government? How can we learn from emerging initiatives and experiences using network technology differently (e.g., blogging) within different government organisations or policy domains? How can we stimulate public servants and political representatives both to make use of new technologies themselves and change their traditional ways of working and engaging with the public? Or, how can we arrange for a situation where the innovation process towards transformed public engagement is not supply-driven, exclusively organised by government that is, but more demand-led, jointly owned by the NZ government and its general public?

If we could facilitate joint social innovation leading to new forms of public engagement for government and citizens, we could at least ensure that 'learning by using' is a realistic option for all NZ citizens. Such development would require a substantial investment in the ICT-infrastructure of NZ, enabling (broadband) access for all in every sense: technically, geographically, economically, educationally, and socio-culturally. It would also require an investment in the ICT-infrastructure of NZ schools: to offer younger generations opportunities for learning by using and, subsequently, learning by doing. Perhaps too we should stimulate our children as 'digital natives' to educate us, the late adopters or 'digital immigrants', how to do things differently. The value for social innovation processes of connection and collaboration, of access to knowledge and learning, can be further demonstrated by various emerging initiatives where citizen – government relationships are being fundamentally reshaped. For example, in several neighbourhoods in the UK and the USA, citizens send digital information (e.g. photos, emails) on a whole variety of local problems (e.g., wrongly parked cars, potholes, graffiti) directly to the police and other neighbourhood organisations for them to be able to do something about it.

Another requirement for social innovation would be to further encourage an innovation ‘culture’ in the NZ public sector by providing strong political and financial support for experimentation. And therefore to allow and facilitate 'out of the box' thinking, applying and doing, which may lead to desirable innovative outcomes or, equally, to unfavourable results and mistakes. Unfavourable results can however be of enormous value in establishing innovative outcomes in the future: to learn how to do things differently. And learning as we know can take time, as 'right first time' innovative solutions are quite rare. In the private sector there is the possibility for starting (Internet) businesses by making use of business incubators for their first start-up years. Why not apply this concept to the public sector and set up public sector incubators which can help good innovative ideas for public engagement to survive and grow in their first period of existence?

The historical examples also demonstrate how difficult it is to predict the future; how early visions of transformation turn out to be completely wrong in the end. The definition of what successful transformational e-government is and should be in 2020, should be regularly reviewed, part of the innovation process, therefore. We not only need to learn how to use network technologies in NZ e-government, how to use those technologies differently and how to do things differently, equally we need to accept that public engagement in 2020 may, and very likely will, look completely different than what we envision today.

Footnotes

[i. Hall, P., Cities in Civilization. Culture, Innovation, and Urban Order, 1998, Weinfield & Nicolson, London, p.943.]

[ii. Castells, M., The rise of the Network Society, 1996, in: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. I, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, MA.]