Open Government, real examples, not technology examples

Since President Obama’s January inauguration there has been a lot of talk about what he has been calling Open Government, a plan to return to a US government that is representative and belongs to “we the people” as the US constitution so brilliantly defines it.

As citizens we often forget that Governments are our governments, instead we choose to think about them as huge bureaucracies within which we have little or no personal role to play. We pay our taxes, fill out relevant forms, pay for the right licenses and conform to the laws of the land.

The idea of Open Government gives us the opportunity to participate in a more relevant way in decision making while at the same time enjoying more transparency around the actions that government takes and the information that it holds that are relevant to those actions.

I don’t for a moment envy the US administration as it aims to turn these words into reality, with thousands of agencies, tens of millions of government employees and literally billions of government documents.

As they make steps towards making the policy into reality though I do think it is important to think about the roots of transparency and participation.

With that in mind I wanted to share a couple of examples of mine from a recent trip to the UK, one through a personal friendship and another as I walked through my home town of Blackburn on a chilly January morning.

My first example is one that I think represents what it takes to become a real participant in government. Like anything in life sitting on the sidelines poking at things we don’t like rarely makes a difference, getting involved with those issues and working towards goals that you have a personal connection to is frequently a lot more productive.

One of my longest standing friends back home in Lancashire really embodies this. Darren Reynolds is a resident of a town close to where I grew up, he and I met when I was in my late teens through a common interest in computing and later we went on to run a small company together before I joined Microsoft.

While I moved to London, Seattle then Singapore, Darren never left his home town of Burnley. Frequently when we met he would articulate the virtues of the town, he sees significant opportunity there, sees enterprise in his fellow residents and has a deep personal passion for the town.

About four years ago he started to think about what he could do to build on that passion by participating in local politics, today he is an elected member of the town council and in the future I’m sure his passion for the town, the people and the commerce there will carry him on to do great things for his community.

This example is pretty key as we think about participation in government. Darren realized that nobody in government was going to come knocking on his door to ask him for his opinion or to draw upon his expertise, so he got involved for himself. If any type of open government is going to take hold then each and every one of us have to think about the role that we want to play in that.

Some, like Darren, will want to run for office, some may want to contribute expertise and others may actively decide that they don’t want to personally participate. The key is that we all get a choice about the role that we want to play, and we make that choice for ourselves.

The second example was a bit of a shock to me even though it is something that has been taking place in my own home town since I was a kid.

On the Saturday morning I had a little shopping to do, so I headed into the local town center. Blackburn isn’t a prosperous place when compared to other parts of England, but it is a wonderful place all the same. It is a market town and once the center of a thriving cotton industry.

The political process in Blackburn was alive and well that morning, a second good examples of more traditional transparency and participation.

In the square outside of the town hall (stood on an actual soap box!) was Jack Straw.

Mr. Straw has been the local member of parliament for as long as I can remember. Today he is a senior minister and for many an internationally visible politician. 

Throughout that time Mr. Straw has continued to stay connected to his local constituency, and on a regular basis he can be found on that soap box talking to whoever turns up about whatever issue is relevant on the day. On this particular Saturday morning he was talking about the banking bailouts and what it would mean to the people of Blackburn and East Lancashire.

Across the street from Mr. Straw was another example of political participation. A small group of three or four local (I assume) residents who didn’t agree with the Labour governments actions in Iraq. They had turned out to protest, hand out leaflets and ask Mr. Straw some tough questions on his policy positions.

The complete audience for this event was about thirty people, the security presence consisted of one visible police officer. My father tells me that Mr. Straw has been holding these open forums in Blackburn every month for decades.

It is irrelevant if you agree with Mr. Straw’s politics or not, what was really special about this event was that it is a transparent and participative political process in action. Anybody could turn up and participate in the discussion and while doing so they were free to express whatever views they held and have them discussed.

As we chatter on our technology blogs about open government and what we believe it means it is vital that we keep examples like this in mind. In itself a social networking tool or a Web 2.0 technology is not going to bring any more voices to the table unless the people owning those voices choose to participate, just like government won’t become any more transparent unless real steps are taken to make information available to people in ways that they are want and are able to consume it.

To make Open Government work the world needs to see more people like Darren who have real passion for their own community along with the passion to get directly involved, and more Jack Straws who are willing to stand up and openly discuss their former decisions and future plans in front of the people who elected them.