One pillar of what is conceptionally understood as open government, is collaboration (the others being transparency and participation, according to the model established by the Obama Memo, read here). Experts advocate in this context not only collaboration between governments and citizens (g2c), but especially intra- and inter-institutional collaboration (government-to-government, g2g). Mere one-directional communication is not yet collaboration however, so collaboration in the open government context is understood as multilateral exchange or space and time dis-intermediated collaboration with concrete results. Collaboration can however develop out of intensive exchange and knowledge exchange and networking, so the one builds upon the other. Why should that be a good thing, and why do advocates call for it?

Institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Problems that occur in one, can also be common in another, and in principle they all can profit from success stories. An exchange within and especially between institutions and their employees is today not very common (at least in continental Europe). Few use online social networks today, even though there is high potential for innovation and (institutional) learning, competence building and broadening of perspectives. How exactly this collaboration is supposed to look like depends on who you ask, especially because of the different interpretations of the definition. In general, aside from collaboration and networking based on web 2.0 technologies, intra-institutional and project-centered collaboration is of highest interest. This is the type of collaboration that involves exchange of documents, coordination of work, communication with third parties, decision making through hierarchies, hence an area where organizations use Fabasoft eGov-Suite or Folio Cloud for example. But what is the picture beyond the desk top? Is there information exchange between different offices about innovation, problem solving, public sector reform, best practice? How do institutions (the same goes for companies) learn, what are the freedoms they and their employees can operate in, to connect, exchange, educate themselves and help each other?

Due to widespread blocking of online social networking services (such as Facebook) at the workplaces in many organizations and the common legal reservations (insecurity due to a lack of guidelines, for example), use of their potential is being hindered. How innovative however such tools can be is nicely illustrated by the success of Govloop, a private initiative which has evolved into a “public sector Facebook”, which contributes to knowledge exchange among government employees and professionals (even beyond the USA) and serves as a platform for expertise, opinion and news network.

To tap into this potential is a stretch goal, and in Europe especially out of reach it seems. Communication structures and attitudes towards contemporary technologies for collaboration and web-based collaboration could be improved with just enough determination, so that the human capital employed by the state can play an even better role. There is in fact little that would speak against usage of such tools by employees as long as there are is a clear framework and rules everyone knows about and sticks to. The majority of the risks and challenges that are often raised can be curtailed by creating clarity and removing legal gray areas, as well as giving out user guidelines for establishing common rules.

During the Fabasoft egovdays 2011 in Berlin, Munich, Berne and Vienna we asked some of our guests, mostly from the public sector, about this topic and found out that even though a growing number of them uses social networking platforms, the big picture still looks rather grim. What follows is an excerpt from our non-representative survey we conducted:

Aside from social networking, a strong emphasis on internal knowledge management is a good strategy for making an organization more efficient, more open, flexible and connected. Just as an example from our own products: Resources in Fabasoft eGov-Suite can be referenced in internal (or external) wikis. Technologies like single-sign-on (SSO) or certificate based authentication can make use of collaboration platforms uniformly secure. Even without a German Govloop for example it would be possible to realize more potential, and that not just from the perspective of the rather progressive demands of the open government movement, or the technology early adopters among the government 2.0 advocates, but as part of existing strategies just as well, like Germany’s E-Government 2.0 Strategy. What kinds of experiences have you made in these areas? We welcome your feedback!

An interesting related link:

• Welcome to the United States of Facebook (Gartner Blog)

PS: We would love to hear counter-examples and success stories, reports from the “front lines” of social media usage in the public sector, especially in continental Europe.

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