Enabling Open GovernmentPublic Policy, Organization Development and Web 2.0

Karl Hebenstreit, Jr.

CBODN GovSIGJune 24, 2009

Enabling Open Government

• My Experiences– Doug Engelbart’s Vision for Raising Collective Intelligence– Maintaining Self-Awareness and Identity– From Personal Sensemaking to Collaborative Decision-making /Problem Solving– Organizational Social Computing

• Web 2.0 and Establishing Relationships– Web 2.0: Enabling New Organization Models– Next Steps

• Open Government– Principles and Practice?– Role for Organization Development?– Public Policy Implications?

References

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Raising Collective Intelligence”Boosting mankind’s capability for coping with complex, urgent problems”

- Doug Engelbart

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Raising Collective Intelligence

Doug Engelbart’s Accelerators

– Co-Evolution of Human and Tool Systems

– Bootstrapping Strategy– Networked Improvement

Communities– Raising Collective Intelligence

Christina’s Challenge!

“If you could take that same Vision and same Strategic Organizing Principles that got such amazing results in that lab in such a relatively short period of time, and embedded them into today’s teams and organizations using next-generation interactive computing as a springboard, just imagine the incredible levels of innovation that could be achieved today.”

-- Christina Engelbart

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Co-Evolving OD and Web 2.0

As we get more connected in real-time, the ability for an individual in maintaining her/his own identity has increasing importance!

What are the ways in which personal and organization development methods and technologies can support this increasing need?

• Methods must embody protecting (nurturing) individual needs -- encouraging ‘downtime’ for reflection to gain/regain perspective, while supporting planning and action

• Technologies must be capable of capturing our thoughts as naturally as possible – minimizing restraints

OD Web 2.0

Bootstrapping Strategy

• Leveraging the capabilities of a method or technology for online communities of practice to learn and share knowledge about that method or technology

• This enables:

– Learning about the method or technology through direct experience

– Sharing knowledge in context– “Being our own customers first”, so that

we can better support client organizations

Based on work of Douglas Engelbart

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Maintaining Self-Identity and Awareness

Getting Things Done

(GTD)PersonalBrain

Co-Evolving Methods and Technologies

• Method helps to provide context for technology, influencing its design and improving effectiveness of using the tool

• Technology can enable new capabilities to improve the effectiveness of the method

• How can GTD be extended to team an organizational levels?

Agency Transformation

Personal to Organizational

Knowledge Management

• How can PersonalBrain be extended to a organizational (collaborative) setting?

Improving Effectiveness

• Personal methods and technologies which enable an “augmented” individual to more effectively participate in group and organizational settings

Organization Development

Getting Things Done (GTD)

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• The bold terms are from David Allen’s most recent book about the Getting Things Done method, Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life, with original terminology from Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity in parentheses.

• David Allen has been using the PersonalBrain for about three years, and led a webinar showing how he’s using the PersonalBrain on June 3rd: Getting Things Done with PersonalBrain Featuring David Allen

Purpose/ Principles

Vision

Goals

Areas of Focus

Projects

Capturing(Collection)

Clarifying(Processing)

OrganizingReflecting(Reviewing)

Engaging/ Actions(Doing)

GTD and PersonalBrain

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Personal Sensemaking to Collaborative Problem Solving

Issue Mapping Compendium

Co-Evolving Methods and Technologies

• Method helps to provide context for technology, influencing its design and improving the effectiveness of using the technology

• Technology can enable new capabilities that improve the effectiveness of the method

• How can Issue/Dialogue Mapping be extended to team an organizational levels?

Dialogue

Mapping

Organizational Sensemaking

• How can Compendium be extended to a organizational (collaborative) setting?

Improving Effectiveness

• Personal methods and technologies which enable an “augmented” individual to more effectively participate in group and organizational settings

Organization Development

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Methods for Dealing with Complexity

When an organization is confronting a wicked problem the familiar approaches don't work. For one thing, with a wicked problem there isn't even agreement about what the problem is, much less how to solve it. To make progress one must focus on creating maximum shared understanding and shared commitment among the stakeholders. Dialogue mapping is a proven technique for building that shared understanding and commitment, as efficiently and effectively as possible.

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Compendium as a tool for supporting Dialogue Mapping

• Compendium is a semantic, visual hypertext tool for supporting collaborative domain modelling and real time meeting capture. It provides an intuitive visual map of issues, ideas and arguments. It can be thought of as real time concept mapping, but with additional native semantic hypertext functionality. It is interoperable via XML with other technologies, for example, in the AKT IRC eScience CoAKTinG project, which is integrating it with other meeting support and collaboration technologies.

• Compendium is simple to learn for individual use, whilst real time mapping of discussions in meetings takes some practice. There is a small but growing community of practitioners who are using it in their work. It is derived from Dialog Mapping, for which there are commercial training courses available.

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Organizational Social Computing

Activity-Centric

CollaborationLotus

Connections

Co-Evolving Methods and Technologies

• Method helps to provide context for technology, influencing its design and improving the effectiveness of using the technology

• Technology can enable new capabilities that improve the effectiveness of the method

• How can Activity-Centric Collaboration improve the way we coordinate actions at the organizational level?

Coordinating Organizational

Actions

Organizational Cultures & Structures

• What impacts will social computing have on organizations’ cultures?

• What are the organizational models enabled by Social Computing Environments?

Improving Effectiveness

• Personal methods and technologies which enable an “augmented” individual to more effectively participate in group and organizational settings

Organization Development

Lotus Connections

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Profiles

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Communities

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Blogs

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Dogear

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Activities

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Organization Models

• Fishnet – described in Johansen and Swigart

• Starfish• Spider

– described in Brafman and Beckstrom

• ???

Clay Shirky on his new book, Here Comes Everybody on YouTube

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• Prevailing Paradigm

• Disconnected• Isolated Components• Application-Centric• Closed, Static Systems• Step-wise• Either/Or• Transactional

• Emerging Social Movement

• Integrated• Social (Collaborative)• Activity-Centric• Open, Dynamic Systems• Continual• Yes… &• Relational

Social Computing: From Stovepipes to Collaborating

Even the term paradigm is being questioned, as a static snapshot of a social phenomenon, rather than an ongoing, dynamic process that is better captured by the phrase ‘social movement’•As one source for this issue, see Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times

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Next Steps

• Establishing Partnerships– Planning a social networking event (September) for CBODN and the DC Chapter

of Usability Professionals Association– Participating in user groups, and sharing ideas on how OD methods can sustain

groups and improve their effectiveness in learning and engaging developers.– Making connections with organizations involved in improving software

development– ???

• OD and Web 2.0: Supporting Project Meetings– Especially for interagency projects, meetings are the basis for project

management and decision-making.

• Mapping a Landscape for OD and Web 2.0– Discovered 12Manage.com, a community site for conversations about hundreds

of OD methods, which could provide a basis for an OD taxonomy– The Technologies of Cooperation map developed by Howard Rheingold and the

Institute for the Future provides a basis for a taxonomy of Web 2.0

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Collaborative Technologies Methods

Communities

Project Management, Meetings & Technologies

ProjectManagement

Enabling Environment for

Facilitating Meetings

Facilitating Meetings

Supporting Communications

• What project management methods are most appropriate for a particular kind of project?

• What methods are most effective for facilitating meetings at various stages of a project?

• How scalable is a method for supporting the number of participants?

• Can the method support geographically distributed meetings, or does it require F2F interaction?

• What technologies best support a particular method?

• How can technologies improve a method’s ability to support distributed meetings?

• How well does a technology capture the content & context of a meeting?

• How well can the meeting artifact be kept within the context of the project?

• How scalable is a technology to support the number of participants?

• How well does the technology support distributed meetings?

• Meetings are a core activity for project management

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A Taxonomy for OD Methods?

Organization Development

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Technologies of Cooperation: A Web 2.0 Taxonomy?

Peer to Patent

Web 2.0

Cooperation Commons

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Open Government Principles

Web 2.0 Public Policy

Organization Development

Gov 2.0

Gov 2.0

Developing an IT infrastructure, enabled by Web 2.0 technologies, defined according to our fundamental governance principles:

Separate but Equal Branches of government

Inherent government functions performed by government employees

Separation of policy formation from policy implementation (operations)

Citizen Involvement

? What new ways for citizen involvement are enabled by Web 2.0?

? How can the OD community contribute to ensuring fairness and improving the effectiveness of citizens’ efforts?

Citizen Involvement

Agency Transformation

Agency Transformation

? What are the policy implications?? How can OD professionals

contribute to transforming agency structures, cultures, and practices?

Open Government

How do we define Open Government, and how what is the role for the OD community?

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Web 2.0 Technologies

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Organization Development

Methods

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1

5

6Government Organizations

Open Government in Practice?

• How can OD and Web 2.0 make government more open?

• How can OD Methods be better supported by Web 2.0 technologies?

• What new OD Methods can now be enabled by the capabilities of Web 2.0 technologies?

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Open

Government

ExecutiveJudicial

Legislative

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Gov 2.0: Separation of Powers?

Judicial & Executive

Judicial & Executive

Legislative & Judicial

Legislative & Judicial

3 Equal

Branches

Three Separate yet Equal Branches

Legislative & Executive

Legislative & Executive

References

Doug Engelbart: Selected Papers

– Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)• Whom to Augment First• Intelligence Amplification

– Improving Your Organization’s IQ (1996)– As We May Work (2003)– Evolving Collective Intelligence (2008)

– Bardini, Bootstrapping (2001)

Embedded Links (Slide Show Mode)

– Title Slide: photographs have links to the sources

– Slides 9 and 10: Each portion of the collage is a link to an event or a video presentation

– Slide 12: http://12manage.com– Slide 13:

Technologies of Cooperation large map (you can click on a box to zoom in to make the box near full-screen size

– Slide 13: Click to Creative Commons and PeerToPatent

Organizational Implications

– Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody (Blog)– Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next

Social Revolution (website)– Robert Johansen and Rob Swigart,

Upsizing the Individual in the Downsized Corporation

– Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, The Starfish and the Spider

People: Methods & Technologies

– David Allen, Getting Things Done– Jeff Conklin, Issue/Dialogue Mapping– Harlan Hugh, PersonalBrain– Simon Buckingham Shum, Compendium– IBM Collaborative User Experience,

Activity-Centric Computing– Howard Rheingold and Institute for the

Future, Technologies of Cooperation– Jaap de Jonge, 12Manage

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