The Gov 2.0 taskforce has released its draft report, but the comment time to next Monday is incredibly limited. Then again, any comment time is better tha none.
I have struggled to come to grips with this project. My reasons I think are more tied up with my concerns that the agenda for Gov 2.0 has been mostly seen as being technologically deterministic - doing things to respond to the technology - rather than grounded in political theory.
The crunch point comes in the second dot point of the terms of reference;
make government more consultative, participatory and transparent — to maximise the extent to which government utilises the views, knowledge and resources of the general community
This very simple phrase reflects some very significant changes that need to occur in the way "government" is conducted. We still have a model that has evolved from the 1970s of government as a command and control activity - that the bowels of government determine a policy and then it is implemented - rather than opening up the totality of the program as contended space.
The report refers to new APSC guidelines - but these relate only to public servants participating online and largely reflect the existing values for other media.
None of this encourages the idea that public servants themselves are in the ideas business rather than the processing of ideas (what did submissions say) or implementation of others (the Ministers) ideas.
I haven't read the whole report yet. I guess I should.
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