From consumer-citizen to participant

Just as the global economy is making its recovery from the global financial crisis, we have the Euro-crisis on our hands. And adding to the excitement, the volcanic ash continues making business difficult for many industries on the continent. One can argue that the volcanic activity is unpredictable -- not so the financial crises. They are symptoms of society going into group-think and freely swallowing what is dished out by politicians and spin doctors. The Euro-crisis - PIIGS crisis is probably more appropriate -- was caused by the nations disregarding established guidelines set by the EU for managing debt and public spending.

If the US-led financial meltdown was attributed to "capitalism gone crazy", then the PIIGS crisis must be "socialism gone crazy". On the face of it, the answer in both cases seems to be stricter enforcement of the law for all including politicians! It is only reasonable to expect that players who have agreed on the ground rules stick to them. Or risk being expelled from the game. Yeah? by who? Maybe we should learn to govern overselves better - by participating. See my previous posts (here and here) where I commented the excellent film "Us Now".

I am not an economics expert, but these events are a cue for citizens to get more involved in how their lives are affected. Is there another option? Admittedly, getting involved is easier said than done - the time crunch, information-overload and complexity is challenging (my reflections here). We must ask for more participation and we need to start participating whereever possible.

The PIIGS crisis is driving austerity measures that threaten the stability of the welfare state. A welfare state reaching newer heights with expenses needed to serve a demanding population that is also living longer. Raising taxes is not going to help! We as citizens need to take more responsibility; we need to participate .... we need learn how to co-produce services. Government agencies regarding citizens as "customers" is misleading and hollow and sets false expectations - there is no 1:1 equivalence between the tax one pays and services received. We are better off if we get rid of the notion of "customer" in public services and focus on including the citizen in the design and delivery of services. Savvy commercial businesses are already advocating customer participation - and are going beyond self-service. Hopefully, the public sector agencies will create their own brand of participation.

But first, politicians and bureaucrats need to truly understand this fundamental shift of citizen participation. They must provide for the trust-infrastructure that encourages participation and drives transparency. Yep, more participatory democracy and less representative democracy.

A big problem with laws and other technical material produced for bureacratic use is that it is - for all practical purposes - limited to those who are well-versed in the jargon or those with an immense capacity to read through technical documentation. (This is not unlike similar practices where for eg only priests could read holy scripture). Opening up content, not only by putting it on the web, but also providing tools to review and comment it is a good idea.

Therefore, Sharedbook is a very welcome technology that encourages people to collaboratively comment and annotate content. This form of collaborative action is useful in growing communities and creating a more engaging electorate (or an enterprise workforce for that matter). As a champion of more direct and participatory democracy, this move has a lot of potential of driving transparency.

I mention Sharedbook, because this is being used by some in the current health care debate in the US. See Congressman John Culberson's effort to get his constituents to engage themselves in the debate. There are similar technologies for co-creation of content (collaboratively creating content) -- and hopefully we will see the electorate actually collaborating on creating content that can become law. NB! I am not advocating that untrained people replace laywers or other experts, but that people are encouraged to participate in shaping policy and help lawyers and the experts.

Over the last few days, I've been trend-hunting -- political trends and technology trends. And picked up Arianna Huffington's note on the "All for good" initiative. To me, the potential impact of this site is huge, not only is it a demonstrator of how the grassroots can serve and be served. But, it also shapes how the governed and the governors interact.

As our notion of goverment and governance transforms, the concept of community widens in scope and participatory democracy becomes more practical. I also wonder what the concept of the nation-state will be like in 2020. Anyway, what is also fascinating at this point in time is watching technology develop against the backdrop of business and political challenges -- we are witnessing continuous innovation. This innovation seems to be backed up political will in the US, consider a recent remark by the newly appointed US Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra “My job is to serve as the innovation platform champion in addressing private market opportunities in support of public priorities” (see this link and my Norwegian language post on my own aspirations for the Norwegian context).

Switching tracks for just a second: I picked up this TEDtalks speech by the prolific and eclectic Ray Kurzweil, as he presented the background for establishing the Singularity University. The university, captures my own sense for the need for inter-disciplinary thinking and the need for our leaders - public service and commerce - to prepare for the digital society. And we need to expect more from our leaders (for the politicians I still these that I posed at the end of this post) . To get a sense of the rate of development watch V Ramachandran's mind-boggling lecture of the abilities of the brain (the last 5 mins will surprise you). Research like this is well on its way to removing barriers of prejudice and of what is possible and what is not.

And as technology and science provide a basis for a digital society, we must educate at all levels of society -- and I hope our effort is strong for the grassroots. Afterall, it is at the grassroots where the problems and opportunities are experienced. It is at the grassroots we can hope to harness the mental and physical abilities in large numbers. Where also these large numbers can bring about the change and stimulate innovation. If crowdsourcing can work for Innocentive, why can't it work for communities? Which is why I am optimistic of what "All for good" and similar sites can inspire.

The browser is the new desktop! Last september, I commented Google's launch of Chrome with thoughts along those lines. Having watched the demo of Google Wave yesterday, I am even more convinced that the browser is the new desktop (screenshots from 7:40 into the video)

For our digital society, this development brings the power of the web and computing closer to the masses - consumers at all levels of society. The ubiquity of the mobile phone with built-in browsers paves the way for broadbased access to the masses. Admittedly, it will be a while before the phones morph to mobile internet devices (MIDs), but the potential is definitely there. And soon the MID will be the new PC.

It is tempting to view Wave as Google's "reply" to Microsoft's Bing and Vine services. And while its a bit hard to nail these Microsoft services, I suspect Wave will catalyse Redmond in "bringing it together".

Aside: Interestingly Google is copying Microsoft's market approach - i.e. targetting the developer community. But with a big difference, they are making this product Open Source. In my mind, I can see that this competition is going to benefit everyone... except probably the manipulators and lobbyist. Transparency and mass-participation are getting powerful tools!

I'm confident that the difficult challenges with technology will be solved as the masses put these technologies to use in regular tasks at work and in social contexts -- to support their work and improve their lives. The developments in Wave and Vine definitely encourage sharing of knowledge and co-creation. Thus promoting crowdsourcing as a means of value-creation and
innovation. I revisted the Harvard Business review article "Disruptive innovation for social change" by Clayton Christensen that I blogged here.

I am reminded once again that disruption is continuous -- happening as we speak; that there is no such thing as a revolution, just rapid evolution.

Just not had enough time to blog -- with so much happening on different fronts. I suspect my posts in the future will be something between micro-blogging and long blogposts. My Twitter feed can fill in the blanks (see right-hand-side column of this blog for Twitter updates).

As I make yet another attempt to scope a research proposal on the Digital Society, I am drawn by Larry Lessig's work and highlight two articles (1) lecture on new media is great because of great content on a relevant theme (2) post on citizen-funding vs public-funding. I find both these posts relevant for the discussion around "deep democracy" --- one where the grassroots are more involved; and where the role of a societal infrastruture is critical.

"Us Now" the film on grassroots democracy had a global webcast last week. The film touched on many topics, the most fascinating was about Ebbfleets United football club where owners can actually choose the team before each match. Interesting use of technology from MyFootball club. Hopefully the message of the film spreads to all corners of the world. What would be cool, is if the film could be sub-titled in a crowdsourced manner. (My tweet).

Just learned that Shashi Tharoor (ex under Secretary General of the UN) has won his seat in the Indian parliament. Last week he wrote and interesting article on the nature of "soft power". Definitely worth the read. The next few months in Indian politics look to be very interesting!

The folks over at the AT ONE project are studying service innovation and have some very cool and practical ideas. Ideas that really excite me, because they talk to my ideas about the digital society (my first post here). After a recent network meeting where AT ONE was presented, I was reflecting on my experiences at a client engagement involving the de-merger and subsquent merger of a business unit. Working with the service management aspects of this engagement, I am struck by the challenges many service orientated businesses face..... and lack of understanding of the nature of services!

My personal learning experience has come from concealing the complexity of the service concept while engaging with people from management and operations. And in trying to understand the anatomy of a service. My Ah-ha! experience has been in recognizing the subtle difference between "customer care" and "customer service". Customer care is what service-orientated businesses MUST offer their customers -- not as a service but as an activity to take care of their customers. This fundamental shift of mindset will open the way for businesses to think about creating experiences for customers.

Many years ago, when working with eLearning technologies, we designed solutions for customer-education for a Telco who was launching ADSL to the mass-market. I recall this huge gulf that separated those who built the order management solution and those who built the customer portal. I believe this gulf was there largely due to this fundamental lack of understanding of the service concept within the organization -- as in "ADSL service vs Customer Service" ---- and a dysfunctional business operating model (a case of chicken and the egg?)

A service is not a product, it is an effect brought about by a provider for a receiver, based on mutually acceptable terms and conditions. The focus of this exchange is on "What" and not "How" -- so the means by which the provider produces the effect need not be disclosed to the receiver and vice versa for the receiver's use of the service. I believe it is up to the provider to find the right balance between functional, commercial, legal, technical and aesthetic elements of the service to create an experience for the receiver that actually addresses his/her intentions.

As a business architect, I am looking to explore the anatomy of the service so that we can model services in a manner that captures provider and receiver perspectives. One of the things such a model will hopefully provide, is the basis to establish quality-of-service parameters that create more transparency, objectivity and automation to service delivery and management. To narrow my scope, I am interested in services provided by government. To that end, I feel it is crucial to consider (a) the dualism of consumer and citizen in each individual (the "consumerzen") and (b) an intention-based approach to engage with consumerzens.

As value creation in our societies comes increasingly from service-based activity, we must rid ourselves of the antiquated concept of "customer service". For welfare-based societies like mine (Norway) we must move fast to harvest our experiences in creating services so that we can take this to the multi-polar world. What I mean by that is for another blogpost.