Complexity and Social Networks Blog

Technology, societal changes and new management practices influence how we perceive the roles of government. Moreover, they may transform how government does business and creates public value. However, we might as well fall into the trap of technological determinism--moving from eGovernment straight to Government X.0 hype. Therefore, many predicted a significant transformation of government thanks to new technologies such as ICT, in particular, the Internet while current research shows that the transformation has not happened (e.g. work by West, Norris, Fountain or Lazer). eDemocracy also remains a rethorical promise (Mahrer/Krimmer; UN).

In any case, while I am still working on my contribution to the discourse on Web 2.0 & Government, I have two recommendations for any of our readers interested in the matter:

First, Philipp Mueller, who has already contributed some guest entries to this blog, is offering a course on "Government 2.0" for master students at Erfurt University's School of Public Policy (ESPP) (Spring term 2008). The course covers various aspects such as Web 2.0, open source, NPM, PPP, citizen-centric governance or performance management. The sessions can be viewed online or downloaded as an mp3 file.

Second, a blog by David Osimo, a researcher at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre IPTS, who is working on the impact of Web 2.0 on public services.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The following is an interesting case (MAP Project) of how a network is used as an alternative to the public service network to solve an issues of troubled teenagers in the Netherlands I stumbled upon during a conference on Innovations in Government.

Young people are frequently left behind in the bureaucratic public service systems. Among the disadvantaged, they are often the most difficult to help because they do not have the resources or experience to deal with the social service system. For example, a young woman (age 19), who has not completed a basic level of education due to family problems. Her family as a unit has a bad reputation among agencies. She has also a track record of being rejected by several welfare programs based on her behavior.

As a recipient of welfare, the benefits office wants her to work as a volunteer because her attitude makes her incompatible with the workplace. If she does not comply, her benefits will be stopped. Yet that money is a potential avenue for the young woman to get out of the family situation. Consequently, there is a disconnect between the two sides' needs. The benefits office will not allow this woman to work because of her attitude, but her attitude towards the public sector is so poor because she is not being allowed to pursue her own goals.

The program aims to allow people like the woman described access to the contacts and social networks they need to achieve their life-goals without shifting through bureaucracy. The Network Program for Adolescents Dealing with Multiple Problems attempts to bridge the gaps between young social service recipients and adult service providers. Its a highly personalized case oriented approach. Moreover, the program mobilizes social capital by putting the program participants (the teenagers in crisis) and adults (from different sectors in society) in meetings to expand the networks available to

Two moderators initiate the meetings and arrange training programs for the participants. For example the participants are asked to present themselves to the audience, find and how they would like to utilize their new contacts. The adults present, respond to the participants by asking questions, making suggestions, and offering information. Therefore, the established members in society offer their expertise for a short period, allowing disenfranchised participants to engage with adult networks and information in an informal ways. Both sides take each other serious. However, the program does not seek to establish a formal mentoring relationship. The primary goal of the program is to A. utilize social capital and B. build the latter for the participants by bypassing bureaucratic training programs to introduce them directly to the men and woman who can help them navigate the job market.

By training participants to identify their own solutions to their problems, th program facilitates a bottom-up approach to public service. Therefore, the program tries to activate self-expertise which also represents one of core values identified by the program. The program works outside regular government institutions to mobile the industrial and commercial job markets to assist young people in need, giving program beneficiaries access to private sector opportunities they might otherwise never find.

In general, the meetings cater three to five participants. The majority of participants attend only one meeting. To date, this project has served 71 young people in 15 meetings since April 2005. 60% of whom have subsequently returned to school or joined the labor market. 43 adults, the majority working in industry or commerce, and the others from the fields of public administration, education, health and politics have offered their advice. The program is funded through subsidies of various government subsidies of around EUR 140,000

The founders of the project (e.g. Clara Pels; Henny Werter) are enthusiastic as the MAP Project has been able to demonstrate the effectiveness of collaboration between organizations from different domains. Yet they also note that the programs informal nature is also its greatest weakness. Its very hard to truly measure the effects of the program.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently attended a conference of innovations in government co-sponsored by the Ash Institute in The Hague where the following U.S. case was presented. The case was not discussed from a social networks perspective but should be interesting to those with an interest in the matter as well as the law enforcement community.

Overt drug-markets are an issue for many communities. The police usually responds by conducting crackdowns and drug sweeps. Many times drug trafficking in those neighborhoods continued. In addition, the police struggled maintaining a positive relationship with the lawful residents living in those areas. The following paragraphs will describe the actions taken in the city of High Point, NC.
 
Determined to make a difference, the executive staff of the High Point PD met with Prof. Kennedy (formerly Harvard U), to discuss alternative strategies. Kennedy proposed the concept of law enforcement and partnership, which would comprehensively dissuade street level drug dealers from open-air markets. Community networks are a core success factor. Though the strategy acts on multiple levels as a deterrent for those impacting the community, leaving offenders with little choice but to modify their behavior.

The Overt Drug Market Strategy has eleven key elements:

1) mapping, to determine where the most serious offenses are concentrated (which follows the idea of CompStat)
2) mobilizing commitment of community through public meetings to identify and inform community stakeholders (thereby lowering the transaction costs of acquiring information)
3) surveying by police and probation officers to identify those involved in street drug dealing; 
4) formal identification of offenders and their areas of activity; 
5) incident review; 
6) undercover investigation of each location and offender; 
7) contact with the offender’s family to invite them to join law enforcement in asking offenders to quit; 
8) the call‐in, face to face call between offenders, law enforcement and the community 9) a deadline is issued for three days after the call in for offenders to quit dealing; 
10) enforcement; and 
11) follow‐up visits about a month after the call‐in to ensure that former offenders are being given the help to get out of their situation.
  
The strategy identifies or selects neighborhoods for implementation based on an intense analysis of crime data, followed by interviewing patrol officers, street narcotics officers and community members for their list of "persons of interest". This take at least three months. To date, 40 offenders have been called-in or notified for the Overt Drug Market Strategy in three neighborhoods.

The biggest obstacle for the strategy is the lack of employment opportunities for notified offenders. Jobs are scarce across the board, and most street level drug offenders have only minimal qualifications. Working in collaboration with local service providers, agencies are trying to offer personalized support for the former offenders. Furthermore, this strategy only targets the supply side, not the consumption side.
 
The single most important achievment of the strategy has been the collapse of the drug markets in the neighborhoods. Rush hour traffic jams caused by people buying drugs on their way home have disappeared.

The 1998 institution of the violent offender notification process, on which the Overt Drug Market Strategy is based, resulted in consistent reductions in High Point's violent crime rate as it decreased 47% from 1302 in 1997 to 681 in 2005. In the two years following the call-in in the West End neighborhood, the pilot project, crime of all kinds remained more than 25% lower than before the strategy implementation. Citywide, violent crime decreased 20% in that same two years.

This case certainly supports Kasadra's and Janowitz's (1974) notion that ones attachment to a community produces a willingness to its maintenance through individual or collective action. Though, in this case, a public body like law enforcement agencies seem to play an important part in activating (or may be reactivating) the sense of moral responsibility and connectedness of people in those neighborhoods.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While attending and presenting some of my work at the "gobernabilidad and participation" week of UNESCO's Monterrey Forum in Mexico a couple of weeks ago I had a lot of interesting discussions on the relationship between government, society and the trend towards networks to answer the today's an future issues of the world.

One of the presenters is working on a project called the United Transnational Republics (UTNR). Today's entry summarizes the project based on conversations with Georg Zoche, the founder, as well as some of their communication material.

The UTNR were found in April 2001 and think of themselves as a “3GO”: a Global Governmental Grassroots Organisation. Moreover, it is also an art project. The focus of the UTNR is to establish democracy on a global level. Democracy as we know it since the last two centuries only takes place within nation-states. At the same time globalization happens globally, outside of national boundaries, legislation or agreements. In Georg's words: the world has global problems, but only local/national governments.

Continue reading "A different kind of network: United Transnational Republics" »

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Administrative and political leadership need to use their growing understanding of
eGovernment to come up with strategies that help them crossing the boundary between organizatonal units for better collaboration and coordination. The PNG working paper "Crossing the boundary - Why putting the e in Government is the easy part" reviews the current status of eGovernment projects and research from around the globe and offers additional insights in how to overcome these challenges.

Figure: Modified Gartner eGovernment Hype Cycle

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Today's post ends my entry series on the use of local Social Networking Services by Japanese municipal governments. If you would like to read the entries in order just click here: Introduction, Yatsushiro Case, / Nagaoka case, discussion (organizational aspects).

Even without knowing the respective research and terms interviewees made the correct assumptions about social networks or tell stories reflecting results of social networks and social support in disaster literature. Drawing for example on the narrative of the family that was helped by many strangers after a the mother of a sons friend (weak tie) wrote about their flooded house in her “Gorotto Yatchiro” blog which supports Granovetter’s weak tie and Burt’s structural hole role in non routine activities (2004; 1983). Those interviewees who joined the local SNS found new friends on the platform and expanded their social network as concluded by Tindall and Wellman (2001). Furthermore, Soiga NPO is a great example how an organization, once brought into existence for one set of purpose (environmental activities), can also aid others for different purposes described by Coleman, thus constituting social capital available for use (1988). The NPO’s blogs were considered a trusted source and can provide an alternative to the mass media which is regarded by many individuals as a more credible source of risk information than government (McComas, 2001). A centralized approach to the provision and publication of local information might not be fine-grained enough to cater to the viral and capillary spread of word-of-mouth information anyway. This informal interaction can only be supported by recognizing the peer-to-peer nature of local interaction which is distinct from the conventional many-to-many, few-to-many, or one-to-many broadcast nature of other online interaction (Foth, 2006). In the past this role was taken by neighbourhood organizations which are already impacted by demographic and cultural change (young generations are not really interested in joining).
Finally, if the majority of the population would be represented on local SNS platform, sociograms could provide snapshots of networks and interaction structures. From these types of diagrams government and citizens can visually identify emergent positrons and clusters of interaction. By examining these patterns of mediated and unmediated interaction they could gain an added perspective on communication structures that underpin explicit community processes as well as those that support affective, less instrumental behaviors (Garton, Haythornthwaite, & Wellman, 1997). Privacy might be a concern for citizens of course. At the moment, local SNS can serve the functions of managing and building social networks. In disasters it covers the areas of “observe and report” and “warn and inform”. Along the lines of La Porte, I argue that the design and rules of the network constrain the character, use and content of member roles and exchanges and the network (1996). Consequently, local SNS could support the community and government beyond its current scope.

Sidenote: As I heard this week MIC is planing to extend their local SNS pilot with 10 other cities. I will keep you posted.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In today's entry I would like to make some comments on the two Japanes local government SNS case studies (Yatsushiro / Nagaoka) I presented earlier.

Mr. Kobayashi, the member of Yatsushiro's IT department, has a key role for the future development and functionalities of the SNS platform. He started this local SNS completely on his own, inspired by the rise of private social networking platforms and personal interest in technology. His government membership and high level of personal involvement ensure the sustainability of “Gorotto Yatchiro”. By comparison, “Ococo Nagaoka” is managed by an actor outside of government. The NPO, although well connected, has less leverage on the level government support and involvement. Government officials reportedly evaluate success by the quantity of users which influences their willingness of support. Therefore, "Ococo Nagaoka" is in a critical state (only 600-700 users).

Many online activities (i.e. exchanges) are depending on a critical mass for others to be attractive, a criteria which has not been met in both cases (1%< of the total population) and both mostly exclude older generations. In addition, both are competing with big platforms like Mixi.

If the local SNS has more users, the load on technology and burden on involved managers will also grow. Mr. Kobayashi would not be able to monitor user behavior without further help if that happens. Although officials claim to learn something from citizens, there is nobody checking the information in the citizens' blogs.
Mr. Kobayashi is right when pointing to the importance taking a gradual approach of getting more users and introducing the platform. However, government marketing is not helping much and poorly done which reminded me of discussions with administrators who were wondering about the slow user uptake in their eGovernment projects.

Although Mr. Kobayashi added the map feature, functionality and design of existing platforms led to an early framing of his understanding of the possibilities and limits of local SNS. The lack of feedback by other people in the creation process is certainly a reason why its use in disaster or the government citizen relationship is not fully exploited. Administrative members would also be more willing to join, add content and engage with the citizen if there would be a considerable and visible amount of support by executive level administrators. Again, Mixi and Gree formed their perception of SNS so that in their words local SNS is mainly a way to interact with the public and offer it a way to interact with each other. They miss the aspect of building social capital.

Moreover, MIC should have planned a longer pilot phase since the tendency of a slow user uptake was already visible in the data for Yatsushiro. Central government is still influential in Japan so MIC could have also done more to inform and motivate the public and administrators alike.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Saga Prefecture is located on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Facing a budget crisis Mr. Furukawa, the newly elected governor, started one of Japan's most ambitious reform programs in 2003. It included yearly budget cuts of 15% while at the same time allowing allowing granting departments more flexibility, an organizational redesign and cultural change towards citizen centricity. One of the latest innovative measures was the release of a list with 236 government areas/ processes in October 2006. The public was then asked for outsourcing/public private partnership proposals. Anyone was welcome to participate.

Hiroichi Kawashima, Saga's CIO, and his team worked together with all departments to identify the outsourcing "candidates". Their final list consisted of 236 areas/processes but the public was also allowed to make suggestions for the remaining 1791 areas/processes. The submission deadline ended in November 2006. Surprisingly, only 1/5 of proposals are directed at the 236 areas/processes identified by public servants. The team is currently reviewing the 361 proposals from individuals, NGO's and non recognized organizations. Thereafter, the will announce which proposals have been accepted and will do a public tender. They are also discussing of doing a second round of proposal submissions.

I think this is a very unique way for governments to tap into the creativity and resources of their citizens. I will keep you posted about further developments.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The following describes my findings from Nagaoka city. Follow the highlighted area to read the first part about on government social software in Yatsushiro.

Nagaoka is a city located in the center of Niigata prefecture spanning from the northern coast inland of Japan’s main island Honshu. Just like Yatsushiro, Nagaoka merged with a couple of surrounding cities and towns between April 2005 and January 2006 increasing its population by approximately 100.000. Nagaoka was completely destroyed during Second World War and always had to cope with some form of disaster (earthquakes, snow, flood). This fact left its distinctive mark on the now roughly 283.000 people living in Nagaoka and is a reason why the Phoenix was chosen as a symbol of the city. The recovery of the Chuuetsu earthquake (More on the geophysics) in October 2004 is still taking place in some mountainous areas. The community is said to be better connected in those rural areas than in the city. According to city officials internet penetration is now at 60%. During the earthquake the internet and basic mobile messaging were the only communication channels working.

Before Nagaoka introduced the local SNS platform, it had a web bulletin board besides its official city website. Citizens showed the same frustration with the language and inappropriate behavior of some users which led many to abandon the platform. The city’s local SNS called “Ococo Nagaoka” was introduced in mid December 2005. As it is based on “Open Gorotto” I will not go into detail about its functionality. By now (December 2006) there are 600 registered users compared to 300 at the end of the MIC test phase in February. Only a few forums around casual topics like food eco-tourism can be considered active. The local SNS was marketed through publications in city newspapers, banners and section on the city website. In contrast, Mixi has 2000 members just for Nagaoka.

The process that ultimately led to the Nagaoka local SNS started in 2004. Soiga, an NPO, originally founded for environmental activities in April 2004 used a blogs and RSS to inform the public when the region first experienced a severe flood in April and earthquake in October. They provided faster information than government which received wide media attention, especially when they took over communication after Nakanashima government was operational ineffective through flooding. The NPO tried to convince government officials later that year to start an official government blog but their idea was rejected because nobody saw any need or importance in it. Thereafter, the head of the NPO was asked by MIC to join a newly formed working group on local SNS. (Furthere information in Japanese) The group consisted of academics, members from MIC and members of local administrators among them Mr. Kobayashi. They formed two groups to cover the theoretical and implementation/system aspects. First, they all looked at Mixi and Gree as the majority of them had never heard of SNS or used it before. To get the funds, the official project goal was officially about improving civic participation in Nagaoka and Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward. Although they could not think of a different kind of use, improved information sharing in disasters was a secondary object. MIC covered the costs (¥ 1,500.000) for the local SNS pilot phase whereas the NPO was asked to manage it and work together with local government. Running costs are at around ¥ 30,000 per month.

When Nagaoka’s local SNS started, many sections except for information policy did not understand the SNS concept and why Nagaoka was chosen. In fact, of those interviewed, many admit that they are still wondering what SNS is all about, why they should put their information online and how it could be further utilized for government. Many immediately joined Mixi to get a feeling for SNS. Perceptions of local SNS vary. The dominating view is that local SNS provides a convenient location for communication and information sharing for citizens and government. In the past neighbourhood associations (NA) were the link between government and citizens. However, most leaders and people in the NA are now very old and lack knowledge or interest in the use of IT. Some interviewees think it could complete or add value to real-life relationships. People could help each other more by learning more about each other, what they could do for the community and as a result rely less on government. One mentions a group that started discussing how to have a nicer city and improve economic growth which members first got to each other through the local and later offline. A member of the disaster section adds that it is strengthening the community by building broad networks between the newly merged cities. Sceptics think that there are more dominating means of communication like mobile phones. A council member who uses multiple blogs and the SNS, thinks that the level of impact on the community of the local SNS is very low. To stress this point he compares his networks on Mixi (112 contacts) and the local SNS (12 contacts). In general though, SNS helped the council member to interact with the younger community.

Currently the members of Soiga (Japanese only) are working on an updated version which should be online by early 2007. The biggest change lies in the use of the Google Maps API. They are as well talking about online advertisement space and how to attract more users to the platform. Significant changes to “Open Gorotto” can only be introduced if they are implemented by Mr. Kobayashi or someone with his skills.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I wrote in an earlier entry I am currently in Japan doing research in 2 areas. First, I look at local SNS (social software) and how this could be useful for disaster management. Second, I will do another case study for my research on Citizen Relationship Management.

Yatsushiro is the second largest city of the Kumamoto prefecture and is centrally located about 40 km from the Kyushu west coast, the southernmost of the four Japanese islands. As part of the eGovernment efforts in 2002/03 the city started “Gorotto Yatchiro”. It offered a bulletin board, calendar, link posting and email form functionality. However, it never got quite of the ground with a final community size of 600, 40 truly active users and 10.000 page views per month. Usage decreased over time and since membership offered anonymity some members did not stick to accepted conventions of online behaviour. As for Japanese culture, this keeps a lot of people critical of such initiatives paired with general mistrust in government and public administration in Japan. More than 900 local governments around Japan had set up citizens’ virtual conference rooms by 2004 as part of their eParticipation efforts. Though, most of these projects met the same fate as the one in Yatsushiro city.

Meet Mr. Takao Kobayashi who had/ still has the biggest influence on local government social networking services in Japan with his ideas and "Open Gorotto" platform which is available free as openSource software (click the above link to download the latest version).

In response to the decline of the bulletin board and inspired by bigger and popular social networking platforms such as Mixi, Mr. Takao Kobayashi, a young member of the Yatsushiro IT department, decided to design and program a new version of Gorotto in 2004. Interestingly, he was neither ordered to do so nor did he ask for permission. Within three months the first version of the “Open-Gorotto” SNS using openSource software as Free BSD, PostgreSQL, and PHP was developed. Except being inspired by existing social networking platforms no additional surveys on user needs were conducted. As the platform is hosted on government servers and development was done in work and free-time costs can be considered insignificant. Up to this day there is no additional budget set aside or significant recognition of political or administrative leadership except that that there is no interference.

Mr. Kobayashi mentions four points that motivated him to create the SNS platform: First, citizens are much better at sharing government information, so each citizen’s network serves as a multiplier. Second, the platform helps the community to grow stronger, meaning that people who share mutual interests can get together in a pleasant atmosphere. Third, the platform presents general and government information in a different way. Finally, administrators can interact and learn from citizens. Disaster is missing here but was picked up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) as a goal. MIC conducted empirical testing of SNS communities in the City of Nagaoka which will be described in LINK and in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward in early 2006.

The SNS platform exists parallel toYatsushiro city's website which links to the former. “Gorotto Yatchiro” functionality includes a blog, networking, personal profile, picture/media library, calendar and newsgroups (see picture below). Its uniqueness compared to sites like Mixi, Gree, MySpace or Xing lies in additional features as GIS/Google maps mash-up, a fire alert or open architecture with allows for integration of other features. Besides that the platform is mobile friendly. Although everybody can use the platform registered users can invite contacts. In order to prevent a development similar to the bulletin board “Open Gorotto” includes the “Alien” or “Grey Person” feature. This automatically scans for swearwords and the like and also sends a quick note to the administrator (Mr. Kobayashi) and another person supporting him with this task.

Since the new version was made available online by end of 2004, member expansion was left to invitations of users only. Mr. Kobayashi thinks that this allows for a healthier online community and avoids the objections citizens might have towards government although it is much slower. Advertising was only done through links on the city website, flyers and ads in the city magazine. Additional public attention came through press articles first in the regional and later in national press which is visible in higher website traffic after key interviews. By now the platform has around 2800 members with 70% being from Yatsushiro. Average age of members is 39 with males tending to be more active than females (ratio: 7:3). 400 users can be counted as truly active in terms of their blog, commenting or in forum behavior. The most used features are the diary followed by the internal email system and forums. 400 users have also subscribed the RSS feature. Smaller forums are managed by citizens; bigger ones are managed by the admins. 100 members of the community belong to the local administration or politics. When asked, Government officials see the local SNS mostly as another communication channel. They are still thinking about further use, especially with regard to disaster though.

Mr. Kobayashi is currently promoting the idea of having local interconnected SNS in all of Japan's municipalities that also mirror each other in case of a failure/disruption like a disaster. Modifications of "Open Gorotto" are already used by other local SNS throughout Japan. However, many times Mixi is able to attract more people from the same area as the local SNS. This relates very much to questions raised by Ines Mergel regarding individual social networking platform online behavior.

In any case, the actions of Mr. Kobayashi are unique. It is proof of an individual's impact on a smaller and ultimately broader scale. I could not find similar projects of government SNS in the world with regard to eDemocracy or disaster management. Hence, "Open Gorotto" is an innovation for local government worthwhile spending more time thinking about.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently, the government in Japan is promoting the use of Social Networking Services (SNS) as they are hoping to take advantage of this for consultation and during a crisis like a disaster. As I will take a look at the attempts in my case studies of Yatsushiro-city, Kumamoto prefecture and Nagaoka-city, Niigata prefecture I will keep you updated in the upcoming weeks.

Let's take a look at one of the big social networking platforms in Japan the meantime. Its called Mixi and has some of the following features:
- Invitation only
- It includes a sort of diary or blog which can be shared only with the people directly connected.
- Users review goods and services
- Miximusic / iTunes integration
- You can see who visited your profile
- Anonymous profiles mostly.
- Groups. Mixi has up to a million groups that users have created
- Heavily mobile-based / friendly. Japanese people spend a lot of time commuting on the train so there is plenty of time to take advantage of the 3G network and advanced phone features like chat, mms or GPS.

I begin to wonder when we will move into the mobile SNS world. Imagine when vast ammounts people start tagging their environment with the integrated GPS or connect with their direct or in case of dating, interested "peers". This will also allow for new types of government citizen interactions with regard to disasters and everyday management.

Update: If you would like to read the full story on government social software follow this link.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The internet made us more powerful as well as making us more transparent. We have access to information anytime, anyplace. We can find, motivate or join like minded people to create something or influence a third party. We also leave our trails on blogs, social networking platforms, newsgroups or buying online. Governments and citizens alike can benefit from this trend.

Hierarchical government structures are the dominant model for public service delivery and meeting public policies. Although desired outcomes are mostly realized, this set-up turns out to have various downsides. Results are a silo like, inward-looking culture, slow decision making, change awareness or knowledge diffusion. While the latter also led to an institutionalized disconnect from citizens it can cause system failures when information and decision making transcends organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. Hurricane Katrina, the Avian Flu, various non-prevented terrorist attacks are such representative cases.

In addition, public administration has become continuously more complex. Economic, social, political and technological developments in the past decades have lead to a growth of the administrative apparatus, its size, power and obligations. Market-based reforms have optimized agency operations and privatized public services through contracting-out (i.e. Public Private Partnerships) or completely conferring them to the private sector. Hence, public managers and policy makers have to work within a sphere of multiple stakeholders and understand interdependent relationships for service provision, regulation and policy making. Knowing whom to hold accountable and a general understanding of this complex system is important for legislators as well as for citizen.

What can governments do?

1. Access
2. Dialogue
3. Transparency
4. Internal change

Governments need to provide access to its services and information by the latest channels (i.e. counter, call center, web portal). Additionally, pervasive municipal WLANs are part of the idea. However, access also means share as much data as possible that was kept within the organization in the past. It is important however to structure and phrase internal information when giving citizens access as they might not be accustomed to the terms, language or procedures. In general, constituents can come up with creative ways of adding value to that data by analyzing or linking it with other information. Google Maps mash-ups like Chicago crime watch are a good example. At the same time it is important that citizens can share their information with their government and fellow constituents.

Dialogues help governments to understand the emotional, social, cultural and government contexts that shape citizens experiences. In an iterative dialogue of equals people can learn from each other. Governments are doing this through focus groups, neighbourhood councils and the like. A centralized call center and number like 311 make it easier for citizens to start that dialogue. In the future, governments could also provide platforms where citizens and governments can form a network on government related topics. Many times though governments cooperated symbolically (Etzioni 1958: 261) usually causing citizens realizing the lack of impact returning to passivity.

By sharing internal knowledge or allowing citizens to track their public services governments create a lot of transparency. In fact they governments loose a level of control while at the same time adding value by decreasing their burden through information requests, using citizen’s input to improve internal efficiency, eliminating gate-keepers or changing daily management. Let’s take the impact of New York’s 311 implementation for example. If any engineer, architect or builder wanted to meet with a DOB building inspector, which was necessary to begin a project, they would have to use the services of an expediter, a person whose job it was to interact with City employees and to facilitate the permitting and inspection process. Each of these expediters had a relationship with an employee in the DOB. As such they were gate-keepers. Typically, expediters would book numerous appointments each day in case they were hired; they would then cancel appointments at the last minute if they did not need them. A building inspector would therefore have his calendar full for several weeks in the future, meaning that anyone not using an expediter would be forced to wait weeks for an appointment. Transparency combined with better access changed this. Now citizens are randomly assigned to an inspector so that nobody can maintain special relationships. Expediters are no longer useful or necessary. The inspectors are working at full capacity and have to meet certain performance criteria (i.e. response time, closing time).

Finally, internal change is necessary to provide an environment and infrastructure to make the above happen. Sustainable, top-level political leadership is one of the key success factors.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A current article in the German online newspaper SPIEGEL reports that wikipedia entries regarding US congress members have been manipulated (in German). As the related wiki entry notes "these edits had, among others, added libelous statements, removed content with malice, added childish insults, violated Wikipedia Policy."

This raises an interesting issue. We need to further our understanding how well such "open source" knowledge bases can be used to find reliable data. Building on recent discussions, such as Censorship and Google, we need to ask whether or not it is required to start thinking about the "rules and regulations of internetworking". The internet on the one hand allows for accessing a vast variety of information, but on the other hand raises serious concerns regarding the reliabilty of such "freely available information". However, one might also argue that there is no need to regulate, because the very nature of "open source" regulates the flow of information automatically (as the current example shows). What do you think?

See also:
Report in Sun Lowell on staffer edits on the bio of US Rep Marty Meehan. A discussion of Wikipedia Immunity by Anita Ramasastry. Further details on Wikipedia and US Congress.

Posted by Thomas Langenberg at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My next entries will discuss the application of Customer Relationship Management in the public sector. Other terms used are citizen or constituent relationship management. As this is a relatively new topic and less applied concept in the pulic sector I hope our visitors are interested in sharing some of their ideas or questions with me.

What is CiRM?
In how war is CiRM different from CRM?
How is it understood in government?
How is CiRM implemented?
Will it have an impact on customer service in the ps? What other impacts do you expect.
What other questions should we ask?

I am looking forward for your input. I will provide further information on Citizen Relationship Management at my website.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Markus Mobius will be speaking today on "Measuring Trust in Social Networks Through a Microfinance Field Experiment"

Monday, November 28, 2005
Bell Hall, Kennedy School of Government
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

We propose a methodology to measure trust within a social network and apply it in a field experiment in shantytowns of Lima, Peru. We model trust as a transaction cost which an agent pays to gain permission to use someone else's asset. Social closeness reduces the transaction costs through two channels: (1) it reduces asymmetric information and makes it more likely that the asset's owner can identify the user as a 'good' responsible) type; (2) it gives the owner the ability to control the agent's use of the asset and hence reduce moral hazard.

We have designed a microfinance program where we invite a subsample of the Shantytown community to become 'sponsors'. Sponsors receive a line of credit and can use a fixed share of it to obtain loans for their own household. The rest of their credit line (the 'asset') is allocated for 'sponsoring'. Any household in the community can get a low-interest rate loan from our microfinance partner by finding a sponsor who agrees to cosign the loan application. We randomize interest rates across all client-sponsor pairs: this allows us to measure the tradeoff between accessing a socially close sponsor with a high interest rate and a socially distant sponsor with a low interest rate. A second randomization varies the extent to which a sponsor is responsible for a borrower's default which allows us to separate our two trust channels. In this paper we report early results from two communities. We find that social distance up to length three reduces transaction costs by about 1 to 4 percent in terms of monthly interest rates. Moreover, geographic distance is also highly significant.

Mp3 Podcast - Presentation PDF

Posted by David Lazer at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

There is a recent and increasing literature on networks and government that makes a strong case that much of what government does actually involves a complex interlocking of government (and nongovernment) actors. A key question, as ideas around “networked government�? are explored, is how to draw on the rich research vein on inter-organizational networks that currently exists, most/much of which focuses on the intersection of networks and markets (economic sociology)? In short, in what ways are intergovernmental networks different, in what ways are they the same? A few differences to begin with:

(1) Governmental entities often have a monopoly over their domain. Much of the economic sociology literature effectively relies on exit (the market) to make the network (pre-existing ties) powerful—I cease to do business with you because you behaved badly with me (relational embeddedness) or someone else I know (structural embeddedness).

(2) There is less flexibility to organizational boundaries—e.g., given high levels of interdependence and potential opportunism, in the market one firm can merge with another, which is often impossible in the governmental setting.

(3) There are often limits on exchange—e.g., often it is not possible for one agency to pay another to help it achieve its policy objectives.

See the slides from this talk, listen to the podcast or watch the Video (WMV 320x240).

Posted by David Lazer at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)