Challenges for Open Governance pioneers
As mentioned earlier on this blog, one of the interesting clusters of projects supported by the Digital Pioneers Fund consists of projects that contribute to the participation of citizens in political and policy issues. In the last two blogposts on this topic, we focused on the rise of what we called ‘open governance’ pioneers in the Netherlands, the US, Australia and the UK and the question how open governance initiatives have activated participation of citizens in politics and government.
Clearly there is a vibrant movement. Citzens organize themselves effectively around public issues horizontally. And, citizens and governments organise themselves from top-down to bottum up. In this third blogpost we would like to address the question on what challenges there are for the near future. Although the real pioneering has been done, Open Governance is still far from mainstream. The theme has gained momentum in the last couple of years and hardly anyone would argue against the importance of it in the near future. But, how to realize concrete change?
There are still many obstacles and problems to solve. The initial enthusiasm of entrepreneurs seems to transform into a question mark. One of the important contradictions to solve is the fact that the Open Governance movement will only be sustainable if a fruitful coalition is realized between grass roots organisations and the government. The early initiators feel that certainly some civil servants and politicians embrace the idea of Open Governance, but at the same time the theme easily slips from the agenda. One of the direct consequences is the disappearance of funds. On top of that, the scene is still fragmented and without a strong collective voice. And last but not least, quite some citizens need to be schooled and convinced of the relevance of Open Governance.
1. Cooperation with governments
A total of seven projects were supported within the eParticipation round of the Digital Pioneers Porgramme, four eParticipation plus projects and three eParticipation projects. The eParticipation plus projects actively sought collaboration with the government. But eventually there was less intensive collaborations between the projects and the government than was expected and hoped for. Collaboration took a long time to establish since governemental organisations acted slower than pioneers, who can move fast.
However, in 9 months there have been made some first steps in setting up collaboration between pioneers and governmental organisations in some projects. In the case of the projects Polidocs.nl and Openkamer.tv, there was the provision of data by the partner, who in exchange got access to the academic research. In the case of HNS dev, three municipalities participated in the project by targeting their data available. Collaboration in the project Democatiespel was realised by having the Institute for Public Policy playing a role in the promotion and testing of beta- versions of the game.
Pioneers know where to find each other in the public domain. But, as we have conversations with a number of pioneers, cooperation with governmental organisations is often perceived as a stumbling block. There is a clear need for partnership with governments, because in theory this offers a lot of opportunities for the sustainability of pioneer projects, but pioneers seem to often lack the knowlegde and network to succeed.
In addition, more and more officials and civel servants are aware of the importance of digital resources to increase and improve contact with citizens. The government has launched initiatives to stimulate this. A good example is Ambtenaar 2.0 (www.ambtenaar20.nl), a Dutch platform and a network of people, both officials and citizens, who investigate the effects of Web 2.0 for the government, exchange ideas, knowledge and practical experience. Many officials would like to integrate the use of social media and Web 2.0 in their daily working practice and projects. But they are often subject to regulation, procurement limits or have limited technical knowledge needed to perform such projects.
As pioneers in Open Government-initiatives are looking for ways to get their project sustainable with the help of governements, officials might benefit from connections with promoters who have technical expertise and know-how of reaching citizens.
2. Fragmentation
The momentum and enthusiasm of the first directors and decision makers in the field of Open Governance is passing by in the Netherlands. The future of Open Governance in the Netherlands is under pressure. Budgets are likely to disappear and Open Governance is no longer on top the political and administrative agendas. Although there are many promising developments and operating products, the field is deeply fragmented.
There is a need for more focus, budget and attention in stimulating participation of citizens in political and policy issues online and anchor Open Governance in the Netherlands. This is also why the Digital Pioneers eParticipation round, with support of Ministry of Internal Affairs was followed up by the Digital Pioneers eParticipation Academy, as mentioned earlier on this blog. Different pioneer initiatives work on a platform that must ensure the continuity of the development of Open Governance initiatives in the Netherlands and organise the fragmented field.
3. Sustainability
One of the big challenges ahead is how the Open Governance initiatives can be sustainable. Some initiatives die a silent death because there is no money or goodwill left to run it. There is a big struggle for finding a working ‘business model’. The project Petities.nl experiments for example with asking people who start a petition to pay a little contribution. Verbeterdebuurt delivers services for different municipalities for which they are willing to pay. The model based on delivering extra services now looks most promising for this field, but will it be enough?
Complicating factor is that the financial support from both national and local governments is now under pressure in the Netherlands. For example, the Digital Pioneers subsidy fund will stop in 2010 and on regional level lots of innovation budgets will disappear. Many Open Governance initiatives are developed based on subsidies. This is cause for concern and the need to generate for generating cash flow in different ways.
4. Schooling and convincing citizens of the possibilities of Open Governance
During the elections of Dutch Parliament last June, more than twenty services emerged where citizens could get help in the process of deciding whom to vote for. Three million people used Stemwijzer.nl, filled in a few theorems, which eventually led to the party on which you agree on most of their programme. However, there is a world to win in convincing the bulk of the citizens of the possibilities of online interaction with their government.
There are a lot of active citizens but there are a lot of ‘sleeping’ citizens as well. There may exist interesting tools and energetic pioneers but changing the mindset of the people who eventually have to use the new technology might prove to be a hell of a challenge as well. Altogether, though participation is getting common, massive cooperation between citizens and their government is still not reality at all.
Researching the state of Open Governance
So in our analysis of the rise of Open Governance initiatives, cooperation with the government, the fragmentation of the field, sustainability and schooling citizens are the main challenges we see for the field for further development. We are very curious in your opinion on this analysis of challenges for the future.
And building upon these challenges, what are the general recommendations for a vital open governance movement the following years? What is needed for example to unite the fragmented field of initiatives? How to convince citizens of the possibilities to participate online in political and policy issues?
