From openness to sustainability

My daughter is studying psychology and explains all our actions with different theories. Something like that got started last week on the Open Knowledge Festival.

On Wednesday Ministry of Finance arranged an open "hackathon" (F) for developing a country plan in order to join Open Government Partnership along with 70 other countries.

Open government, Open knowledge, Open data.. 

Opening data has been on agenda for a year now. Short-sightedly, I have settled for aiming to opening up government spending.

Last week I came across with broader views that obviously had been there for me to find. With a colleague from Isle of Man we discussed how to find and visualize the influence behind faceless enterprises. How to spot the power links in the world economy and what exactly is the thing that needs to be opened if we aim to find the real places of influence?

Customer journeys in one's own mother tongue

Data visualization came up in Visualizing Knowledge (F) seminar on Monday. Rob Waller linked literacy built on structured documents with the concept of customer journey.

On Thursday I got a sort of a wake up call on the real significance of mother tongue. I got acquainted with contract visualization already on Monday, in English. But it wasn't until M!ND researcher Stefania Passera gave the same speech in Finnish, my own mother tongue, that really got my own thinking going.

As the pieces gained their familiarity in Finnish I became able to apply the newly learned methods in the phenomena in my own work.

So this is what it means to really understand what the official actually wants of me!

Open data is not knowledge, interpretation creates understanding

In the end we got taught by a living legend. Hans Rosling so knows how to visualize "boring" data, how to interpret it and how to communicate the phenomena lurking behind millions of rows of raw data. If Bush can get it, so can you, he concluded :)

Opening data, knowledge and government means more.
Openness is the way to sustainability.

Open data connects taxation with public spending

Knowledge is power, they say. In western countries we aim to control public decision making by making it transparent and opening it for discussion. The voters then have the power to change the decision makers they're unhappy with.

Doesn't the Arab Spring source from lack of that openness?

When we think of the complex causal connections within societies, it is obvious that the voting power is distributed unevenly. How do you care about something you don't understand?

Open data enables democracy

The recent development in ICT comes in handy. Open data makes, say, presenting government spending in a more conceivable way much easier than the dead-boring budget ledgers could ever achieve.

Apps4Finland is a competition that has really boosted innovation for a few years now. It has invited IT nerds to come up with stunning solutions of presenting data. But it is also advancing open government with invitations to open data.

My personal favorite is data visualization. Due to my background, here are a few examples that are closely related to taxation.

Taxes and other payments as a proportion of a working day

A day as an tax payer (F) describes with a watch, how your gross earnings would be divided into different payments. Click the watch for further information. Hovering the mouse above the watch takes you further in details.

First section of your earnings belongs to you, it is your net salary. Second section will cover your municipality tax and the third your state tax. The fourth sector is your share of pension fees and the fifth section will be spent on other minor fees.

Tax receipt shows how you finance the society

Tax receipt (F), on the other hand, shows you, based on your salary, how you will be financing public spending. The application is based on state budget and general information of tax percentages. Since the state budget is quite difficult with its bureaucratic wordings to apprehend, this is quite a nice way to get a hold of the bigger picture of government spending.

Yet another strong symbol of the Nordic openness and equality in Finland is that Tax Administration opens the so called public data on how individuals actually were taxed each year. Tax Administration publishes on its website information on
How the publication of data is carried out (F)
What is included in the public data (F)

Public data can be used to show how the tax laws apply to different tax payer groups. After the people have the information, they will be more able to analyze it and draw conclusions on their society, respectively. And we'll be one step closer to democracy.

Work 2.0 comes with a revolution

Our minister of communications Suvi Lindén blogged (in Finnish) Arjen tietoyhteiskunta on building the information society, responsibilities of her ministry and accountability.

The National Audit Office (NAO) wrote in its surveillance report 9.6.2010 (F) about the missing results in information society.

For some reason we're good at planning, strategies and all that other stuff on paper - but we don't seem to be able to move on to concrete results. What's stopping us?

The missing communications

NAO pointed out the missing communications: " The site Arjentietoyhteiskunta.fi (F, some content also in English) has been updated quite passively and there is no information on the work of different working groups." (translation mine)

I'd point out missing target groups, too. My experience is that a new site only comes to my knowledge in three ways:

a friend recommends it to you

it pops up in Google results (no matter what you search)

the link has appeared on one of the sites you visit regularly

These three need to be taken care of in communications. Of course, things are already quite a lot more "findable" and open than just a few years back.

I can still recall the day Ota kantaa (F) was introduced in our office. What a thrill: this is the beginning of an new, open era! But then, the discussions grew thinner and thinner. The topics stayed somewhat distant (even for a fellow civil servant). So what can you do; if it's not your thing, there is nothing that would draw you back.

Today the site looks good and the topics are interesting. Moderated discussions are off, at the moment.. Anyway, let's take a look (at the links that unfortunately are solely in Finnish).

"Discussion is closed" -page has a link to .. project site.. at the site of the Prime Minister's Office. There's a loooongish text.. And there! On the right you have Read more -link to.. a third page, with a pdf, press release and - this is good - a video release.. And on the menu bar on your left there's the Web discussions -link.. Nope. Nothing new there: it takes us back to the press releases..

Although I pretend to be pointing out things with my finger, my wish is that together we are able to improve the user experience on these sites. It's no good to seminate links and web pages unless the entity is meaningful and takes the surfer to the goal that has been promised.

Do I have all the Right Answers? Of course not. But I do want us to begin the search for the better together. The main thing is to talk about all this, so that more and more citizens find in to our mutual search.

Missing openness in communications

Communications in public sector is missing timeliness and openness. It often feels like the only signals of life are official releases (missing the concreteness) or registered requests for official statement on this or that. The subsidiaries then come to attention and start churning out the official mumbo jumbo with high respect.. Is this level of interaction acceptable in 2010's?

On the other hand, openness and activity are on the rise in the Facebook. A few hundred fans support Vertti, virtual master of the Ubiquitous Information Society Facebook page (F).

The person / function / ministry behind this Vertti creature is quite bashful: he or she doesn't want to come out. (THE topic at the moment: should public sector officers give out their names in the social media or not).

On this page you can discuss anything about the information society. Do share your suggestions, ideas; give a prop, challenge us, make a comment or an argument. The forum is yours. -Facebook - Data (F, translation mine)

Quite an encouraging message! Yes please, I'd be happy to participate. Here are a few top links I've found eg. on Gov2. Are you guys with me; or what do you think? No answer. Silence. For some reason Vertti really is shy.. Perhaps we haven't been introduced properly?

I can't help it: I would so love it if the Official Oracle of the site would, in the spirit of the social media, make even a small nod stating: "I heard you". Because, that is the only way to have a dialogue. I talk - then you - then I respond - your turn.. connecting, communicating!

We must remember, though, that IRL (in real life), all the representative meetings between different ministries or boards are still far from spontaneous communication. It is perhaps the tradition (not noblesse) that obliges civil servants to behave like a bunch of mummies at a cocktail party. Or, even worse, like in a play where loyal servants race to praise the prevailing circumstances as if there is nothing to improve anywhere in life..

Just like in that fairytale of the Emperor's New Clothes! Only.. if it's not proper to point out the failures, there will be no change.

For a revolution you need..

It's not that we don't have networks: we do know each other, we do business together. Email is floating with stuff to and fro. The point is that it is oddly missing the hottest topics, the ones that are in the middle of the change and demand crowdsourcing in order to improve further.

Is it possible that the civil servants still don't dare to communicate in a less official way? "I have no authority to be the one to talk about it, yet", is that it? There are just the home page to be updated in a somewhat passive way and the official press release to be published.

Why? Is it unclear responsibilities? Undefined content? Lack of courage? I say, Work 2.0 needs a revolution for

Civil servants to have courage for unofficial communication

Platforms to entail sharing (Like this, Share this)

Networks to work together intentionally

Communications to become continuous: no pain, no gain!

Without the new approach, communications is like a relay where no one told the runners whether they're running 4x100 or 4x400 tracks. Bound to drop the baton, eh?

Disclaimer
This writing is an intentional wake up call. Even though I've *gathered this evidence* as a representative of my employer, the opinions and poking questions are mine and mine alone. Thus this post does not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my employer.

On the way to Information Society

A bit over a year ago I blogged about how to plan services (F) For user experience to be pleasant, the service needs to have all bits and pieces in balance.

A good example of nice experience is how you plan your Google front page. Some might say "nonsense", but I love it for showing me news headlines at a glance. I also love beauty; so this is how my iGoogle looks like.

This year's foot ball finals (F) was my first game ever (en spite of the fact that I loved Goal! a lot). Fanny, our cat, got so excited, too, that we took some snapshots to share with our friends.

I'm a Picasa user (over Flickr) for the simple reason of user accounts: I already had an account with Google. Oh, how I'd love OpenID: the less accounts (and passwords), the better!

To my regret, I have a Nokia E90 instead of an iPhone, so sharing photos has been a pain in the neck. Google's Picasa offered a good option to do the trick via email. Fast and easy, and the results you can see here.

Social media opens new horizons also to government officers, those wanting to share experiences, learn from one another and create new innovation. I believe we need to speed up the development: all too few of us use tools enabling bigger productivity or crowd-sourcing type of innovation.

Public sector in Finland (perhaps the whole country, too) is still in the phase of slow adaption with Twitter - and I wouldn't have the time to wait =) LinkedIn is more used but, all too often, poorly so. Facebook is all the more famous but mostly used for private purposes. (Dear reader, a word of warning: the previous estimation is based on my professional public sector networks and may not represent the whole truth)

I am part of a big team SADe (F) that is building information society and eGovernment in Finland. I'm not saying that government offices' first priorities lie with tweets or sharing photos, but my few examples above are definitely worth learning from. Information society should be innovative and easy to use.

What needs to be gained, in my experience of a year as a blogger, is networking, sharing and enriching the experiences. Only thus can we benefit and speed up the learning curve.

That's how innovation is spread. First there was Gutenberg's printing press. Today we blog to spread our thoughts.

My blog at Arjen tietoyhteiskunta (F - unfortunately not translated).