I was interviewed recently by Alexandra Meis, cofounder of the education startup Kinvolved and a graduate student at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service. I met Alex last year when she and the Kinvolved team won the National Invitational Public Policy Challenge hosted by the Fels Institute of Government and Governing. Both Kinvolved and Alex are doing great work, some of which you can follow here. The interview was for her class Gov 3.0: Rethinking Governance and Re-Imagining Democracy for the 21st Century. Here's an excerpt:
Alexandra Meis: Beth Noveck’s Gov 3.0 class at NYU Wagner is focused
on the notion that “technology has the potential to transform governance and
produce a more open and participatory political culture with effective
institutions that engender trust.” What are your thoughts on this? What, in
your opinion, are the biggest changes with technology over the past 3-4 years?
What will technology with regard to governance look like over the next 3 years?
[In general?]
Dennis McKenna: Certainly the movement to make government more
open and transparent has been important and leaders like Beth (Noveck) and
Aneesh (Chopra), have been pioneers in this and have done great work.
You see a great deal of
activity today with organizations like Code for America and hackathons hosted
by cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia that are changing the
culture of how governments engage with the public and in their use of
technology. This is a significant shift. Certainly many leading political
campaigns, whether for candidates or on issues, have become effective in
building what might be called a more participatory political culture. Most of
this innovation has been around the edges, however, and there remains a long
way to go.
I’d like to mention
something here. There are of course many factors that influence the current
state of our political culture and Americans’ relationship with governments at
all levels. One that is critical but overlooked is cultural and has little to
do with technology but the two intersect.
Governments, taking a cue
from private industry and the consumer movement in general have for decades
increasingly approached their populations as “customers” or “clients” of public
sector services. In fact, “customer service” has become as important a
term of art for public organizations as for private companies. Admirably,
governments are harnessing smart technology to improve the “customer service
experience”. Getting people “on line and not in line” as they say. This
is well and good and certainly routine services are a significant part of what
governments do and technology innovation can be applied here.
What gets lost, however, is
the notion of citizen. I have a colleague that likes to say that government is
a barn raising and not a vending machine. Governments struggle with the problem
of public engagement. I would argue that this arises, in part, from this
diminished idea of “citizen” in our current government/public equation.
This is terribly
oversimplified, but for example, in education we know that better outcomes come
from ecosystems that engage parents, kids, and the broader community. If
parents simply take the view that “I’m a client of a school and my kid is a
consumer of the education system,” we can run into problems. A better approach
is “I’m a citizen engaged in my child’s schooling and school.” This is a
more fundamental idea: “I participate” vs. “I consume” government services.
Surprisingly, back in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy In America
called this participation out as a unique strength of the American people.
So social media and related technologies can
improve trust issues and open up government data. But through all this it’s
important to drive the notion that we’re all in this together.
