In the 2008 Bertha Bassam Lecture, David Weinberger points out that over the past several centuries we have come to equate credibility with objectivity and impartiality, but that the rise of the Internet is eroding this equation (italics added by me):
Because it shows us how the sausage is made, Wikipedia is far more credible. Yet this is exactly the stuff that the Britannica won’t show us because they think it would make them look amateurish and take away from their credibility. But in fact transparency—which is what this is—is the new objectivity. We are not going to trust objectivity. We are not going to trust objectivity unless we can see the discussion that led to it.
Replace “the Britannica” in this quote with “civil service” or “the government” and you see the problem. The values of civil service presume that objectivity and impartiality lead to credibility. Indeed, in many Western democracies this is a core value of civil service: to provide “objective” advice to partisan elected officials. Increasingly, however, this model is breaking down. One reason why demand for open data has resonated within and beyond the tech community is that people aren’t satisfied with seeing the final product; they want the right to see how, and with what, it was made.
Governments will argue they are open, but this is in only a relative sense when compared to private corporations (as opposed to open source projects). Take, for example, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests infrastructure in Canada. Put aside the fact that this system is simultaneously open to abuse, overwhelmed, and outdated. Think about the idea of FOI. The fact that information is by default secret (or functionally secret since it is inaccessible) is itself a powerful indication of how fundamentally opaque the workings of government remain. If information growth is exponential, how much data can the government not only manage but effectively assess the confidentiality of on a regular basis? And at what cost? In a world where open models function with great efficiency, how long before the public loses all confidence?
Why does this matter? Because successful platforms are very rarely those that are opaque and self-appointed as credible. Quite the opposite: platforms for innovation work because they are transparent, are accessible, and can be remixed. And yet reorienting governments from an authority model based on objectivity to one based on transparency is possibly one of the single greatest obstacles.
The combination of these four forces—the Coasean collapse, the long tail of public policy, patch culture, and the death of objectivity—is reshaping how governments operate and their relationship with citizens, and is presenting them with an opportunity to establish themselves as platforms for innovation. But they simultaneously serve as enormous challenges to the status quo. Virtually everyone I speak to in government talks about the stress of change and uncertainty they currently experience. This is hardly surprising. Sociologist William Ogburn once noted that social stresses can arise out of the uneven rates of change in different sectors of society. Today, the gap between the government and the private sector (particularly the tech sector) has become enormous.
From the inside, the transition from a civil service that is corporate and opaque to one that is transparent, open, and platform-oriented risks looking like it will be gut-wrenching, challenging, and painful. Reengineering processes, metrics, worldviews, roles, and, above all, a 100-year-old culture and values set deeply embedded within civil service is scary. We all fear change, particularly if we fear that change might erode our influence. Ironically, however, it is the resistance that will erode power and influence. Those governments, and especially those civil services, that embrace these shifts and develop appropriate strategies will discover that they are still influential—just in new and unforeseen ways.