I’ve fully read both NASA’s plan and the Office of Personnel Management’s plan while skimming the rest of the plans.  NASA does have a great plan that is detailed and just well thought out.  Other plans used the right buzzwords but you can tell that there is not a strategy for fully realizing the capabilities of social networking.

It would be good to see some independent reviews of the plans.  Might be an interesting project for the summer.

1) “How do Web technologies support the strategies of an organization?”
2) “How do Web technologies enhance organizational performance?”

The authors of the study argue that existing efforts to use Web technologies are not being effectively utilized because the organizations do not know how to align the technologies with the strategic goals of the organization due to a limited understanding of how to achieve such an alignment. Using a case study of a Singapore IT publication (Hardwarezone.com), the authors list the seven capabilities of Web technologies:

1) “Enable an organization to transcend geographical and temporal boundaries.”
2) “Facilitate improvements to processes in an organization’s value chain.”
3) “Provide an effective means of collecting customer information and feedback.”
4) “Enhance the timeliness of organizational information.”
5) “Reinforce offline business models and facilitate the creation of new business models.”
6) “Reduce the capital outlay involved in establishing and expanding a business.”
7) “Enable the development of virtual communities.”

None of the above should be surprising to Gov 2.0 practitioners. Having listed the seven capabilities, the authors then describe their process model which consists of the three core logics of strategic management and the two core logics of organizational sociology:

1) Strategic Management
a. Logic of Positioning – how a company strategically positions itself in the marketplace
b. Logic of Leverage – effectively using strategic resources and capabilities
c. Logic of Opportunity – innovating effectively in response to a changing external environment
2) Organizational Sociology
a. Logic of Optimality – creation of the optimal organizational form for the current environment
b. Logic of Social Congruence – organization harmonizes relationships with key stakeholders

So, what does this mean for Gov 2.0 practitioners? Even though the process model applies to business organizations, the same logics can be transformed into public administration equivalents. For example, when selling a new social networking technology to agency management, you can demonstrate how the technology’s capabilities can fulfill one of the logics.

Let’s say you want to start up a Twitter feed to publicize agency activities. The Twitter feed meets capabilities 1, 3, 4, and 7. These capabilities meet the logics of Positioning, Opportunity, and Social Congruence. By demonstrating how the new technology aligns with some of the strategic goals of the organization, Gov 2.0 practitioners can better sell these new technologies to upper agency management.

References:
Tan, B.C.C., Pan, S.L., & Hackney, R. (2010). The strategic implications of web technologies: A process model of how web technologies enhance organizational performance. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 57: 2. 181-197.

(Cross-posted on GovLoop)

Q: How do we facilitate a change from existing behavior and culture to open government?

A: I did my doctoral research on questions similar to this question. In my research, I examined the link between the communication of a change vision (a special form of mental model) and organizational alignment to determine what constitutes effective communication in bringing about organizational change. I developed a case study of the merger of a city archives and a county archives into a single metropolitan agency.

Listed below are findings that might prove especially relevant to the questions:

1) There are two change visions: an internal change vision and an external change vision. The external change vision in this case is the one that is promoted from the Obama administration to the general public. This external change vision explains the benefits of open government and attempts to build support with the external stakeholders of the government agencies. The external change vision is detailed and extensively communicated through a wide range of communication methods.

In contrast, the internal change vision is the vision that is communicated to the employees of the affected agencies. This vision is often lacking in detail and is not as well-communicated as the external change vision. In many cases, there is little or no effort to gain support of the internal change vision. The internal change vision is imposed from the top-down with no input from the rank-and-file employees. There may be some discussion of the benefits from adopting the internal change vision but the main message is that resisting the internal change vision will harm or terminate the employee’s job.

2) Examples of poorly communicating organizational change to employees is to give little opportunity for feedback and abundant use of clichés. In the case that I studied, the employees attended mass meetings with the government merger team but did not receive specific answers to their questions. There was an intranet but none of the communications encouraged feedback to the announcements from the change team.

Clichés and “management speak” are especially pernicious because employees – already concerned about the organizational change – will interpret clichés and management speak in the most negative ways. In my case study, the change team talked about addressing the “lowest hanging fruit” first. The archives employees took this to mean that the less-essential, non-revenue producing agencies will be either shut down or drastically downsized. This was never said by the change team but the adverse perception was widely communicated among many of the employees.

3) The organizational change was still successful despite the poor communication of the vague internal change vision. I believe that this was the result of two factors. First, the professionals of the archives agencies have a mental model of how a professional archive should work and they used this mental model to fill in the gaps of the internal change vision. Second, there was a “change vanguard” or a group of employees who perceived the need for organizational change and took advantage of the vacuum created by the vague internal change vision to implement changes they wanted.

Kelman (2005) believes that it is a myth that people are resistant to change. Front-line employees are most familiar with the shortcomings of the organization and would like to change processes and operations but feel they don’t have the power to initiate the change. Once a leader signals their support for the change, the vanguard is emboldened enough to sustain the change effort. The change vanguard can be a great source of innovative ideas and help to motivate the rest of the organizational members in support of the change vision.

Thus, for OpenGov to be successful, government change agents should become aware that there is more than one change vision and that they need to spend just as much effort on the internal change vision as they do on the external change vision. Change agents should also realize the existence of change vanguards and work to recruit them into the change effort to help increase the possibility of success of change efforts. Collaboration, openness, and transparency in affecting organizational change in the government agencies will bring about the organizational alignment needed for OpenGov.

References:
Brantley, W.A. (2009). The effect of mental models on creating organizational alignment around a change vision (Doctoral Dissertation). Available from Dissertations and Theses Database (UMI).

Kelman, S. (2005). Unleashing change: A study of organizational renewal in government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

According to the “Net Generation, Unplugged,” there is growing skepticism among academics that the digital natives are any better at technology than the other generations.

“Michael Wesch, who pioneered the use of new media in his cultural anthropology classes at Kansas State University, is also sceptical [sic], saying that many of his incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools that they use regularly, especially when it comes to the tools’ social and political potential. Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population.”

This is important to the OpenGov community because preconceptions about how the generations approach technology can hinder efforts for openness and engagement.  These preconceptions can also affect how new government managers are treated as they enter the workforce.  As Jennifer Deal argues in her book, Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground, the generations all want the same things (family, recognition, achievement, etc.) but how they perceive each other is what causes the gaps.  Changing perceptions is the first step in better engagement.

It can be summed up as the agencies are more comfortable with the devil they know then a possible devil they don’t know.  A fascinating study on why rural hospitals don’t readily adopt new technologies describes six barriers to adoption.  Understanding and confronting these barriers can help overcome inefficiencies.

The first barrier, cost, is an obvious one and quite relevant to current state of the federal budget.  Legality, the second barrier is also a well-understood cause.  President Obama’s policy of Open Government addresses and overcomes these barriers.  But the remaining four barriers may be more difficult because they are tied into the culture of government.

Time is a barrier because implementing and learning a new technology may take longer to realize than an impatient public is willing to give.  Political appointees also like to see immediate results and may not have the patience for a new technology.  Allied with time are the barriers of inefficiency and complexity.  Poorly implemented new technology solutions will provide “proof” that the old system may be ineffective but not as bad as the new “ineffeciency.”

The above barriers all feed into the fundamental barrier – the fear of change.  Technologies and processes are embedded in the culture of the organization.  Technology adoption is not plug-n-play where you can easily swap one process for another.  Adopting new technologies takes time, trust, and the willingness to tolerate failure as the employees learn to use the new technologies.  Again, change is not about technology but about people.

UPDATE: Firoze Lafeer makes an insightful comment that government should require contractors to set aside funds for developing Plan B innovations while creating the Plan A innovation.