Author of machiavelli.net, proud father of three, interested in shaping network society. Welcome to my blog.Three Reasons for Radical Transparency and a Rough Guide to Implementation
Radical transparency is the hottest new management approach in business and government. It has become possible because of open data standards, search, discovery, filtering, and visualization. However, why would you want go “naked†or radically transparent?
1. Transparency increases legitimacy. Because transparency is possible, it is expected, so there will be punishment for non-transparent ventures.
2. Transparency allows us to improve our processes. Following Linus’ Law “with enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.â€
3. Transparency allows us to outsource parts of the process to interested third parties. They can build on our data and co-produce. Radical transparency saves us money.
So you are convinced of the approach. Here is the rough guide to implementation:
1. Define what data you will free. Explain the limitations explicitly, outline the next steps to full transparency.
2. Make sure you make all data available in machine-readable format, ideally in real-time. Do not massage or edit it!
3. Do not define who will be able to access your data, let your collaborators self-select.
4. Define standards for participation, do this in code and convention.
5. Do not ask open questions like “what do you think of Europe? How do we integrate minorities?†Structure the conversation, define expectations, but allow for flexibility and participation in the debate about the core principles of the collaboration.
6. Design reflexivity into the process. Use work flow mapping and meta-data on the deliberation processes to mirror the community back at its members. Sophistication will increase.
This posting is based on my teaching notes from this week’s strategic management lecture at the Erfurt School of Public Policy, Beth Noveck’s WikiGovernment, and the brilliant insights of my colleagues at PepsiCo. It is a work in progress, so please comment!
The Emergent Grammar of Twitter
danah boyd has just posted an academic article (under review) on retweeting at her blog:
We wanted to explore retweeting as a conversational practice. In doing so, we highlight just how bloody messy retweeting is. Often, folks who are deeply embedded in the culture think that there are uniform syntax conventions, that everyone knows what they’re doing and agrees on how to do it. We found that this is blatantly untrue. When it comes to retweeting, things get messy.
It’s a must read and reminds us that there is serious grammatological work to do. We need to ask how does Twitter as a system of writing shapes, structure, and delimit our thinking and communication. The simple encoded rule “speak less than 141 characters,†the open question “what are you doing?†and emergent convention “RT, via, retweet, @philippmueller, etc.†allow for surprisingly complex human speech. Time to re-read Friedrich Kittler’s Aufschreibesystem 1800/1900 and Derrida’s Of Grammatology?
Quick Book Review: WikiGovernment
I just started reading it, but I have already been using the core argument of Beth Noveck’s WikiGovernment: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings 2009) several times in conversations, so let me put it down in writing. Beth Noveck argues that we are at a point in history where we can move from antiquated modes of collective governance (representative democracy) to a more effective mode (collaborative democracy). This goes beyond the Habermasian notion of deliberative democracy, because it assumes that the there is excess capacity in citizens that can be utilized not just for public decision making (governance), but for the creation of public value (goods and services). Public value creation processes must be designed with the following issues in mind:
a. Egalitarian self-selection: anybody can participate, but only the experts in a specific field will. This is “democratic” because as humans we have the capacity to work together and bring our specific skill sets/knowledge/experience to the table.
b. Visual deliberation: the processes of collaboration must be distinctly designed to further the ex-ante defined goal. The visualization of the collaborating group becomes a governance tool, insofar that it provides an outside perspective on the group for the group.
c. Collaboration: in democratic practice, collaboration is under-appreciated. Participation today can go beyond once-a-year elections.
Read the book and come back here to discuss it. I hope to post a full review later in the week.
World 2.0: Twitter Governance [Conditions of Possibility]
What makes technologically mediated social interactions different? What are the conditions of possibility of networked governance?
The Technology Principle: Network Society is mediated through technology. Corollaries:
- The Path Dependency Principle: Path dependency makes it costly for us to exercise choice and leave any given network.
- The Scale and Network Effects Principle: Network effects are the glue of network society.
- The Critical Mass Principle: Some things only work when a critical mass is present.
- The Modularity Principle: Modularity allows complexity by combining simple parts.
- The Granularity Principle: The smaller the useful contribution, the easier the scalability.
The Social Principle: Any network participant chooses to participate or to leave at any point in time. Corollaries:
- The Consensus Principle: Decisions in choice-communities are made by consensus (not unanimity…and forking is allowed)â€.
- The Outcome Legitimacy Principle: The legitimacy of a policy that aims to create public value is derived from the public value created (as defined by its stakeholders choice to stay-or-leave).
- â€The Peer Collaboration Principle: Commons are produced by peers, for peers.
- The Transparency Principle: Transparency takes the role of democracy as the standard which any governance situation is evaluated against, this necessitates documentation (transparency through time).
- The Reflexivity Principle: any decision-making situation can be reflected at all times (this is what Beth Noveck calls visual deliberation).
Anything I am missing? What types of governance does such a world allow? What are the limits and possibilities of networked governance?
World 2.0: Twitter Governance [the simple model]
The Greek verb κυβεÏνάω [kubernáo] which means to steer was used for the first time in a metaphorical sense by Plato. As we are moving into network society, we need to ask, what are the conditions of possibility of steering? The simple answer is Larry Lessig’s “code is law†(1998), which argues that governance can be encoded into natural law, as in the first rule of twittering: “thou shalt not write more than 140 characters†where enforcement is automatic “thou shalt not be heard if you express yourself in more than 140 characters.â€
So in our simplest model of governance in network society, code, law, and enforcement are one.
Learning from My Students: “…Blogging is so 2005”
In this time and age, where information is shared through new social media and the frameworks to describe collective action change by the minute, it is smart to listen to the first generation of digital natives. On my trip to the East Coast last month, I was impressed by my former students Adriana, Sam, and Sofia in NYC, by Emilene and Katie in Washington DC, who work as strategy re-inventors, sustainability lobbyists, transparency gurus, web 2.0 facilitators, and business re-engineers.
I am constantly learning from the ESPP-class of 2009, who are working on their MPP thesis projects. Topics range from an evaluation of national digital strategies, a focus on sustainability as a core business strategy, to the role of social media in society or political campaigns. And then there are my 2010 students in peer producing public policy and my undergraduates in network politics: they constantly surprise me and come up with fresh new sources for information and approaches to think about the emerging paradigms. Jenny Miksch came up with a follow-up list to Ines Mergel’s list of who to follow on twitter, so here it is, and join in the debate!
Lessig– is famous for his focus on law and technology
Marshallk – is a VP at ReadWriteWeb
ginatrapani — founder of livehacker.com
Who else are you following that we should know about, so we can move beyond our daily-mes?
World 2.0: Political Theory in Network Society
Political theory asks the question how do we create the good life? How good are historical and contemporary forms of governance and what can we do in order to improve governance for our contemporary and future societies? How do we understand membership (identity) and who should decide, what, when, where, and how (authority)?
If we drill down to the unquestionable, why do we actually participate?, we find metaphors mapping the logic of one domain onto another: our society on a body, where everybody has their role; our society onto an original contract; or our society described as a network of inclusive, some-how like-minded, outcome-oriented, collaborators, guided by rough consensus and running code.
The World 2.0 Series: The Grammar of our Networked Lives
Yesterday, I had a discussion with Alex Schellong about how we are rushing towards introducing web technologies and social media into business and government without reflecting on what it actually will mean to our lives and societies. Therefore, it might make sense to step back.
In the next days, I will be posting a few ideas on the fundamentals of political theory, governance structures, and policy making in network society under the header “World 2.0,” to tease out the grammar of our networked lives. Very much looking forward to your comments!
The Plot is Thickening: Phase II of the Open Government Initiative
Beth Novack, the author of WikiGovernment (Brookings 2009), is the new deputy CTO for Open Government of the Obama Administration. She is leading the Open Government Initiative. After a brainstorm phase, we are moving into the discussion phase today. Read her White House blog-posting here.
As we are setting up Government 2.0 parallel to our existing democratic institutions, it is time to re-visit the pre-2009 writing and experiences on participatory forms of governance. Ruckelhaus’ experiments in the EPA with town halls come to mind or any text written by Archon Fung.
And we should not forget to ask the questions that we have been asking of governance ever since Cleisthenes introduced democracy to Athens in 508 BC: Who was participating in the brainstorm sessions? How heavy-handed was the moderation? How are opinions aggregated? Do we have access to the raw postings to hold government accountable on the issues? How is the discussion organized? What forms of structural power are instituted in the process? Who are the people that are participating? What are their backgrounds? What percentage of the US population is participating? Are participants representative? What would count as a success?
A Macro-Historical Perspective on Engineering Governance
In Western thought we locate the birth of rationalism with early Greek thinking, when mythical explanations of social artifacts do not suffice anymore. Rationalism can take two perspectives: (a) observatory or retrospective rationalism that seeks to describe and explain why things are happening by linking causes to effects and (b) instrumental rationalism that connects ends with efficient means.
Instrumental rationalism only became pertinent after a radical perspective change took place in the 15th Century: the move from a universal, a-temporal transcendental world view to our human-centered perspective. Instrumental rationality sees our collective challenges and opportunity as a set of engineering problems:Â how do we achieve an end by using the fewest means possible (efficiency)? Engineering problems have several attributes that distinguish them from other problems: They assume that there is a unique solution that everyone can agree upon as long as we have solved coordination problems, which are seen standard-setting issues.
So by giving up the world-view of universality and transcendence in the 15th Century, humanity gained the possibility of shaping its own world. And shape we did.
However, as a result of this instrumental rationality revolution, we were confronted with a governance crisis. How could we legitimate authority in society in a world, where authority was not transcendentally predefined. The quick answer offered was the idea of the pre-historical social contract. This rhetorical figure that allowed us to argue that the distribution of authority was fair, because we agreed upon our social structure in the original position: immanent, but a-historical. This rhetorical figure allowed us to assign sovereignty, to delineate the inside from the outside, and to develop the functional differentiation necessary for a continuous efficiency revolution.
With the rise of functionally organized and technologically mediated networks (the web 2.0 revolution), the conditions of possibility of coordination changed in such a way that a form of governance that is organically linked to the idea of instrumental rationality has become possible. Network society emerged as an engineering society based on a culture of “rough consensus and running code.” Requests for Proposals (RFCs) are the procedural principle on which governance is based. Self-selection is becoming an accepted principle for participation in the policy process, expertise in an an engineering culture is defined by merit (outcome) and not position, and political problems are reduced to the creative acts of RFC-writing, the focused and technologically structured deliberation, and accountability comes from peer review of radically transparent processes.
So basically, in 2009, we are starting to have the match-up of instrumentally rational value creation with an engineering governance culture. Questions to ask: Is this the world we want? Can it deal with all collective action problems that we want public governance to be able to deal with? How high are the barriers to participation in such a world? Can we construct media literacy campaigns that will decrease these barriers?
19. June 2009 by Philipp
Categories: Blog | Tags: engineering culture, instrumental rationality, rationalism, request for comments, RFC | Comments Off on A Macro-Historical Perspective on Engineering Governance