Open Government – Embargoed in Alberta
Is the Embargo dead? Some say yes, clearly not everyone. In the case of Lynda Steele and Global Edmonton, and the three minute violation of the Government of Alberta (GoA) Embargo of the Ted Morton, Minister of Finance and Enterprise, and the Budget 2010 press conference, I can understand the strict stance by the Public Affairs Bureau to enforce adherence to such an agreement. Understanding and agreeing with the actions taken are two different things however.
Also, many probably know by now, this wasn’t entirely Lynda Steeles’ fault by the way, someone else is culpable within Global for the release of certain information. Further, I like the folks over at CTV, and yet people should know they played a key role in this situation too.
By the way, in an Open Alberta, Ted Morton and his team would have been collaboratively and transparently working with citizens on the budget. In an Open Alberta, we might be able to contribute to the budget directly via a wiki. There’s less need for the work behind closed doors, big political announcement machine if we’ve all worked on the budget together and there has been lots of open discussion about priorities along the way. However, that type of environment doesn’t sit well with people who like to have control.
I clearly understand what an Embargo is and the need for accountability in support of that agreement. However, evidence continues to suggest that the GoA hierarchy, indeed many governments and bureaucracies are not ready for the current digital reality. In Seattle, I listened to Douglas Shuler, of Evergreen College speak about “civic intelligence.” The “command and control, vending machine” government model is ill-prepared for the social web, is ill-prepared for our collective “civic intelligence.” The difference is how some are being proactive and how others are clinging onto the last few strands of the government processes established in the previous century.
Lynda Steele and Global Edmonton et al, are banished by the PAB for the rest of 2010. Along the same lines of accountability, does that mean that Mack Male (@mastermaq) has been banned or had something more severe happen as a result of action taken by the Government of Alberta for a security breach of the Budget 2010 website a day before the Embargoed press conference? Notwithstanding the fact that it was so simple to do, I’m not aware of anything happening there regarding that hack. I’m not advocating that something should happen to Mack, just asking a question about an incident related to accountability on several levels and from different angles.
For example, how should we as Albertans hold the GoA accountable for their inability to secure “our” digital assets? The argument offered by Bart Johnson, Director of Communications for Alberta Finance and Enterprise who said in an Edmonton Journal article, “It’s a concern that someone should be able to access a site that is secure, but I want to emphasize that all he got a look at were blank pages and placeholders.” Just because the pages were blank doesn’t alleviate the issue of poor GoA Internet security processes and the inequality of reactions to said breach. At the risk of comparing apples and oranges to some degree, which infraction and reaction was worse?
What we really need to do is analyze how not only this government works, but how others do as well. We as citizens need to tell decision- makers what we want from them. Explain how we want information delivered to us or how we want to access that information from government or its agencies. Explain to them that they need to get up to speed on the social web, integrate it into processes and commit to working side by side with us at more than just the odd stakeholder engagement town hall.
We need to explain that a $70M contract to one large vendor is actually moving away, some might say backwards, from an Open Government direction. We need to ensure that Assistant Deputy Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Ministers, MLA’s, MP’s, Mayors, Councillors, and other government officials actually learn the difference between the social web, real-time web, and Web 2.0 and how to deploy in all situations as appropriate.
Experience suggests that much of the decision-making, elected official hierarchy is passing judgement in the dark on this issue. Not just in our province at all three levels of government, but in other provinces and countries for that matter. In addition to our work performed inside government, the signs are all around us. Only a few decision-makers show up for ChangeCamp Edmonton, Social Media for Government Conference only had Mayor Glenn Taylor participate, Open Gov West had a few elected officials in the room for opening statements and announcements, but the majority moved on pretty quickly and didn’t attend the panel discussions or breakout sessions. This is a continuing trend and it needs to change for countless reasons.
Below is a series of images drawn by public servants about their perception of their work environment as it relates to the use of social media, you can draw your own conclusions about how they feel…
Updated August 21, 2010
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