Many public sector agencies view access to social networks, the likes of Facebook, Twitter and – incomprehensibly – LinkedIn, with what can only be described as either fear or deep suspicion. Some of them even go so far as to block access to these sites:

…these technologies are most often though of as social – more pleasure than business. When discussed in the context of work, they have tended to be regarded as a drain on productivity, a leaking of people’s social lives into office hours.
Network Citizens [PDF 356 KB], p.17

That last clause is a telling one. As if, in the minds of the people that think blocking access to these sites will make people more productive (or protect them from themselves…), there is some sort of impermeable divide between what we do at work and who we are.

The fact of the matter is that professional public servants, like any knowledge workers, rely on a range of competencies in their roles. And many of those competencies are based on interpersonal skills. In short, in order to just do their jobs passably well, they need to be able to interact with a range of people inside and outside the organization. In order to excel at their job, they need to be able to draw on the knowledge and experience of their networks.

Given the economic crisis that we are facing, and the constrictive impact that this will have on agency budgets, the imperative to develop higher levels of staff engagement (and the resulting increases in productivity) is paramount. As the authors of the report note:

These social ties are strong predictors of wellbeing at work; to that extent, networked firms are happy firms, too.
p.27, my emphasis

Of course, there are risks associated with new technologies. Or, more particularly, with the behaviours that these technologies enable. The case yesterday of the Virgin employees dismissed for comments on Facebook is a good example. It highlights the need for appropriate guidance to ensure employees can use the tools confidently and responsibly.

Weighed against the alternative approach, blocking access, this risk is at least manageable; and in the short term. The implications of blocking will likely be far more deleterious. First, for many skilled and connected professionals, a disconnected workplace will be the equivalent of a career backwater. Second, from an organizational point of view, you are effectively abandoning what is now a competitive advantage and will soon be the industry standard.

Attempts to control employees’ use of social networking software in the office may end up damaging the organisation in the long run by depleting its network capital.
p.72

One other interesting aspect that this paper raised was seeing it through the context of a larger, quantitative piece of research. Earlier this year, academics at Harvard Business School published a fascinating analysis of the communications activities of a multi-national organization.

The data we analyze include the complete record, as drawn from the firm’s servers, of e-mail communications and scheduled meetings (both face-to-face and conference calls) among 30,328 people during an observation period of roughly three months.
Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization, [PDF 645 KB] p. 12

The conclusion that the authors reach suggests to me that, rather than adopt a suspicious or sceptical view of social software, organizations would be well advised to accelerate the use of these networks (both in terms of the technology and the behavioural aspects). For public sector agencies, that tend to be more hierarchical and siloed anyway, these tools offer opportunities to improve internal communications, lift engagement and – in what would admittedly amount to a harmonic convergence – promote innovative and transformative practice.

The authors found that:

The overall conclusion to emerge from the dyad-level analysis is that organizational structure and geographic space sharply delimit patterns of exchange. Social categories also influence propensities to interact, but the magnitudes of their effects are modest relative to those of organizational structure and the (organizationally assigned) spatial organization of BigCo.
p. 37

The message is clear. Understand the change that is happening inside your agencies. Ensure that you provide people the sorts of tools that will allow them to develop professionally and to invest and grow their social capital. Attempts to restrict the ability of your staff to build their networks (online or off) will only result in a disengaged workforce that expends most of its ingenuity trying to get around your blocks in order to find a job that is both fulfilling and professionally relevant.

Photo: luc legay

The focus of the project is to consider:

• how can administrations create long-term strategies that shape society while still being responsive to a changing environment?
• how do administrations identify changes in the environment and what kinds of structures and processes are necessary to respond?

The paper begins by asking what is agility, and puts forward Eric Beinhocker’s argument that agility depends on both hard and soft elements. The hard elements are the institutional or structural systems and there are three changes that can increase an organization’s adaptability/agility:

1. Reduce hierarchy
2. Increase autonomy
3. Encourage diversity

The changes to the soft elements, or cultural norms, are about opening up the organization to experimentation within the framework of a strong and consistent set of values that provide focus and coherence:

1. Create a culture of cooperation
2. Foster a high performance culture
3. Develop a culture of innovation

Taking a step back and looking at the six changes that are proposed, it seems to me that the overall culture that is being described here can be summarized as one of high trust.

Managers would need to give their staff the mandate, the tools and the support to pursue ambitious, innovative and experimental approaches to their policy and service challenges. This latitude would be offset, however, by a clearly understood shared vision or purpose.

Why does this matter? Again, it comes back to trust. As the authors note:

Private markets are offering consumers unprecedented levels of product choice and service responsiveness …[this] certainly creates an expectation that public services should be better attuned to citizen’s wants and needs. If governments cannot keep up, they risk diminishing levels of public trust in their capacity to deliver. Without public trust, the operating legitimacy of public agencies is undermined. (8)

Agile capabilities

The paper then looks at the five capabilities that are entailed by the notion of agile government. Three of these warrant further comment.

Outward-oriented culture

What we refer to in Wellington as the outside/in view. The shift to a more customer/citizen centric view in the public sector is both welcome and, from a communicator’s perspective, overdue. Unfortunately, I would argue that the authors do not go far enough, agencies do not only need to look outwards and scan the environment they need to actively engage with their various publics. Trust is built on two-way interactions.

Workforce adaptability

Yes, we need a versatile and adaptable workforce. Again, this is not just about demands on staff. Managers need to trust their staff to experiment (and to make the occasional mistake) but more importantly, we need to re-engineer our working environment to better match the social norms of the workforce. Digital natives bring a very different world view and skills to the public sector, and we need to respond to their expectations around connectedness and mobility.

Successful use of information

The value of government information can not be underestimated. The potential is not just limited to

the creation of more responsive relationships with citizens, who can now get more information to make their own decisions and use channels such as the Internet to access services. (12)

While this is undoubtedly true, what must also be considered is the (largely untapped) value of social and economic benefit that this information represents, should it be published in an accessible format for people to reuse and mashup.

Conclusion

The authors close the paper by posing five questions, inviting readers to submit their answers/responses to be fed into the next phase of the project.

The provocation questions are:

1. How can government reconcile agility with the inherently slower processes of deliberation and accountability under which the public sector operates?
2. What advantages might government have over other sectors when it comes to scanning, responding and shaping?
3. To what extent are public sector functions aligned, or not, to enable rapid adaptation to changing circumstances?
4. What are government’s most significant constraints against agility and how might these be addressed?
5. What does agile government look like in practice?

I would also put forward another question: how can government move to this platform of enhanced capability without further impact on baseline funding?

Finally, I can’t help thinking that, given the nature of the project, how a much better a blog would have been for enabling transparent feedback and higher quality engagement — a missed opportunity.

Photo: Kwong Yee Cheng.