Last week a report by the US Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion roiled government social web (“web 2.0”) advocates. The microblogging service Twitter, it found, can be used as a potent tool by terrorists. There followed some handwringing on Twitter and among journalists, and even some thinking across the river here at Harvard.
Will this dustup affect the move to the social web in the defense and intelligence communities – wikis, blogs, Facebook, and the like? After all, there’s been good movement in recent months, impressive gains, and some major wins. But there’s been little enterprise-wide embrace. To many, the current position feels unstable.
All this makes me wonder: was last week’s “red team” caution flag a Twitter “PEBES” moment? Recall that some years ago, the US Social Security Administration was among the first
What’s the likely impact of last week’s Army report? Is the social web still too new and, like Social Security on the world wide web, the only thing we see clearly is risk and cost? Or has positive value been established enough to move forward?
It depends. For those who would otherwise pause, they probably will take comfort from the Army's report. For those who would otherwise move forward they will too, and with due caution.
First, Twitter is like any tool or platform the defense and intelligence establishments use: it has risks, and they need to be managed. We would no sooner give up cell phones than we would landlines -- though we recognize cell phones are instrumental in facilitating attacks on our forces. We manage those risks accordingly.
Fourth, platforms, services and devices are not silver bullets. Twitter will no more defeat us than lead us to victory. It’s a little more complicated than that. We looked for a single breakthrough technology to counter IEDs – we couldn’t find one. What worked was stitching together people, process and technologies in new architectures of action that allowed us to be more effective. That’s what we have to keep our eye on – “it’s the architectures, stupid,” to paraphrase, and not necessarily individual platforms or services.
The fact is that we live in a world where we and our adversaries all have access to the same off-the-shelf commercial ware. It is arguable that there is little genuine military R&D going on these days. What is going on are mash-ups using freely available commercial R&D – ingenious measures and countermeasures.
Our strategic advantage will come from devising and moving our adaptations quickly to the warfighter. The foundation of that is our open society – authoritarian regimes have historically been disadvantaged on the battlefield. We leverage strategic advantage from that asymmetry by using means such as the social web to rapidly innovate, adapt, and disseminate.
Our goal now is not to build walled-gardens or fortresses – I could probably get you a deal on the last ruins of the Maginot line if you’re interested. We have competitive asymmetric advantage in our open society and the free flow of ideas; we achieve strategic asymmetric advantage on the battlefield by moving ideas to action quickly – and that means taking advantage of tools like the social web. Manage its risks, yes; but slam the brakes on the social web, and we risk fighting with one hand behind our backs in the asymmetric battlespaces of the future.
05:02 PM, 28 Oct 2008 by Zachary Tumin
OK, so it's not THAT rare to have the two units together. But check the small print:
Cross-boundary, enterprise-wide, IT-based innovations become much easier when you have serious influence not only over the technology budgets, but over all budgets.
Of course I may be a little early with my optimism, but I wanted to draw the Michigan move to your attention.
A hard part of government IT budgeting comes from what I call "budgeting myopia." That is, while budget preparation, by its nature, spends the vast majority of its effort looking one year ahead on a program-by-program basis for incremental adjustments in current activities, the high-value IT can't be found there. You have to lift your vision to look instead for long-term, cross-program innovations.
So it takes an unusual budget director to set up a process to uncover the best IT investments.
Let's wish Ken and Michigan the best.
Meanwhile, follow the link HERE to comment and let us know if you see other jurisdictions doing similar things, and/or what you see as the pros or cons in the Michigan approach. Tough times will clearly lead to more consolidations, but will there be more like the one announced the other day in Michigan?
Best,
Jerry
04:03 PM, 20 Nov 2009 by Jerry Mechling
The Obama campaign has attracted lots of attention for how it used technology to get people engaged. The web reduced barriers to participation since you could fit your campaign activity into small blocks of time from anywhere. Responding to a variety of "5 minute options," Obama supporters gave more money and pulled off more election-relevant events than "the pros" had ever before thought possible. Future campaigns will clearly learn from this. Technology has become a strategic tool for the "civic engagement" called campaigns.
But what about post-election governance? Many are interested in the new tools. But they are clearly wary about Web 2.0 as an augmenter and mediator of government's interactions with the public - it's all too new, too easily to explode out of control, and too vague. What is "civic engagement" anyway?
Abstractly, technology-enabled "civic engagement" simply continues the "e-gov" trend of using the net to reach the public. The big e-gov win so far has been services you can reach "online, not in line." An internet world offers "anytime, anywhere" access to a huge variety of private and public services.
What "engagement" will do is increasingly shift online interactions from one-way transactions (government delivering services like tax forms to the public) into two-way relationships, where the public will play a more engaged role in defining problems, setting priorities, and "co-producing" services. As with campaigns, substantial "work" on public problems could take place as volunteer effort without money changing hands. We've seen the net make it convenient and rewarding enough to create a huge body of open source software from a largely volunteer workforce. And we've long had volunteers for community projects like cleaning up vacant lots, helping with the elderly, looking out for crime in the neighborhood, and meeting with elected representatives so both constituents and representatives can learn from each other.
The question, then, is what will happen if technology reduces barriers and increases participation in these and other "civic engagement" events?
Today's example, complete with scientifically collected evaluation data, can be found in the report: Online Town Hall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century.
This was a very interesting, if simple, experiment, with very interesting results.
The experiment allowed a variety of U.S. Representatives and one Senator to meet online with their constituents. Each of 21 meetings featured one of the Members of Congress. The meetings in total engaged roughly 600 constituents. The offers to attend were sent to a representative sample of constituents. Those accepting were tracked with before and after surveys as a test group (those who attended the sessions) and a control group (similar demographics, but not admitted to the sessions). The issue discussed was immigration reform, and the Members of Congress held diverse views on how immigration should be handled. The sessions were neutrally moderated and accepted all questions including hostile questions (only redundant, off-topic, unintelligible, or questions that were profane or abjectly disrespectful were filtered out).
Some of the key results:
The online sessions were convenient for the Members of Congress (all they needed was a phone, with no travel to specific sites) and also for the constituents (all they needed was a computer with a connection to the internet).
This study, conducted by David Lazer of the Kennedy School and others, generated further comments you can find here.
This example clearly doesn't answer all the questions we've got about civic engagement. But it does represent the kind of concrete testing and data gathering we need if we're going to make sense of civic engagement now and for the future.
What do you see taking place in the "civic engagement" space? And how would you prioritize that work?
You can follow the blog back here for comments.
All the best,
Jerry
11:36 AM, 05 Nov 2009 by Jerry Mechling
Very interesting McKinsey interview with Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar today.
Zipcar offers rental by the hour from nearby in the neighborhood. That contrasts with traditional rental cars that typically offer by the day or week from the airport.
IT developed over the past twenty years makes this happen efficiently and effectively enough to make it a business. Customers, after all, have got to be easily able to find if a car is available, where it is, how to get in, how to solve any emergencies that may arise, how to pay, etc. Those are all information problems. Wireless networks and web services are essential, as is comfort in the population in handling similar web transactions.
I think you'll find the details interesting, here.
In particular note that Zipcar is increasing the utilization of cars that would otherwise be largely idle. Zipcar says that, in comparison to the normal rental car companies, they roughly double the revenue per car and double the number of cars covered per employee .
Theory suggests that, as the fleet gets larger, availability should increase and the walk to your "local" car should decrease. It also suggests that, as the community sharing the fleet increases, utilization per car should increase and the cost per person decrease. This is a basic economy of scale for shared services. It works to the extent that "customers" share in the savings and consider the process responsive to the individual needs. It apparently is working for Zipcar.And, as we all have heard, it should work also for cloud computing, if the kinks can be worked out. What, after all, is the utilization rate for your laptop, or even your department's or your jurisdictions central servers?
I've not used a Zipcar myself, but know some friends who have and have liked the experience. Have you tried Zipcar? What did you think of the cost and quality? Zipcar says they are now renting the fleet management information systems to fleet managers such as governments. Is your government exploring this? Would it be a good move in tough times? Comment by following the link back to the blog here.
All the best,
Jerry
04:04 PM, 29 Oct 2009 by Jerry Mechling
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