Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22 - Issue 2

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Editorial
Editor-in-Chief: Patrice Dutil
Associate Editor: Jeff Mackey
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Veterans Affairs; Guy Gordon, Manitoba; Michael Eastman,
Institute of Internal Audit; Peter Jones, OCADU; Murray
Kronick, Interis Consulting
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4 / Canadian Government Executive // February 2016
Regardless of whether you are an elected official, a public servant, consultant or service-
provider, I’m sure you regularly cup your head in your hands and wonder “how could
they have made so many mistakes?” Government does countless things every ticking
second. Most things go right but, inevitably, some things go wrong. People are mistreat-
ed and misjudged. Things get lost; people are not informed sufficiently or in time. The
wrong people get the wrong service at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Too often,
whatever is desired is delivered too slowly. Errors are made. Costs go over estimates. The
newspapers (at least for those who still read them) offer a daily dose of mis-deeds.
Can the State be smarter? Yes, according to Beth Simone Noveck in her new book, Smart
Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard
University Press). Noveck teaches at New York University, but she’s not been afraid to
get her hands dirty. In 2008, working with the United States Patent and Trade Office, she
developed a very innovative Internet-based patent review project called “Peer-to-Patent.”
She was hired by the Obama White House to lead its “Open Government Initiative” and
worked there for a few years. Her previous book was Wiki Government: How Technology
Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful, a volume
that reflects on her experience in the Peer-to-Patent initiative.
In Smart Citizens, Smarter State, Noveck explores how expertise, which was once the pre-
serve of a few select professions and government officials, has become democratized. The
reality, she notes, is that there is far more skill and knowledge outside government today
than there is within. Industry is vastly more mobilized and the citizenry is better educated
than before. Linked by the internet around the clock, social capacity has the potential to
revolutionize everything the government touches. The challenge is in getting that exper-
tise to work for the State so as to help it improve its policy making and its services and en-
sure a governance that is still fair and equitable. But Noveck goes further: it’s not a one-way
street. Shemakes the bold claim that smarter governancewill actuallymake citizens better.
Noveck’s volume is rich with examples drawn from public services around the world.
She draws provocative lessons from instructive case studies and slowly builds an argu-
ment for the better use of crowdsourcing methods. She calls for experiments in involv-
ing citizens in all sorts of real tasks, making the argument that this can only help the
State improve. Noveck is optimistic that this can be accomplished, but much of her
book is an examination of what the obstacles ahead might be. She devotes a chapter
to the inertia in many US government departments who will point to various statutes
and use them as pretexts to limit the appeal to the public for assistance. She notes that
politicians are also suspicious and that there may be a series of legal restrictions that
actually prevent government from going “outside” to seek the best insights. She points
to the Federal Advisory Committee Act as a particular culprit that must be eliminated.
The guiding quest of Canadian Government Executive has always been to draw atten-
tion to the people and organizations that work to make the State smarter. In this issue,
Rod Windover reports on the CRA’s Accelerated Business Solutions Lab, part of our
series on “Innovation Labs”. Craig Szelestowski probes the solutions at hand to correct
the “defects” in government services and reports on innovative breakthroughs.
The State can also get smarter by tightening its relationships with its closest service
delivery partners. Bryan Evans and Adam Wellstead report on some of their key find-
ings regarding that key component of governance. Clearly, there is more work that
needs to be done in creating a rapprochement between the State and the many non-
governmental organizations that increasingly deliver services to the public.
Is it naïve to think that technology can bring citizens and the State into a more pro-
ductive relationship that goes beyond easily manipulated “consultations”? I don’t think
so. It just may be the only route to ensuring that government lives up to its promise of
delivering policy and programs that meet needs and expectations. It may be central to
the future of the State.
Searching for Smarter Governance
editor’s note Patrice Dutil
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