Government Using Web 2.0 Innovations to Gauge Feedback
The new dark blue uniforms recently unveiled at BWI Airport’s TSA checkpoints didn’t result from an expensive study by consultants or a systematic plan by managers, said Stephen Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Instead, Goldsmith told the audience Tuesday at a Deloitte-sponsored seminar on Web 2.0 in Government, the new outfits came in response to comments by employees and travelers on Evolution of Security, the TSA blog.
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Seminar attendees heard a series of such stories of great successes -- and miserable failures -- in using technology to improve the work of government agencies. Goldsmith and Frank DiGiammarino, vice president for strategic initiatives at the National Academy of Public Administration, gave examples of how Web 2.0 technology can improve service and make employees happier and more productive -- in addition to a few embarrassing failures caused by using technology to “improve” service without listening to the recipients of the services.
Effective use of technology can increase civic involvement, Goldsmith said. He cited Minneapolis, which adopted a wiki for residents to comment on zoning and land use plans, after a new city park built a basketball court that no one wanted. The wiki, he said, attracted far more attention and was much more productive than a community meeting. Goldsmith, a former two-term mayor of Indianapolis, said the town-hall meetings he remembered always resulted in the loudest voices drowning out all others. Wikis are collaborative, allowing for more-constructive discussion over a longer periods, with results more satisfying for all involved, he said.
Collaborative communities like wikis can produce better results than experts, Goldsmith said. He told of a city engineer’s decision to repave a section of sidewalk that served mainly as an open-air drug market, while less damaged but more heavily traveled sections were left alone until the engineers determined they needed repair. If the city had been able to monitor community feedback, he said, it might have avoided the subsequent outcry over spending public money to repair a drug corner instead of maintaining the sidewalk outside a church.
DiGiammarino said collaborative Web 2.0 tools allow better use of time and can save money. He said the TSA blog, allowing interaction among the agency, its employees and “customers,” is a textbook example of the value of management embracing Web 2.0.
The blog, DiGiammarino said, was an example of how collecting feedback in an open setting allowed for more efficient operation and quicker response to concerns from an organization with 43,000 front-line employees who screen millions of passengers a day. Comments on the blog resulted in 20 successful policy changes in six months. - Andrew Feinberg