Australia’s Government 2.0 Future Part 1

I’ve been asked to contribute to the Gov 2.0 Futures project launched by Kate Carruthers and Craig Thomler. Looking out 20 years, contributors are asked to consider three questions:

• What does Government 2.0 mean for governance?
• How will Government 2.0 change the culture and practice of public servants and governments?
• What will our Government 2.0 future look like?

This posting sets out some of my early thoughts about this challenge, with a focus on regulation for the moment. I’ll have things to say about public sector culture and practice in a later posting.

Social regulation

Put simply, regulations are rules to govern practice with the objective of protecting the interests of consumers and other issues of public interest (such as safety). In Australia at least there are three forms of ‘regulation’:

• government regulation (black letter law)
• co-regulation (rules are developed by industry and may be enforced by government)
• self-regulation (voluntary rules developed by industry)

Legislation covers both black letter law and co-regulation. Government has an interest in monitoring self-regulation where public interest issues are at stake to consider whether intervention may be necessary to secure public interest outcomes.

I believe the social web has ushered in another regulatory element  that I call ‘social regulation’: where industry action is in effect governed in part through the expression of consumer and citizen views and information sharing via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media. While not a formalised type of regulation, ‘social regulation’ could influence the development of rules – either through direct participatory engagement or through some other form of influence.

Social regulation recognises that social media participants are not only less reliant on institutions (including government agencies, corporations and industry representative bodies) for access to information and knowledge, they create and curate their own content.

New business models have emerged that help informed consumers enhance their power. I have an application on my iPhone called ‘GetPrice‘ that provides me with price comparisons on consumer goods in my area, and the location of relevant retail outlets.

Social regulation has potential in my view to help consumers and communities of interest to take more responsibility for solving their problems – similar in concept to the United Kingdom’s Government call for a “big society” plan.

Readers of this blog or my Twitter profile may recall my own successful actions online to resolve service issues. I recently referred to VW Golf forum that saved me spending $950, contrary to the advice of the outfit that serviced my car.

In Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky wrote about customers of HSBC bank setting up a page on Facebook to complain about HSBC withdrawing its policy on interest-free student overdraft facilities. Such was the strength of social networking on the Facebook site the bank quickly reversed the policy change.

Social regulation has the potential to solve problems faster through sharing more – and better –  information.

Social regulation has a default culture of disclosure and transparency whereas the culture of traditional regulation can be weighted down by confidentiality and bureaucratic processes.

I’m thinking of working up this theme of ‘social regulation’ to examine how it may evolve over the next 20 years and what its consequences for government and Gov 2.0 might be.

If you have a view on this, I’d love to hear from you.

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