Gav's Blog

Over at the In Development blog at eGovt, they are asking for comments on the state of progress for eGovernment in New Zealand. I’ve copied my comment here.

Location, Location, Location!
A quick skim and keyword search indicates that the report has almost entirely neglected one of the most important aspects of information, and that it location – its spatial component. It is not surprising then that the Government is struggling with how to handle spatial information. Some of the most important aspects of community anywhere are distance and connectivity. However with Government doing a poor job in making spatial information available to the citizen, it is no wonder that individuals are struggling to find out about consents from two properties over.

Even more of a shame is the fact that Government has failed to deliver on a project to produce an authoritative National Address Register of addresses, roads and placenames. This dataset is one of the most fundamental to being able to place information in space under truly understand its context. eGovernment will never take off under the core location issues are worked out. Whilst the recent release of significant amounts of Statistics New Zealand information is a great step, the true benefits and insights contained in the released census data is being held back by the lack of an authoritative National Address Register.

Organisational Inertia and Champion Individuals
Government organisations themselves are often hesitant to change or try something new. This is not to say it doesn’t happen, and there have been some excellent examples recently of organisations stepping up and trying something new – such as using wikis for consultation and engagement. I am fairly certain that most of these projects will have been championed internally by a small group of individuals, and I’ll bet they had quite a struggle to see their project through. Here’s hoping that these recent projects are the catalyst for more risk taking, and acceptance of exciting IT projects within Government.

Not enough Champions
As a consultant that has worked  a lot within Government agencies, much of the information projects I’ve seen successfully delivered have been almost solely on the back of one or two key individuals. The agencies themselves have often been more of a hindrance to delivery of exciting new initiatives, and the Champions have had to fight an uphill battle against their own organisations, and other Government agencies when ‘engaging stakeholders’. Even worse, a number of these Champions actually run up so many brick walls in their organisation, and within Government, that they end up choosing to leave in frustration, or even worse are forced out by unenlightened superiors. In some circumstances they make their way to an organisation that is supportive, but that fate does not appear to wait all Champions. You need some way to support and encourage these key individuals that lie within Government agencies – there may only be one or two, but they are your key instrument of change from within.

Start Small, Release Early, Upgrade Often
Despite the fact that the National Address Register is such a necessary component of eGovernment. I don’t believe that the project as tendered should have gone ahead – not for something where tender prices ranged between $9 and $48 million. The project would have been so large and complex that it would likely have not been delivered on time, would have been over budget, and would have lacked the desired capabilities.

I think Government has to learn to try the small and simple things first and work up.

Surely, for the price of one or two Geospatial Professionals and supporting hardware, the New Zealand Government should be capable of aggregating all roading information from the 74 Road Control Authorities and Transit New Zealand, and publishing it as a single national roading dataset under permissive licensing. This should be able to be done now for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. But just produce a dataset and get it out there. Get feedback about how it is used, and look at improving the process, and accepting feedback. If you don’t, then the New Zealand Government is going to look pretty ridiculous when volunteers have created their own national roading dataset using OpenStreetMap because Government wasn’t capable.

Here are some simple actions that Government can undertake to encourage more exciting use of Government information.

Find data. Release it under permissive licensing. Release it in formats that make it readily accessible to manipulation in software (e.g. don’t release maps only as pdfs, make the underlying spatial data available). Announce it through a simple clearing house – nothing flash, it only needs to be  WordPress blog pointing to the relevant source. It won’t be until this happens that the more exciting concepts such as entirely unexpected but useful mashups occur.

And that is when things will get really interesting. At that point, we will have citizens building mashups and services about ‘Our Place In Space’ – and they won’t be constrained by the organisational inertia inherent in most Government agencies that are tied back by accountability and liability that makes them hesitant to take bold steps.

Remember eGovernment is not just about Government developing systems and solutions. It does include citizens, communities and organisations building systems to meet their own needs.