Social Networks and Maturity ? we have a ways to go IMHO....

Well, this blogpost from my esteemed colleague Mike Boysen at Customer Think reminds me that social networks are just entering their adolescent years.

Not sure what they are going to become, and still shaking off the idea that the world is the world where parents were always right.

Paul Greenberg reminded me of this when he wrote FACEBOOK #FAIL about his experience in recovering after his FB account had been hacked. And it was Paul who got me into FB in the first place .... http://ow.ly/16sg7X

So is there an Abe Lincoln quote for this?

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. " A. Lincoln

What is happening to the reputation of Facebook when things like this keep happening?


Customer Think | What’s With The Complicated Social CRM Maturity Models?

Can't we have a Nobel Prize Winner as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Maybe this is not such a wild and crazy idea as it might seem.

I'm for it -

"A higher purpose" CRM in 2010: The experts' predictions

Follow on article by Neil Davey looking forward, quoting my "CRM at the Speed of Light" buddy

I picked out the subtitle and highlighted it above - in the reaction to the financial catastrophe that has hit us, people are looking for higher purpose as a way to filter out actions taken out of pure self interest. I read in the NYTimes that the University of Toronto Business School has seriously been re-looking at their curriculum to add multi-culturalism Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School?


This helps some, but I can't help feeling its a little like slamming one small barn door after the horses have bolted from stables across the globe....




CRM in 2010: The experts' predictions

Seven CRM lessons to take from 2009

Gary Lemke at CRM Advocate does his usual good job in highlighting the best - in this case: Neil Davey originally posted 11/27/09 in the UK


Seven CRM lessons to take from 2009

Engelbart's Talk at San Jose State 2003 - Art and augmenting our intelligence

Doug Engelbart gave a talk that was downloaded 50,000 times in a week after it was posted at Slashdot - follow the link above to see it.

Doug Engelbart's call for improving how we improve: Investing in a new future

Since David Nordfors has brought Doug Engelbart back to view, here is a quote which may inspire you to look at Engelbart's 2002 speech in Singapore at the World Library Summit and a later version given at the IBM Co-Evolution Symposium in 2003 - click on the title above to get to the text of the speech - the eloquence of the call to action is enhanced by the assistance of Bill Zoellick who worked over a period of 6 months with Engelbart to bring the pieces together in a 30+ page paper.



"Wisdom has to do with not only intuiting the long view, understanding systems in the context of their larger whole, but also acting in resonance with what is known as true and lasting. Only wisdom can guide effective decisions on how we invest our attention, both individual and organizational, in the conditions of galloping "complexity multiplied by urgency." - Doug Engelbart

Meanwhile in Mei Lin's kitchen - says David Nordfors in Huffington Post

Well, I must say Thank You to David Nordfors for writing such a lovely article about my kitchen...


Change will come about in the kitchens of the world!

信任与政府 Trust and Government - Chinese - first published by Greater China CEM

信任与政府
社交站点在Gov 2.0中扮演的角色



Mei Lin Fung 女士
主席， www.isoe.com
G-CEM全球顾问

www.isoe.com



本文特别为G-CEM所撰写。

大约在2007年中国新年前后，我和我尊敬的CRM Guru同事Paul Greenberg(畅销书： CRM at the Speed of Light的作者)一起与所有机构和部门的eGov头头们在新加坡财政部大楼进行了一次交谈，该大楼是新加坡公民服务的中央枢纽。eGov——电子政府——是一项正在进行中的重大计划——旨在消除一些繁文缛节，加快服务交付时间，改善质量并削减成本。其间最令人印象深刻的莫过于对信任的作用的大讨论，一种将信任作为资产加以维护和发展的理念...这种对CRM的理解无论是在政府或其它我曾接触过的行业中都是最先进的。

第一届Gov 2.0高峰会与展览会于2009年9月在华盛顿特区拉开大幕。O’Reilly Media的领导人本次大会组织者Tim O’Reilly 向大家解释了他发起这一活动的原因：

“政府就是一种合作行动的手段，让人们参与进来共同推动公益发展。“

对上述理解我看到的问题是许多人对何谓“公益”有着不同见解。集体行动如果不能就什么是公益达成一致就将导致行动前后失据并为更大的灾难埋下伏笔。指南针能够告诉我们方向。而政府政府也需要一个指南针保证自己行进在推动公益的正确道路上。

所有我又回来思考2007年新加坡召开的会议以及关于信任的观念。

我一直都很关注信任这一概念的变迁并发现了Strephen R Govy的书The speed of Trust, 其中说到当企业开始建立信任关系时它的发展速度就会越来越快而成本会越来越低。评估信任取决于对以下四个关键问题的回答：

1. 你信任谁？
2. 为什么信任这个人？
3. 是什么造就了这段关系中的信心？
4. 谁信任你？

下面我来阐述其于政府的意义。Answers.com 有一个很简单但概括得很全面的定义：

“理想的来说，政府就是一个社会构建出来的权威，用于保护和推进公众利益。”
政府是一个有着很深文化根源的概念——一个社会对权力构架的认可是基于每个国家使用权力（好的或坏的）的历史的。需要重点指出的是，正如不同企业有不同文化并会反映在客户管理管理（CRM）或客户体验管理（CEM）中那样，不同国家也会有不同形式的政府，这种现象是自然而然的并且反映着不同的文化与价值观。除了国家历史之外，许多国家属于多民族多种族聚居。即便同处一个国家，这些族群也会有不同的文化和价值观。这样就很难说清楚国家的“共同利益”在何处了。

如此多的利益团体带着互相矛盾的目的使得政府对公众利益的定义变得越来越混乱。在CRM世界里许多企业纷纷追逐以客户为中心。但这种说法现在“早就过时了”。我们的口号已经从“以客户为中心”转到了“以客户为驱动”，这也意味着参与被赋予了越来越多的关注，甚至以客户为主导来定义未来CRM和CEM科技未来的发展方向。 正如一位来自微软的著名博主在2006年6月所写的那样
“互联网使我们对信任和社区的观念不断变化。”

- Robert Scoble


只要看看美国医疗改革的风雨飘摇就知道了，各种利益集团之间的纠葛使得现行没有政府几乎不可能拿出一个“适合所有人”的答案来应对医保危机和目前医保占GDP总额16-18%的窘境，不比世界上其它任何一个国家好，世界卫生组织(WHO)有关世界卫生体系的报告则表明情况还在恶化。

Gov 2.0能够为政府提供一条从“以公民为中心”转向“以公民为驱动”的道路。当你的推力不再来自制定政策而转向接纳来自国家不同部分的解决方案，并且这些方案都限定在一个“以公民为驱动”的框架中时，取悦大部分人并同时保持社会秩序稳定就成为可能。

看看一些大城市如北京、纽约、罗马、圣彼得堡或拉格斯街头的交通工具我们就能大概知道这样的运作方式如何存在于我们的日常生活中了。每个司机驾驶着自己的交通工具去往目的地：自行车，摩托车，汽车，卡车或面包车，并且选择他们自己喜欢的路线。他们共用一条马路，必须遵守交通灯交通法规和交警的指挥。类似于个人旅游形式的“以公民为驱动”计划正每天发生在世界之路上。

Gov 2.0如何能为以公民为驱动的计划建立起一个框架从而推进公众利益？Tim O’Reilly在TechCrunch上的一篇客串文章中建议不仅要利用技术还要从技术行业的进化和行业成长背后关键成功因素中吸取经验和教训：

”但是说过Web 2.0，Government 2.0成功的秘诀在于将政府当做一个平台 来考虑。如果非要说一样我们从技术行业学来的东西，那就是每个大赢家都是平台公司：某些人的成功促成了其他另一些人的成功，他们为自己的工作建立了基础并使其影响力发挥乘数效应。微软“让每家每户的桌上都有一个PC”，互联网将这些PC连接起来，Google掀起了广告赞助风潮，苹果为其开发人员提供轻松的氛围，令其设计出其它手机厂商望尘莫及的应用软件从而颠覆了手机市场。在每个案例中，都是平台提供商扛起大旗并为其他人创造探索的机会。”

那么，政府作为一个平台又意味着什么呢？Tim O’Reilly接着描述了一个由美国政府提供的站点，叫做Data.Gov。这个站点认为：为未分类政府数据的使用提供无缝接入是政府的职责，将联邦政府地方执行机构生成的计算机可读数据集 开放给普通公民也是政府应当做的。人们被邀请来积极参与规划Data.gov的未来，他们可以提出补充数据集和增强站点的建议。经过data.gov之后政府就从控制数据转型为了鼓励公民积极参与改善公众利益。

“Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s data.gov站点背后的理念是政府机构不应止步于提供web站点，他们还要提供web服务。这些服务，从效果上来说就是政府的SDK (软件开发包)。政府可以利用这些API（应用软件编程接口）打造一些应用软件，同时公民和具有创新意识的企业也有机会用它们发开新的、出人意料的应用软件。”

这里要提出一些严正警告：创新必须是为公众利益服务的，必须是负责的、可行的。群众有时候会失去理智成为暴民。我们一定要竭力防止这样的灾难降临于2.0。

• 正如道路规则保证司机们各行其道但又共用一条路——Gov 2.0也必须有自己的公路规则。
• 正如交警强制执行道路规则那样——Gov 2.0也必须有好的代码保障其执行。
• 正如交通灯和信号指挥与协调大流量的道路交通那样，必须要有通用的标志和警告来约束这些从不知名的源头和数据搜集方法中分析出来的海量数据的使用。

在美国的Gov 2.0大会上，涌现出许许多多吸引各国听众的主题：

• Geo-Spatial地图——虚拟的阿拉巴马州
• 争论/竞争——来自Apps for Democracy——能够获得data.gov上的数据库并提供应用软件或工具增强数据的用途。得奖者是www.DataMasher.org
• 可视化——www.Gapminder.org

这些应用软件都是站在市民的角度上——打破了传统政府部门之间的壁垒并对数据进行强化、集成和归总从而使数据中所蕴含的观点能够立刻被执行。

峰会上，我们向所有递交Gov2.0应用软件的企业发出邀请，它们展示了美国和世界上其它国家的公务员或政府所反正的主观能动性方面的变化。这些应用软件被分为五大类：

政府作为供应商——胜出的是一个由援助工人在非洲实施的应用软件。叫做Txts4Africa——该应用的写就只花了几个星期并立刻得到实施——最初它被用作提交营养调查的信息——但最后这款蜂窝电话应用软件不仅记录了有关营养方面的物理统计数据并将之直接发送到中央数据库，数据接收一方还能发回消息，根据严重程度告知应如何照顾营养不良的人。

政府作为合作伙伴——BART.Gov成为赢家——Bay Area Rapid Transit创建了一个社交网络和社区，鼓励行为艺术，参与社区和寻找乐趣。经常光顾BART的人会得到最新信息并接受如何巧妙使用BART并发挥最充分功能的教育。

政府作为和平守护者——Second Life是一个虚拟世界——获奖的是一种能够让人们在Second Life虚拟世界体验陌生感的方法。这种方法被用来检测一个人的自我感觉和别人对他/她的感觉。对穆斯林和非穆斯林之间互动的研究被用于观察如何才能通过建立关系的行为发展新社区。

政府作为保护者——犹他州高速公路巡警队发言人向大家演示了获奖的应用软件，该软件利用包括Twitter在内的社交传媒为记者提供更快更精确的高速公路事故新闻。Twitter是一个微型博客应用软件，所发送的消息不能超过140个字符。

政府作为一个流程——加利福尼亚北部城市圣克鲁兹正在因为经济衰退和财政危机而实行严厉的预算削减计划，它们希望得到公众的意见，放弃了由一两个人主导的会议，他们于是开发出一款web应用软件，专门用来征求和展示公众的评论、问题和讨论。

令人大吃一惊的是如今联邦政府内拥有大量具备丰富科技知识的工作人员——我感觉本次峰会令白宫和联邦政府内支持和热衷于Gov2.0的人留下了极为深刻的印象。

联邦政府CIO,CTO和IT经理们拥抱Gov2.0的奉献精神和创新动力令人慨然一叹——你可以强烈感受到Gov2.0将开辟出一条激动人心的坦途大道，公务员们得以找到为公众服务的意义和目的所在，从而使他们的服务方式更有价值和创造力。Gov2.0 2009为来年5月将在华盛顿特区召开的Gov2.0 2010奠定了坚实的基础，那时将有更多应用软件展示在大家面前，而政府创新的浪潮中亦会涌现出更多投身于为公众利益寻求创新的典范和楷模。我强烈建议和鼓励CRM和CEM从业人员考虑参加来年的峰会，从而捕捉到美国政府未来5到10年内的风云变幻，因为政府数据和政府应用软件都将建立在Gov2.0这个平台之上。

把视野转向美国以外，放眼全球，还有哪些国家是政府推动公众利益的成功者呢？Accenture向全世界不同国家的公民征询了有关其对政府看法的问题，并且基于此发布
了一份年度报告。Accenture的“2008 Leadership In Customer Service: Creating Shared Responsibility for Better Outcomes”包括对各政府效力的比较，该比较取材于社会大众的评级并以公众利益中的改善生活质量为标尺。


“特别值得注意的是在民众对政府信任度的问题上新加坡可以说领先全球，它的公民相信政府是透明的，能够为公民提供高质量的生活，同时能够不断接纳和鼓励公民的参与。”

2009年Accenture的报告罗列了4项与政府效率相关的最佳实施，它们都提及了以社交网络联结政府与公民。社交网络是让参与者对共同目标和兴趣达成一致的基础所在——这些参与者包括公民，公务员，政策制定者和管理者。

1. “好的服务始于透彻的了解。”
2. “参与。倾听。响应。”
3. “驾驭所有可用资源。”
4. “透明。负责。寻求反馈并采取相应行动。”

第2条和第4条是建立信任的最佳实施——下面我补充第五条最佳实施，旨在增加社交网络的粘合力，确保针对公民的创新执行条例能够被观察到，被遵守和被贯彻。

5. 定期度量信任度，对信任度受政策，行为或决策影响之后的增减作出预测。
总结信任与政府的关系，社交网络与Gov 2.0

科技使政府得以推出解决小众群体价值和需求的方案，而在这之前，我们所能想到并且实施的只有单一的“一刀切”解决方案。为以公民为驱动的计划制定‘执行规则’必须享有优先权以防止贪污腐败的滋生和强势群体的控制或利益冲突。对这个正经历金融危机然又瞬息万变的世界来说社交网络无疑是一个开发执行规则的好框架。而信任则是社交网络可持续发展的指路明灯
建立信任=好， 降低信任=差。


新加坡是大规模公民反馈，使用在线Facebook页面和面对面反馈方面的先驱，正如Paul Greenberg所描述的：

2007年我和6000名新加坡公民一起参加了国家反馈日的活动并怀着激动的心情亲眼见证了一次最充满智慧和丰富内涵的讨论，与政府报告不同，该讨论会的主要议题涉及房屋、交通或教育等多个领域。公民们针对普通议题和特殊议题畅所欲言，提出自己的想法，反对意见或对现有建议表示赞成。真正写报告的委员会就在现场并且随时准备接受盘问。基于议题的房屋或教育政策惊人的详细。每位委员都配有一个公证人，负责记录公民的评论。

如果你无法参与，他们还可以提供在线报告，你可以在那上面提出自己的反馈。所有实地或者在线反馈都会被集合起来然后加入到修正讨论中去。所有的建议和政策都会据此作出相应调整。
-- Paul Greenberg

Gov2.0代表了政府向平台功能的深彻而强烈的转型，在此之上可以开发出以公民为中心甚至以公民为驱动的应用软件并为公民们用来追求公众利益。具有持续性的反馈与响应是Gov2.0的关键所在，而在社交网络上建立信任则是培养以公民为驱动的创新所不可或缺的土壤。
关于作者

Mei Lin Fung是总部位于Oklahoma City 的Custom Solutions的主席，同时也是总部位于美国加利福尼亚硅谷的Service Organization Excellence协会成员。Mei Lin是CRM最早的倡导人，和Tom Siebel及Marc Benioff一 起工作，并在1990年在Oracle建立了适用于内部的第一个CRM系统。她在Paul Greenberg3版最畅销作品“CRM at the Speed of Light ”中的附录被McGraw Hill所发表。在Oracle培训与发展是CRM成功的最关键部分。Mei Lin 通过在美国及亚洲进行的专业的，能力发展项目，为赢得客户信任继续着工作。

Trust and Government - article for Greater China Customer Experience Management

Trust and Government
The role of social networks in Gov 2.0



Ms. Mei Lin Fung
Chairman, www.isoe.com
G-CEM Global Adviosr

www.isoe.com


This article is exclusively written for G-CEM and reprinted by permission..

Around Chinese New Year 2007, my esteemed CRMGuru colleague, Paul Greenberg (best selling author of the textbook: CRM at the Speed of Light) and I were speaking with the heads of eGov for every agency and ministry in Singapore's Treasury Building, the central HQ of Singapore's Civil Service. eGov - electronic government - was a major initiative underway - to cut red tape, to speed up delivery of services and improve quality AND cut costs. Most memorable was the discussion we had about the role of trust, an understanding of trust as an asset to be preserved and grown... This is the most sophisticated understanding of CRM in government or other industry which I have come across.

The first Gov 2.0 Expo and Summit was held in Washington DC in September 2009. Tim O'Reilly, the head of O'Reilly Media, the conference organizers explained why he initiated this important event:


"Government is a means of collective action where more people can get involved with advancing the common good. "



The problem I see with this idea is that many people have many different ideas about what is "the common good". Collective action without agreeing on what is the common good, will result in mis-alignment of activities and is a recipe for disaster. A compass tells us whether we are on track or not. Government needs a compass in order to keep on track to advance the common good.

So I went back to thinking about that meeting in Singapore in 2007 and to the idea of trust.

I have been paying attention to the changing ideas of Trust and found The Speed of Trust - Stephen R Covey's book on the benefits in increasing speed and lowering costs when an organization starts to build trusted relationships. Assessing trust lies in answers to 4 key questions:

1. Who do you trust?
2. Why do you trust this person?
3. What is it that inspires confidence in this particular relationship?
4. Who trusts you?

Let's clarify what I mean by government. Answers.com has a short definition that sums it up well:
"Ideally, a government is the way a society decides to structure authority
in order to protect and advance the common good."


Government is a concept that has deep cultural roots - the way that one society agrees to structure authority is based on each country's history of the use (good and bad) of authority right up to the present. It is important to note that just as different businesses have different cultures which would be reflected in their implementation of Customer relationship management (CRM) or Customer experience management (CEM), different countries have different forms of government and this is natural and a normal reflection of different cultures and values. In addition to national histories, there are many countries with multiple ethnic groups living together sometimes integrated, sometimes more tightly in geographically separate communities. These ethnic groups within one country also may have different culture and values. It becomes difficult to say what are the national agreement on what is the "common good".

The problem of a government in defining the common good when there are so many competing agendas by many interest groups is made worse in the following way. In the world of CRM, many businesses were chasing after the goal of being customer-centric. Now that sounds "so yesterday". Now our catchwords have changed from "customer-centric" to "customer-driven" which means that we are placing more and more emphasis on participation and even leadership by customers in defining the direction of technology for CRM and CEM in the future. As a renowned blogger from Microsoft wrote June 2006
"Our ideas of trust and community and all that are under radical change because of the Internet."

Robert Scoble

We have only to look at the quicksand of US Healthcare Reform to see how the competing interests of different groups make it impossible for the current form of US government to come up with a "one size fits all" answer to the healthcare crisis and a situation where the US spends 16-18% of GDP on healthcare, more than any other country in the world, and still ranks far down the chart at number 37 in a report on world health systems by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Gov 2.0 is a grass roots response that offers a path for government to shift from "citizen centric" to "citizen-driven". When you are not pushed to define policies centrally, but solutions emerge from different parts of the country, within a framework that allows for "citizen-driven" initiatives, then it is possible to satisfy many more people and still have an orderly society.

We can see how this operates in our daily lives by looking at the vehicles in the streets of any big city like Beijing, New York, Rome, St. Petersburg or Lagos. Each driver operates their own vehicle of choice: bicycle, motor bike, car, truck, or mini-van and steers to their individual desired destination, taking the route that they have chosen for themselves. They share the road, and must obey the traffic lights and traffic laws and the traffic police. "Citizen-driven" initiatives, in the form of individual journeys are taking place in a mostly orderly fashion on the world's roads every day.

How can Gov 2.0 set up a framework for citizen-driven initiatives that improve the common good?
Tim O'Reilly in a guest post at TechCrunch suggested not just using technology but also learning from the technology industry's evolution and critical success factors behind the industry's growth:

"But as with Web 2.0, the real secret of success in Government 2.0 is thinking about government as a platform . If there's one thing we learn from the technology industry, it's that every big winner has been a platform company: someone whose success has enabled others, who've built on their work and multiplied its impact. Microsoft put "a PC on every desk and in every home", the internet connected those PCs, Google enabled a generation of ad-supported startups, Apple turned the phone market upside down by letting developers loose to invent applications no phone company would ever have thought of. In each case, the platform provider raised the bar, and created opportunities for others to exploit."

What does government as a platform mean? Tim O'Reilly went on to describe a certain site provided by the US government called Data.Gov. This site takes the view that it is the job of the government to provide seamless access for use of unclassified government data and expands public access to machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. People are invited to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements. The government through data.gov is shifting away from controlling data, to enabling citizen's to be pro-active in improving the common good.

"Behind Federal CIO Vivek Kundra?s data.gov site is the idea that government agencies shouldn't just provide web sites, they should provide web services. These services, in effect, become the government's SDK (software development kit). The government may build some applications using these APIs(Application Programming Interfaces), but there?s an opportunity for private citizens and innovative companies to build new, unexpected applications."

It's important to sound some important notes of caution and raise flags here that the innovation must be responsible and accountable for contributing to the common good. Crowds can lose their wisdom and become mobs. We have to be vigilant to avoid these dangers of Gov 2.0.

Just as the rules of the road were formulated for road drivers to have considerable independence yet share the same roads - there must be rules of the road for Gov 2.0.

- Just as there are traffic police to enforce the rules of the road - there must be enforcement of the codes of good conduct within Gov 2.0.
- Just as there are traffic lights and signals to coordinate the movement of large streams of road traffic, so must there be common sign posts and alerts about the appropriate use of large quantities of data analyzed without knowing the source and data collection methods.

Within the US Gov 2.0 conference, some themes emerged) of interest to an international audience:

- Geo-Spatial mapping - Virtual Alabama
- Contest / Competition - Prizes offered in Apps for Democracy - to take the data.gov databases and provide applications or tools to make the data more usable. Winner www.Gapminder.org

The applications were citizen-driven - they cut across traditional government department boundaries and consolidated, integrated, synthesized data to make views of data that could be immediately acted upon.

At the Summit, invitations were given to submit Gov 2.0 applications as demonstrations of what was already happening at the initiative of individual civil servants or government departments either in the US or internationally. These applications were divided into the following 5 categories:

Government as a Provider - The winning application was one implemented in Africa, by a US aid worker. Called Txts4Africa ? the application was written in a matter of weeks and implemented immediately - it was used initially to submit information for a malnutrition survey - in the end, the cell phone application not only recorded the key physical statistics for malnutrition and sent it in directly to the central database, the data receiving officers were also able to send back messages on how to care for the malmourished person depending on the degree of severity of the malnutrition.

Government as Partner - BART.Gov was the winner - Bay Area Rapid Transit created a social network and community of BART riders, encouraging performance art, community engagement and just plain fun. The commuters on BART were better informed and educated on how best to use BART wisely.

Government as Peacekeeper - Second Life is a virtual world - the winner was an approach to allow people to experience the unfamiliar in the virtual world of Second Life. This was used to explore how a person felt he or she was perceived and how the person was actually perceived. Interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims were studied to see how new communities could be gradually developed through relationship building activities.

Government as Protector - The Utah state highway patrol spokesperson demonstrated the wining application which used social media including Twitter to provide better and faster access for journalists to highway patrol incident news. Twitter is a micro-blogging application where only messages up to 140 characters can be sent.

Government as Process - The City of Santa Cruz in northern California was struggling with severe budget cuts due to the recession and the fiscal crisis in California as a whole. They wanted public input, without having the sessions dominated by one or two people, so developed a web application to solicit and display public comments, questions and discussion.

A big surprise was the number of tech savvy highly placed individuals were now in the Federal government - I left the summit having a strong impression of people in the White House and Federal Government who were committed and passionate about Gov 2.0.

The dedication and innovation drive of Federal government CIO's, CTO's and IT managers to embracing Gov 2.0 was astounding - you had a sense of Gov 2.0 providing an exciting avenue where civil servants could find meaning and purpose in serving the public in valuable, innovative, new ways. Gov 2.0 2009 laid the groundwork for the next year's conference in May 2010 in Washington DC where more applications will be demonstrated and the wave of government innovation, citizen-driven will have more role models of people dedicating themselves to innovate for the common good. I strongly urge and encourage CRM and CEM professionals to consider attending in order to grasp the vast change that is ahead for all US organizations over the next 5-10 years as government data and government applications build on top of the Gov 2.0 platform.

Moving to a broader view beyond the US, it is time to look globally and ask which countries have been successful users in enabling governments to advance the common good? Accenture has been publishing an annual report based on asking citizens questions about their government in different countries. Accenture?s "2008 Leadership In Customer Service: Creating Shared Responsibility for Better Outcomes" includes a comparison of the effectiveness of government as rated by folks in the society in advancing the common good expressed by the measure of quality of life:



So where do social networks fit in the picture? In his blogpost , January 2009, Paul Greenberg

"What is completely noticeable is that in all but one area the government of Singapore comes in first in the world when it comes to constituents who trust them to be transparent, provide a quality of life that is personally valuable to individual constituents, to do the right thing and at the same time, to continuously engage their citizenry."

In 2009, Accenture's report listed the 4 best practices for government efficacy and ALL of them refer to engagement by government with citizens in a social network. The social network is the basis for developing common understanding of shared goals and common interests aa mong participants of the network - citizens, civil servants, policy makers, administrators.
1. "Better service starts with better understanding."
2. "Engage. Listen. Respond."
3. "Harness all available resources."
4. "Be transparent. Be accountable. Ask for and act on feedback."

Items 2 and 4 are trust building best practices - I recommend a fifth best practice to increase the cohesion of the social network, to ensure that rules of conduct for citizen-driven innovation are observed, obeyed and enforced if violated.

5. Measure trust regularly, especially forecasting whether trust is increased or decreased by policies, actions or decisions.

Concluding remarks on Trust and Government, Social Networks and Gov 2.0

Technology enables pin point government solutions that address the values, and needs of small groups of people, where once we could only imagine and implement single "one size fits all" solutions. Defining the "rules of the conduct" for citizen-driven initiatives must be made a priority in order to avoid the problems of rampant greed, conflict of interest, and the dominance of powerful interest groups. Social networks are valuable frameworks for developing the rules of conduct in the rapidly changing world currently undergoing a financial metamorphosis. Trust is a compass for sustained social networks
building trust = good, decreasing trust = bad.


Singapore is a pioneer in mass scale citizen feedback , online with Facebook pages and more and face to face as described here by Paul Greenberg here:

In 2007, I attended National Feedback Day with about 6,000 Singaporean citizens and watched with astounded fascination the mostly intelligent and passionate discussions on varying government reports with proposals in different areas such as housing, or transportation or education. Citizens flocked to general and proposal-specific sessions to discuss their thinking on the different proposals and present their counterproposals or support for the existing recommendations. The actual committees that wrote the report were on stage and available to be grilled. The back and forth about housing or education policy based on the proposal was amazingly detailed. Each committee had a scrivener who took notes on the citizens' comments.

If you couldn't attend, they had all of the reports available online and you could provide them with feedback there. All of the in person and online feedback was aggregated and then incorporated into the revisions discussion. Recommendations were made and policies changed accordingly. Paul Greenberg

Gov 2.0 - represents a profound and powerful shift to government as a platform on which citizen-centric and even citizen-driven applications can be developed and used by citizens to contribute to the common good. Constant feedback and response is essential to Gov 2.0 and building trust in a social network is critical for orderly citizen-driven innovation.

About the Author

Mei Lin Fung works with Oklahoma State University's Spears Business School to offer certificate and apprenticeship program ins networked service leadership. She recently assisted communications firm Avaya in developing an innovative public and private customer relations partnership, honored with the American Society of Competitiveness' Phillip B. Crosby Golden Medallion. Fung was an early pioneer in CRM, having worked with both Tom Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, and Marc Benioff, founder of salesforce.com in 1988 at Oracle at the very beginning of the CRM industry. Blog: Professionals Earn Customer Trust