Should the Government of the Future Function as a Social Business?

Seems just about everyone is trying to decide what government needs to be in its’ next iteration and what parts social media in all of it’s flavours can play in that future state.

Here in Canada initiatives like Blueprint 2020 appropriately hashtagged as #GC2020 are underway tweeting through @BlueprintGC2020

In parallel, looking specifically at social media, the first step was release of the Treasury Board Guidelines unveiled by Minister Tony Clement at our PSengage 2011 event. And today initiatives like the Deputy Minister Committee on Social Media and Policy Development which you can follow @DM_SMPD are beginning to formally plan and move forward.

At the grassroots level informal groups such as #w2p have been working (and playing) hard for years to establish the initial bottom up groundswell among public servants as a key driver for the coming transition. Even the design and customer experience community has been part of this rising wave since 2010 with UXCampOttawa aka @UXCampOttawa and hashtagged as #uxott.

More recently you’re seeing governments also supporting the growth of social enterprises such as the Province of Ontario’s ‘Impact: A Social Enterprise Strategy for Ontario’ Supporting a new generation of social innovators working to give back to their communities and thrive in today’s economy.

So governments continue to become more social both in how they are working (or soon planning to work) in the future and also in how they can support the establishment, support and growth of social enterprises. Utilization of social tools in citizen (customer) service, policy development process and all the powerful and proliferating sources and uses of Open Data.

The world is now in the blocking and tackling stage of implementing social business. Business approaches such as Conscious Capitalism are trying to take the social enterprise approach mainstream with demonstration of many social businesses outperforming traditional organizations on just about every positive metric.

Many theories abound as to why this is, but one simple fact is that employees in these organizations feel more engaged as their work and the work of their organization has more meaning and they are part of something more personally rewarding.
Sound familiar? Add to this increasing social connection to their customers (citizens) and stakeholders through social technologies and the transformation is complete to a responsive and high performing organization or social business.

What does this look like? Well my favorite depiction of this type of social business and feedback loop comes from my friend Esteban Kolsky in his Social CRM Experience Continuum.

Should today’s traditional governments be transformed into the high performing social enterprises of tomorrow?

All we can say is an emphatic ‘Most certainly!’ and those who share the vision would agree this transition is already underway.

Jeff Ashcroft