Getting on with Government 2.0 - Department of Finance and ...

of aptitude and contribution in the field. Just as these values can be brought inside traditional
organisations, firms in the Web 2.0 world are successfully experimenting with means of adapting
aspects of this kind of voluntarism to their own organisational structures.
One approach which a number of software companies have experimented with is enabling
employees to spend some of their time on projects which are for the benefit of the firm, but which
they are free to choose. Employees with a creative idea have the authority to try it out, and to try
to persuade others to collaborate. In this process, they create some of the organic possibilities and
associations typical of the undirected spontaneous activity of markets and civil society.
If such an approach were centrally imposed on agencies it might simply reduce productivity.
Nevertheless, tapping into the intrinsic motivation of public servants, and encouraging a greater
degree of self selection for tasks is an important challenge for the public service. Approaches
which have their origins in the culture of Web 2.0 might be trialled, either in pockets of
the service or in recognition of particularly creative and well-motivated public servants.
Recommendation 4 encourages agencies to take measured steps in this direction.
4.7 Public servants, public, private and professional practice
Virtually all formal organisations distinguish between the official and private activities of their
officers. The distinction is central to the culture of the public service. The APS Code of Conduct
and associated documents have well-developed protocols for making these distinctions, although
the issues remain inescapably subtle and require considerable judgement in their application.
However, between the ‘ideal types’ of public servants officially putting forward their agency’s
position and their speaking in a private capacity, there is much middle ground. In negotiating
this terrain, public servants may find official stipulations, codes of conduct and other guidance
useful. Yet for the distinction to be practically useful, they must have an intuitive ‘feel’ for how
these apply as they negotiate the public space of the internet in ‘real time’.
To date public servants have taken an extremely cautious approach. There is a rich array of blogs
hosted from within Australia and elsewhere which provide a valuable avenue for professional
discussion. It is true that such blogs sometimes descend into party political debate and even
acrimony. It is appropriate that officials avoid public debate of this kind unless it is seen as strictly
private activity (and even here senior officials should show sensitivity). Yet much discussion on
blogs covering public and professional issues is not rancorous or highly partisan. Yet, except for
some pseudonymous participation, Australia’s public servants are largely absent.
Box 7: On the role and regulation of public servants
In an environment of open consultation and perpetual beta, errors and omissions become matters of
public record. As such public servants need to be provided room to fail, if they are not to be forced into
paralysis or subversion of the access policy. To operate successfully Government 2.0 must accept the
existence of errors and implement tight corrective feedback loops seeking a trajectory of increasing
accuracy. It cannot work if public servants are in constant fear of criticism and rebuke for the errors and
omissions that are a natural part of any drafting or problem solving process. It is also worth noting here
that a shift from being authors of policy to public curators frees public servants to collaborate as citizens
in the public contemplation of policy.
Submission by Andrae Muys 162
162 Andrae Muys, Submission to Towards Government 2.0: An Issues Paper http://gov2.net.au/submissions/.
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