Treating Employees as Legacy Systems: Gov 2.0's Worst Bug?

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then, as the great Mahatma Gandhi said, what you've been advocating for so passionately suddenly becomes conventional wisdom -- and then you have to finally flesh out just what the heck the transformative social and political change you've been promising is actually going to look like in practice, day in and day out, technocratic detail by technocratic detail, employee manual provision by employee manual provision. Or something like that. It's fairly inarguable at this point that the idea of "Government 2.0" has infiltrated mainstream thinking in Washington, at least. The Gov 2.0 folks have devoted friends in the White House. They have skilled agents in the agencies. But more than other revolutionary change, even, the devil is most assuredly in the details when it comes to the innovative reworking of how government interacts with the people it is elected to represent.

We're still waiting on the White House to provide leadership with the issuing of its Open Government Directive spelling out the Obama vision of open, transparent, and participatory government. (The OGD is coming by the end of the month, sayeth OMB.) And in the absence of trickle-down Gov 2.o from the White House, folks in and out of government are starting to look inward, and beginning to probe two separate but complementary questions: (a) what a future of Gov 2.0 should look like, and (b) the road map for getting from where we are today to that eventual goal. And the role of government lifers and appointees in that conversation is starting to produce some heat...

For example, Brian Drake from Deloitte Consulting writes on the Green Dotted Line blog that what's called for at this unique moment in Gov 2.0's evolution is, yep, yet another Gov 2.0 conference that brings together those working (and wanting to work) in the emerging field -- but this one focused on where Gov 2.0 has come up wanting thus far:

The problem, in summary, is that the richness and depth of our conversation around Gov2.0 needs to be enhanced. So, in early 2010, our small federation of planners will be hosting a workshop on The Shortfalls of Government 2.0. We want to draw together the informed detractors and advocates who have been hinting at strategies and solutions that are helpful to everyone. We seek a dialogue that informs each side and allows us to advance mission objectives.

But Gwynne Kostin, who works in online communications for the Department of Homeland Security, wonders if even a self-reflective Gov 2.0 conference like that can really get past "just alot of talk by the same people about the same things," and actually equip government insiders to produce, in the near future, the practical change advocates want to see:

People who actually work in government are well aware of the barriers and arguments against Government 2.0. Yes, we already know. We don't need to talk about it at another conference. We need to fix it. The problems and issues have been defined and discussed since last year.

On that point, Kostin quotes Gartner's Andrea DeMaio, who argues that what's missing from all the let's-get-together-and-talk action of the last year or so is the perspective of government employees themselves -- some of whom have an anthropological awareness of how government works today that makes them cautious advocates for Gov 2.0 reforms:

I am still amazed to see how little employee-centricity there is in today’s government 2.0 conferences, debates, positions and articles. It is as if employees were considered legacy, just part of an organization that will be transformed, and not the real fuel and soul of those organizations. Until when their role will be given equal dignity as "citizens", government 2.0 will remain an interesting subject for discussion, will marginally contribute to service improvement, but won’t realize a fraction of its potential.