The Networker

On the project:

We're investigating how the business of government and the nature of governance itself change as we move into a digital global economy. We're looking at the whole political process and how policies get formulated. What will be the expectations of e-citizens? Another issue has to do with the nature of the state itself and the role of the nation-state in a global economy. Arguably we're not very well-equipped in our current governance structures to address many of the challenging new issues of governance that transcend nation-states. Ultimately the goal of the whole program will be to enable governments to rethink their value propositions and how they function and their relations to citizens around the world. The goal of the program is not to create just some great insights; it's to change the behavior of governments.

On the structure of government:

The current models of government we have are industrial age bureaucracies. Governments look a lot like the integrated industrial-age corporations that were the main drivers of wealth creation in the economy.

In the private sector, these old industrial models of corporations are giving way to new electronic business communities, where people cooperate on networks to create and deliver value for consumers. Arguably, changes of similar scope and character can and should happen regarding the public sector. . . . What we're talking about is fundamentally changing the whole business model.

On e-governance communities:

Take any value proposition, say clean air. Rather than government simply adopting legislation and enforcing that legislation, maybe we can be building electronic governance communities that involve citizens, civil society organizations, private companies, government lawmakers and regulators on networks where we attack this issue from a whole new, fresh perspective. In doing so, we come to understand our common-felt interest of protecting the environment. We're at the very early stages of this kind of thinking. I think it's a time of great opportunity.

On adapting to the digital economy:

What we've done so far is positive, but overall it's fairly limited in terms of where we're going. We deliver government information online. We even deliver some government services online. We've started administrative renewal, where we use networks to flatten government and streamline the process of government.

But most of these focus on the delivery of government to the citizen as a consumer of government, as opposed to fundamentally changing the relationship between citizens and the state. So maybe what we've been doing is tinkering with the old industrial model instead of fundamentally changing it.

Vice President Gore has been working on this reinvention of government for quite a few years. Some progress has been made, but on the other hand I think just about every observer would say we've got a long way to go. Maybe where we're going is different from where we initially thought. We're not just going to have better and cheaper government; we're going to have very different government.