The purpose of a Maturity Model is to provide a ‘target’ for business transformation projects to aim for. In short measure where you are currently, identify where you need to be, plan a route to get there.
Therefore the ultimate goal of an Open Government transformation exercise is to attain a Level 5 ranking, in terms of overall organizational maturity. By using Michael Hammer’s “PEMM” maturity model we can articulate this as a pinnacle of self-organizing structures.
In the Leadership section it describes how the start of the journey is Level 1, where:
“the senior executive team has started shifting from a top-down, hierarchical style to an open, collaborative style.”
The conclusion to this journey, the level 5 open, collaborative style, is also referred to as “Crowdsourcing“.
Recently MIT published a paper ‘Harnessing Crowds: Mapping the Genome of Collective Intelligence‘ (20-page PDF) that distills the key mechanics of this science, and that are ideal for applying in relevant scenarios.
For example here the US Government has recommended policies that transform government processes to be inherently participative and that harness the public as a collective intelligence the same way, proposing that agencies build ‘Public Participation Plans’ to engage their local communities more proatively in setting and reporting on policy performance.
In essence Beth Noveck’s Peer to Patent project defines this level 5 ultimate conclusion to this journey. She embraced the same cultural and systemic model change, and transformed how the agency works and performs.
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