The road to Malmö: government reform from the bottom up

As I had noted before, I participated in a Brussels workshop (March 2009) called Public Services 2.0 that left a small legacy: a group of people – just a couple of dozens, from all over the planet, rallied around David Osimo and Paul Johnston. This group has the knowledge and the stamina to try and bring the voice of the Net People in the European policy debate on e-government. As a pun, we call ourselves “the rowing committee”: there’s no helmsman, the harder you row the more respect you earn.

So, we started a collaborative process (with quite a few steps, and some very healthy mistakes), coordinating on a mailing list, writing a joint blog, and using other tools for collaborative editing. This way we produced a draft declaration, which is now receiving a last round of very helpful comments (people from my favourite e-gov projects, from Farmsubsidy to Patientopinion, are right at the forefront) before settling down in its final form.

We asked the European Commission that our declaration is presented at the Malmö ministerial conference, alongside the declaration of European ministers responsible for e-government. Please note that no one offered us a place: we claimed it. And the Commission – fair play to them – accepted; so next month in Malmö our small global tribe will establish a small precedent. This is (small scale) innovation, too. 🙂

There’s still room to help out. Anyone interested is welcome to go here, read and comment, spread the word, and walk with us the road to Malmö.