I’ll say this expertise is overrated. Woah.. where did that come from? We’ll sitting at the Gov 2.0 Summit something said by Elizabeth Coleman of Bennington College really resonated with me: start with the world then bring it back to government.
Yes expertise is valuable in it’s small tiny sector but government isn’t a small tiny sector it touches everything aka pretty much the whole world where as government itself is only run by a small fraction. Point blank expertise is limited and there is no way to be good at it all (and if you are apparently you get a multi-million ad deal). Plus expertise intimidates which is not what we want if we are truly trying to make something a national or even universal movement. I know I was and still am (sometimes) intimidated when discussing Gov 2.0 with some of it’s major players but really that’s not the way it should be. We need to get everyone in on the game which I understand is really the driving force behind the idea of Gov 2.0 but I don’t think we do a good job actually displaying that in the build out process.
We have to remember that just because someone isn’t an innovator on the cutting edge doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful. Real regular people who probably don’t have anything to do with government are able to help but we don’t truly let them. We write them off because they don’t have any government experience or tech experience (I’m guilty too). But they have something maybe even more valuable: real world experience. Coming in recently from the outside world into government I can tell you that Gov World and Real World are two completely different things neither necessarily bad but just different.
Being able to apply real world experience to whatever situation you have at your job is invaluable. This why I always try myself to do new things, go new places, read the things I’m not interested more than the ones I am interested in so because of this I’m not really an expert at anything but I’m well rounded. It’s gaining that experience not necessarily expertise that is important.
I feel that with gov 2.0 right now we are starting with ourselves then trying to bring it to the world. Instead of that we should be starting with the world and bringing it back to government. I understand that’s a major paradigm shift but it has come apparent to me that we have to have one in Gov 2.0.
Boiling the Gov World down will help the Real World get it and be less intimidated and hence more active in applying their talents to the pot.