<![CDATA[Jon Lebkowsky, my co-editor at Extreme Democracy, writes at WorldChanging.com:
Beyond campaigns, you have large consultancies showing an interet in selling egovernment expertise. Consider Deloitte, whose public sector work includes “eCitizenship for All” and whose Global Director for Public Sector research, William Eggers, has written Government 2.0, about the impact of government on technology. Accenture talks about customer relationship management for government, and offers a public sector value model for government.
This in response to Ross‘ comment in email about several recent articles by folks characterizing government as being about customer service:
Seriously, there needs to be a concerted effort to slam this consumption-based model of emergent democracy. It disgusts me and is a real threat to whatever has been achieved.
In particular, Ross points to this piece based on a speech at the Institute for the Future by William Eggers, where he is reported saying:
Traditional image of government is hierarchical and siloed; but increasingly we’re moving to a networked model in which public agencies, subcontractors, NGOs, etc are brought into the project of governance. We see this in the military, with the growth of contractors as suppliers of major services and security. “In a networked world, the lines blur between public and private.” Accountability, flexibility, and dynamism are somewhat at odds: sometimes less accountability can encourage operational flexibility and creativity.
Eggers is also the author of Government 2.0: Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy, which is described this way:
Rich with anecdotes and case studies, Government 2.0 is a must read for every entrepreneur frustrated by paperwork, every parent who’s sick of being surprised by bad report cards, every commuter stuck in traffic, every activist trying to fight City Hall, and every taxpayer who cares about the future of government.
The long and short of this argument is that government would be better if it were privatized and citizens made their preferences known with their feet, like consumers. But this severely discounts the role of the citizen, making their participation in social decisions a kind of ephemeral expression of sentiment rather than a relatively stable set of principals and priorities. Instead of “we believe everyone should be educated to a level necessary to earn a living wage,” this system says “there is no general consensus so we can take care of our kids’ education on our own.” Citizens become customers, but customers don’t get to set the rules of the market. Instead, they make the best deal they can given the offers available, and that has nothing to do with government and democracy. It’s a social Darwinist environment in which the most influential participants (them that gots the money) set the rules of the game.
Now, I agree that all sorts of new changes can be made by small groups using the tools available today. That’s why we described Extreme Democracy this way:
“Extreme democracy” is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a deliberative process that places total confidence in the people, opening the policy-making process to many centers of power through deeply networked coalitions that can be organized around local, national and international issues. The choice of the word “extreme” reflects the lessons of the extreme programming movement in technology that has allowed small teams to make rapid progress on complex projects through concentrated projects that yield results far greater than previous labor-intensive programming practices. Extreme democracy emphasizes the importance of tools designed to break down barriers to collaboration and access to power, acknowledging that political realities can be altered by building on rapidly advancing generations of technology and that human organizations are transformed by new political expectations and practices made possible by technology.
The important element of government is that citizens have joined together to express a basic set of standards for living in society together—they may not agree on everything, but they find a middle ground on which everyone generally agrees (I am grossly simplifying this). We pay taxes to support those standards, from enforcing the law to regulating industries that might kill people if they get too messy. But when The People become The Customers, they are no longer a society in agreement about those basic standards and can be fragmented.
Maybe that’s what you want, but don’t kid yourself that this is democracy. It’s a marketplace, where there are always losers and winners.]]>