Jean-François Gauthier, a vision for the future of public services through open government

Jean-François Gauthier, who specialized in management consulting for the Quebec City firm Loran Technologies, is concerned about the interaction between the government and citizens. His professional experience enabled him to understand the needs of citizens and the constraints of a public system.

He is worried about the lack of public confidence in their representatives and civic disengagement. Jean-François and his family witnessed a coup in Haiti in September 1990. Two weeks of constant gun shots around his house in this country opened his eyes. He knows how we too easily take democracy for granted, how precious it really is.

Jean-François believes in leveraging technology to render public services more efficient. During a strategic consulting assignment at the Treasury Board of the government of Quebec, he became aware of the potential of open government. An "awesome discovery", he said. He realized that technology tools available today can be integrated to a government within a structured approach, something useful to increase public confidence. Jean-François sees how transparency and information flow increases public trust, improve policy makers accountability, and can increase the level of performance of public agencies. He likes how open government brings a unifying vision of business that can help meet the challenges of government budget constraints.

Jean-François also has a keen interest in developing multilateral partnerships that will support development of open government initiatives in the French speaking countries. He's a founding member of recently launched Democratieouverte.org.

Read more about Jean-François

― Mon cheminement vers le gouvernement ouvert http://edgeryders.ppa.coe.int/share-your-ryde/mission_case/mon-cheminement-vers-le-gouvernement-ouvert

Will B.C. take the lead in transparency?

What is Christy Clark waiting for? Pendant que le Québec branle dans le manche, while Quebec is shaky and unsteady, all eyes are turning to the West coast for true opengov Enlightenment. Donald Lenihan speaks of a 'golden opportunity'.

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OPEN GOVERNMENT: WILL B.C. TAKE THE LEAD IN TRANSPARENCY?
Donald Lenihan, Posted 06/27/11 08:56 AM ET, Huffingtonpost.ca

British Columbia's new premier, Christy Clark, has declared open government one of her top priorities. She promises to "get citizens more engaged with their government, including holding open town halls in communities around the province."

Fifteen of the world's leading experts on government would be pleased. They have just released a major report titled "The Future of Government." The report, which was sponsored by the World Economic Forum, distills a vast amount of learning down to a few basic thoughts on what governments must do to meet the challenges of the next decade. At bottom, the message is to pursue open government.

So is B.C. blazing the trail for Canadian governments?

Clark is on the right track: "Open government," she tells us, "means talking about our problems and setting our priorities openly. Government will work with citizens to find solutions and explain decisions."

Unlike her counterparts in Ottawa, or even Washington, she sees open government as much more than a commitment to more transparent government, say, by making more information available online. Clark's version also includes new approaches to decision-making through public engagement.

Nevertheless, Clark's plan to achieve this by holding town halls around the province is a little underwhelming. Town halls have been with us since the American Revolution -- maybe since the Middle Ages -- and where has it got us?

If she really wants the kind of open government she preaches, Clark will need something more ambitious than town halls to drive it. The "Future of Government"report has an excellent suggestion: develop a new set of performance measures for open government.

Readers may now be blinking: Performance measures? Is this not even more underwhelming than town halls? But stop and think about it. Performance measurement (PM) is now a core practice in every major government in the land -- indeed, throughout the OECD.

It wasn't always so. I recall when PM first surfaced on the Canadian political landscape. It was part of the Klein Revolution in the early 90s. Alberta was the first jurisdiction to apply PM at a government-wide level. I know because at the time I went across the country to discuss the merits of PM with other governments. Most hardly knew what it was.

We've come a long way. Today, all major governments are committed to PM on two key fronts: policy outcomes and service quality.

On services, satisfaction surveys are commonly used to evaluate and improve service quality. As a result, a wide range of service standards has been developed and applied, which, in turn, has revolutionized thinking around service delivery.

As for policy outcomes, before the Klein Revolution, little or no information was gathered on them. In many cases, officials were not even clear what outcomes their programs were supposed to achieve. Hard as this may be to believe, the word "outcome" was barely part of our policy vocabulary.

PM changed all that -- forever. It forced managers to start clarifying objectives, adopting indicators to measure progress, and collecting and using data to improve the results.

While we may still have a long way to travel on this road, it would be hard to overstate how much PM has already reshaped our views on policy-making and service delivery and, ultimately, our expectations around government. Whatever history will say about other parts of Ralph Klein's revolution, everyone agrees that PM is here to stay. Take note, Christy Clark.

So what does this mean for open government?

As the "Future of Government" report makes clear, open government is a kind of catch-all term for a complex array of concepts, tools and processes, including networked government, citizen engagement, innovation, interdependence, complexity, participation, collaboration and agility.

We can sum all this up without too much distortion by saying that the central challenge open government poses for governments is to develop new ways of working with the public to further improve policy outcomes and service delivery. At bottom, this means collaboration.

But if open government is a new way of doing business through collaboration, governments have a lot to learn. They have always operated on command-and-control principles. Learning to listen, discuss and share will not come easily.

PM is a critical first step on this journey. Governments will need it to help them build the new skills, structures and culture to support open government. The public will need it to hold governments' feet to the fire.

As the report notes, however, this is a whole new field of measurement, which is still in its infancy. In order to tackle the challenge of collaboration systematically, governments need to make some major progress on it. Measurement therefore should be a priority.

There's a saying that what get's measured get's done. Unless and until governments can track and assess their progress toward open government, it will remain an ideal at best, political rhetoric at worst.

The measurement barrier can be broken. The question is whether governments are ready to take up the challenge. If Clark wants to make her mark, here is a golden opportunity. Just ask Ralph.

Tunisia: 3 open government departments before the Constituent

By the Constituent Assembly, 3 departments will adopt an open government. The interim president has ratified a decree to convert all the ministries in this transparent mode of governance within 2 years. But the open government depends on the emergence of e-Citizen. Exclusive Tekiano interview of Gaaloul Adel, Secretary of State for Technology.

Translation from French to English by Lyne Robichaud.

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TUNISIA: 3 OPEN GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS BEFORE THE CONSTITUENT
Wednesday, June 8, 2011 7:00, Interview by Mohamed Jebri, Tekiano
Tunisie: 3 ministères gouvernement ouvert avant la Constituante

The Secretary of State for Technology, Adel Gaaloul, delivered the opening address at the event TunAndroid held on Saturday, June 4, in Sousse. In his speech, he spoke of five main axis to give a boost to the ICT sector in Tunisia's. Among the guidelines, the Secretary of State spoke about the role of government, which must ensure that the aspect of "transparency" is in its relationship with the Tunisian. After the close of the event, Tekiano took snippets of conversation with Mr. Gaaloul, which I would stress, welcomed (the journalist from Tekiano) with an open heart and did not complain about the questions he asked. Immediately, we discovered a humble man, smiling, warm, and loquacious. Interview guarantee 100% without twaddle.

Tekiano: During your speech, you talked about the forthcoming introduction of open government in Tunisia. What date do you plan to launch?

Adel Gaaloul: First, it seems important to define the notion of open government. This mode is relative to transparency of our administrative institutions in their relationship with citizens. It therefore enhances trust between the governor and the governed. I must also remind you that this is a notion that has been implemented very recently in some developed countries. But since Tunisia now welcomes a new climate of freedom, the interim president has ratified a decree for which we have provided a 2 years period for all our departments to make public their financial reports.

What are the constraints now?

There are certainly some constraints inherent in the infrastructure that explain why the open government is not immediately established. But just as, I think, it should be noted that the long process of learning which must undertake the Tunisian citizens to become familiar with this concept. In my opinion, it takes 5 years for an open government to succeed and lead to a more strengthened between civil society and its administration. Upsetting the balance of power after 50 years of dictatorship is not as easy as people think. And teaching Tunisian citizens to take care of their own interest by themselves and assume their full responsibilities of his country, it takes time...

What about technical constraints?

The biggest problem we have now is related to citizen identification. The implementation of an open government must go through the assignment of a login to each Tunisian to give them access to the reports of our government and interact in their name about the content. We have not banned tyranny to lead a society composed of anonymous individuals. - You can imagine the volume of work and investment that it implies. But the good news is that the government is now cornered, the decision was taken and we cannot go back. The ministerial structure that will be formed through the Constituent Assembly has only two years to adhere to this mode of governance.

And the last word...

What I can promise you right now is that I'll get the project started before leaving the department. By the election of the Constituent Assembly, three departments will adopt the open government. I also want to clarify that the interim government relies heavily on the dynamism and vitality of the youth, who ejected the dictator, and who has made Tunisia what it is today...

Loss of critical thinking / capacity analysis, trivialization of issues related to transparency & ethics at government of Quebec

Pierre Curzi
When an MP declares he reached his personal limit, he can no longer look at himself in a mirror with a clear conscience, impairment of the relationship between the government and citizens has reached a threshold.

Resigned MP Pierre Curzi denounced the growing distance between political parties and citizens of Quebec.

Here's a sample of texts read yesterday by MPs Lisette Lapointe, Louise Beaudoin and Pierre Curzi in announcing their resignation from the Parti Quebecois, published in Le Devoir on June 7, 2011: "Shockwave at Parti Quebecois - My personal ethics threshold of tolerance has been reached". («Onde de choc au Parti québécois - «Mon seuil de tolérance éthique personnel a été atteint»)

[Pierre Curzi] I choose to leave the Party because of my inability to concur with a proposal which deprives citizens of a full right to exercise their civic and legal responsibilities.

Partisanship and opportunism: I perceive democratic life as being elevated, to something most significant, that is to say, the full and free participation of citizens in shaping their society. This latest episode of our parliamentary life collided head first with these values, and is a powerful indicator of the growing distance between political parties and citizens of Quebec. I think this is largely due to the fact that political parties, in particularly in the context of a sclerosing bipartisanship, too often put their partisan interests and opportunism before the interests of citizens and citizens.

Joyless, I leave the [Parti Québécois]. Citizens must take control of their democratic institutions. I will now spend my political commitment to contribute freely and without any bitterness to recovery charge. There you go.

How is Pierre Curzi intending to "contribute to the recovery charge"? I repeat endlessly the same song as a gramophone, an open government would restore harmony in the relationship between the Quebec government and citizens.

How come this solution of an open government does not emerge when the National Assembly is sinking in a democratic crisis?

Premier Jean Charest has pushed back to the fall the adoption of Bill 204 (which causes all these gyrations). MPs were to vote on the bill before June 10. "Liberals are split on Bill 204, without tearing each other apart as the PQ does", reports Marco Fortier in Rue Frontenac.

Transparency, participation and collaboration would establish a relationship of co-creation co-production between the government and citizens. Problems would be turned into challenges, citizens would be invited to collaborate and this would offer an opportunity for unexpected solutions to emerge.

Yesterday, the president of the Quebec Federation of Municipalities (FQM), Bernard Généreux, expressed concerns about the National Assembly "trivializing the issues related to transparency and ethics".

"What game are we playing?" he wondered. "There is this feeling that the National Assembly is losing its critical thinking and capacity analysis, necessary for the adoption of a law. Even if the management agreement between the City of Quebec and Quebecor is not clear in terms of transparency, it gives rise to a "grand concert of forced unanimity", lamented Bernard Généreux. "People see that and it's a very bad message. What we are doing is undermining credibility of the municipal world," he predicted.

Issues such as loss of critical thinking and capacity analysis, trivialization of issues related to transparency and ethics, could be avoided with an open government. An open government would ensure transparency in legislation as well as in developing new policies and programs, would provide an opportunity for citizens to intervene when critical thinking, capacity analysis and ethical issues would be undermined.

The National Assembly is taking a break for the Summer, June 10 is the closing end of parliamentary activities. What does Henri-François Gautrin’s team, responsible for an analysis mandate of the potential of Web 2.0, planning for the summer? Their new website for public consultation, expected to be launched in May 2011, is running late. The team is behind on timeline.

This week’s incidents show there is a need to implement an open government initiative in Quebec. Everyone would benefit from it.

"A government that breaks the rules and conceals facts does not deserve to remain in office"

Michael Ignatieff
"You have spoken, Mr. Speaker. The committee has spoken, and now the House must speak with a clear voice," Ignatieff told the Commons. "And it must say that a government that breaks the rules and conceals facts from the Canadian people does not deserve to remain in office." (Michael Ignatieff)

Perfect! Now can we have an open government please? A real one, not one that looks good on paper, a real open government please.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff introduced a non-confidence motion that is all but certain to bring down the Canadian federal government. MPs will vote on the motion at 1:30 p.m. ET on March 24th 2011, likely marking the end of the 40th Parliament.