Tag Archives: ForumPA 2012

Kicking down doors: pushing the edge of citizen engagement in government

I was in Rome last week, to hold a keynote presentation at a large government tech/innovation trade fair called ForumPA. It was a lot of fun, with a very high energy exchange between me and the audience. 18 months after my book Wikicrazia hit the bookshops, we talked in a very frank way of where the frontiers of online collaboration between citizens and institutions are, and what new and interesting problems are emerging. One is “kicking down doors”: piggybacking on innovative civil servants or elected officials to set precedents and open up new administrative channels, in order to extend the space of actions perceived as possible by administrations. Another one is the dire need for complex ecosystems of governance, with civil society acting as skunkworks of new solution that might then be adopted by institutions proper. You can find the video here (very professionally made, in Italian); the slides are above.