When we (Dutch ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations) started with our government 2.0 projects last year, we chose to embark on a perilous journey called open innovation. Well, for as open as we thought government might be. That meant we needed to follow through the idea that the best ideas on improving the workings of government by web 2.0 would probably always come from outside our high-security buildings (anyone ideas for a physically open government?). So, innovative as we civil servants are, what we did was to steal from the UK (showusabetterway) the idea for a contest.

Last Oktober, we put out the following question: “how would you improve government with web 2.0”? We set up a ningsite (overheid20prijsvraag.ning.com), did some e-marketing and waited. Within 1,5 months, we had 124 ideas that everybody could comment and improve upon, from all over the country (yes it’s a small country). Really inspiring, and a real success that we hoped for, but absolutely weren’t sure of beforehand. We had the money to fund three start-ups. The selection went as following: first we made a long list of ideas that really followed the criteria they should have (they were known from the start). A jury of web 2.0 experts and government figures nominated six ideas. On this six ideas, over 200 participants of the conference we held in December had to vote for the best three. At the end of the day, we had three winners: “hulp bij dit formulier” (help me with this e-form), “de overheid maakt het mogelijk”(government makes it possible: helping people proactive with getting the benefits that they’re entitled to) en “jij en de overheid” (you and government, a bottom-up portal that makes government information and services more accessible). The people behind the ideas have turned their ideas into real projects and themselves into project leaders. We participate, but from a distance. That’s not to say that we don’t have difficult negotiations on what exactly the project should be like and aim for, just like the start of any project. But all’s going quite well. So yeah, pretty happy with ourselves. And yet...a little uncomfortable.

We hope that this projects will become major successes, but what if they actually do? We have many e-government programs, and even our own government 2.0 activities, which have so many potential connections with these projects that may now or in the future be a cause for conflicts, whether it be interoperability, accessibility of just plain personal (how could you have helped create a cheaper, more popular application that competes with my own!). Yes we try to be as open and connected as we can be, but still, do you understand what I’m talking about? So what to do. The plan for now: keep the citizen’s interest at heart, deal with uncomfort, deal with resistance and see what happens! Maybe we’ll make our services obsolete somewhere, is that so bad?