The Knowledge Worker Desktop.

Just a few years ago when the term e-government was coined it covered the concept of making more information about government available to the citizens. Self-service portals and one-way information sites almost created a faceless interface between government and citizens, void of human interaction.

Government 2.0 changes all that. Now government employees become a valued asset and facilitator of communication between all stakeholders – citizens, politicians, grass-roots associations, business associations, lobbyists and finally within the governmental hierarchy.

In other words government employees will in the future be challenged to become true knowledge workers doing more non-trivial work and often in teams in order to serve the citizens. The most valuable skill set in the future isn’t necessarily knowledge, experience or training (although important attributes), but rather the degree to which the new knowledge worker looks for, expects and is prepared to deal with and successfully initiates actions to deal with the unexpected.

This has the potential of fostering a new trusted relationship between government and citizens that can be mutually beneficial but it could also become a serious challenge if the governmental employees are not provided the tools needed to deliver on the service levels citizens have been promised.

The European Commission is stating the following:
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“While promoting the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in society as a whole through the i2010 strategy, the Commission intends to lead by example by applying to its own administration the European information society policy in e-government.

Modern on-line public administrations are an essential element of the information society and contribute to achieving the Lisbon goals of increased growth and competitiveness.

The e-Commission aims to deliver better quality and more transparent services, guaranteeing security of information including the protection of personal data, to the benefit of its own staff and of everyone having contact with it i.e. administrations, businesses and citizens. The Commission is thus following an ambitious strategy to become a front-runner in the domain of e-administration.”
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In this blog we have previously covered some of the Obama Administration’s initiatives towards a more open and transparent government.

The latest initiative invites citizens to participate in improving the existing site where regulations are published – www.regulations.gov/exchange.

People are invited to give input to design and features from May 21, 2009 until July 21, 2009 and the response has been impressive so far.

I believe the human factor will become the single most important factor to deal with in this transformation of government. Expectations are certainly raised to what seems like almost unreasonable levels and one can certainly hope that the governmental employees are being empowered with the proper tools to deliver on the promise.

It would seem that the timing of releasing our “Knowledge Worker Desktop” product could not have been better. We will cover the “Knowledge Worker Desktop” in more details in future posting on this blog.