Government to get more technical

In light of the recent elections I have spent some time pondering how government has evolved from the lovely paper-based structure it had been when it first started to the lovely paper-based structure it...Wait a minute...Things have not changed.

In this article I want to look at some of the benefits that going digital can offer not only the South African government but any of the governments of the world.

I am writing in the hopes that some of our government officials or members of parliament or even our new mayor of Cape Town Patricia de Lille (Follow her - she has a Twitter account) might actually read this.

I realize that the word digital has probably evolved so much over the last few years, but please note that I am referring to the bare essentials when I speak of "going digital". So all I am really asking is are we using technology to it's full potential in running our country?

The thought struck me as I was voting a few weeks ago. I was standing in that box and thought to myself, "Why are we physically marking on a piece of paper who we want to vote for?" If anyone took the time to read through that poster at the front door of all voting stations you would notice how much room for error there is in the voting process. Why can we not employ technology to eliminate these errors?

I thought to myself: Imagine if all voting stations had Playstation consoles in them (someone has to have a massive batch of PS1s lying around somewhere). As we enter the station we log into the system and then go over and vote with our controller by scrolling down with our directional pad to our party of choice and then voting with the "X" button (clever hey).

A voting process like this could make results instantaneous! In government circles, instant results are unheard of.

Please note that I am aware of the logistical and educational issues there are regarding an automated voting process, but as I said, this was just a thought that came my way. Nothing concrete.

The biggest problem that governments face, and this could be due the size and scope of the work they do, is that they are process oriented as oppose to outcome-focused. The resulting attitude is therefore that of compliance rather than innovation which encourages a culture that drives change.

So what are some of the other benefits government can ascertain from embracing technology and/or going digital?

1. Technology allows for increased efficiency and effectiveness of processes. This is the beauty of automation - input and processing data becomes streamlined and results have the potential to be made available sooner.

2. Technology can allow for government to be more transparent and therefore accountable to its citizens. Information made available on the public domain signals to the citizens that their government is open to collaboration and makes them more personal which breeds a sense of trust.

3. As a result of increased efficiency and transparency the government is teaching its citizens about understanding their world better and could even contribute to driving economic change.

Has this been done before? Of course. The American federal government in 2009 (note how far ahead they are in terms of integrating technological trends into their national governing body) introduced the Technological, Innovation and Government Reform team a.k.a. the TIGR Team.

This team made use of the trend we now know as crowd-sourcing and allowed citizens to propose changes to the government. Changes could be from the most trivial to the outright bizarre. The project was called the Citizen's Briefing Book.

What were the results? Within a few months "125,000 users submitted over 44,000 ideas and almost 1.4 million votes were cast. The top ideas accumulated tens of thousands of votes each." In my mind I would say that it was pretty successful and I believe that we are more than capable of doing the same. (More results from the Citizen's Briefing Book)

Where to from here? I have wrapped up my old Playstation and am ready to mail it through to government HQ. Let's help out where we can. I look forward to the day where the voting process is gamified.

Gareth Heuer - Signing out.