Andrea DiMaio

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Andrea Di Maio
VP Distinguished Analyst
12 years at Gartner
25 years IT industry

Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, the business value of IT, open-source software… Read Full Bio

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Citizen-driven does not mean weak government

by Andrea Di Maio  |  April 14, 2009  |  5 Comments

Earlier today I was having an email conversation with a few colleagues about the whole concept of citizen-driven government(Gartner clients can see the relevant research note) and I realized that the term can be interpreted in different ways. One extreme interpretation is that somebody may decide not to pay taxes just because it is not equitable, or people may decide to take justice in their own ends by replacing juries with crowds who decide about whether somebody is guilty or not by voting on the Internet.

Whereas one cannot rule out such extreme scenarios in a more distant future, I believe that the most interesting aspect of citizen-driven government today is that it can help and complement governments in areas that are being challenged by the lack of resources or just the scale of the problem to face. Examples include social security and employment support, as well as the immense task of ensuring that stimulus or financial bail-out money get spent wisely and effectively: in all these cases engaging citizens through social media can help.

This view of citizen-driven government is one where governments focus of the objectives they are trying to achieve, and on outcomes rather than outputs. They are obsessed with striking the right balance between tasks for which they need to retain direct control and those for which they can rely on self-organized citizen groups (be they businesses, charities, or social networks).

Citizen-driven means smarter, not weaker government.

5 Comments »

Category: social networks in government     Tags:

5 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Here comes a new term: Context-Driven Government   April 27, 2009 at 7:09 am

    [...] I wonder to what extent context-driven government is also citizen-driven (you can take a look at an earlier post or to a Gartner research note if you are a client). The idea of providing information seamlessly, [...]

  • 2 Citizen-Driven Government Must Be Employee-Centric, Too   June 11, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    [...] I believe is quite innovative in our positions on this topic is that we put “citizen-driven” and “employee-centric” together. I’m sure that many will react saying that government has [...]

  • 3 It Will Take A Lot For E-Government To Become Smarter   June 24, 2009 at 5:54 pm

    [...] and should play in innovating cities. Once more, this confirms that few really think in terms of citizen-driven government, and even fewer think about [...]

  • 4 Government Websites Are Not For Politicians 2.0   September 18, 2009 at 11:37 am

    [...] well be a learning curve and we may be seeing soon a return to citizen-centricity (or, as I put it, citizen drive) in how websites [...]

  • 5 Government 2.0: Lost in (EU) Declaration   November 19, 2009 at 9:38 am

    [...] introduces the concept of user-driven services. I hope that this has been somewhat influenced by Gartner positions on citizen-driven vs citizen-centric Increase availability of public sector information for reuse. We will increase availability of [...]