In one case, the CIO is overseeing a significant consolidation and centralization program that will rationalize computing assets and applications from several different agencies . While a shared services organization has already been formed, he will need grater power to mandate the use of certain services, through the issuance of new regulations in the coming months.

I was positively surprised, as I have met in the past government CIOs who exude the power given to them by political mandates and directives, as opposed to those who have to make their way through consensus building. This particular CIO seems to be very well aware that a political mandate or a directive won’t necessarily make him too many friends, and that those who may look supportive of his increasing authority may turn their back after the necessary regulations are passed.

When I suggested that he should focus on the 20 percent of client agencies as well as services that he wants to really win, he quietly smiled and gave me the impression that he had already thought through that and had his clear list of priorities in mind.

The second CIO operates in a heavily federated environment, where agencies still have a great degree of autonomy in how they source IT. We had a great conversation about how to prioritize e-services, and how to look at citizen participation as a way to improve operational efficiency more than a way to deliver better services.

As he looks at the future of his central organization and the opportunities and challenges posed by new sourcing models, such as cloud computing, he seems to be smartly playing to become an excellent procurement and advisor organization, rather than a service delivery one.

Both CIOs had this in common: a relentless focus on how their organizations can add value over time. Sustainability of the services they provide is for them as important as the immediate business case that leads to more centralization as a reaction to difficult economic times.

Interestingly enough, both CIOs come from recent private sector experience in technology companies and have not been in the job for long. People with a similar profile, used to environments where decision making is considerably faster and authority can be exercised with less horse-trading, often lack the articulation to navigate the difficult waters of government organization. This is not the case for either of them, and I hope that they will be able to keep a steady course of action in the coming months and years.

He clearly showed that he understood both benefits and risks of using his personal profile on social networks to be more successful in his role as a government employee.

He shared a great example. As part of his job, he suggested that his ministry used Twitter to publicize the availability of a program helping local companies establish links with foreign companies. He went through a number of steps to explore and get the required authorizations, until he was told that such a tweet could be issued only by the communications office but, apparently, there was no policy and process as to how to do that.

He was disappointed but did not give up. He decided to tweet about the program himself, just providing the URL of the program page, and  being careful not to formulate the tweet as coming from the Ministry, but as something shared by an individual who happened to have found this out.

I found this an interesting case that proves how employees can leverage their own social networks to get their job done, notwithstanding existing processes.

However when I thought I had found a model civil servant 2.0, he told me that he had just joined government from industry, an still had an official trainee status. While I hope he will keep an edge about the use of social media, I can’t help thinking that I may meet a very different, more rule-abiding person in a year time.

On September 11 2001 a series of terrorist attacks in the US killed almost 3,000 people. Conspiracy theorists have been posting videos on YouTube as well as writing books,  and they have received responses on YouTube and in writing. I have not read anything about the US government willing to shut down social media or prosecute conspiracy theorists, although the size and relevance of the two events is not even comparable.

In my research about how governments should use technology to better engage with their citizens, I have often said that it is essential for them to reach out to existing social networks and engage in conversations, since there is little hope to control social media.

I am pretty sure that law enforcement authorities and secret services everywhere in the world do spend time infiltrating social networks that may support or point to terrorist and other illegal activities: this is their job and I would be surprised if they did not.

On the other hand, I would hope that other parts of government would engage with social networks to establish or continue a dialogue, to understand what are the deep reasons why decent people express support for despicable actions, gather information about what people want and get inspiration about how to bridge that gap.

But in a country where the immediate reaction by government and some of the opposition is to put social media on a tight leash, there is little hope that the conditions for real and productive engagement will ever be established.

Once again, old Europe should learn what democracy means from our overseas friends and distant relatives: the first amendment may turn to be the most critical success factor for open government and government 2.0.

In most cases I have delivered uncomfortable, controversial messages. The blurring boundaries between internal and external collaboration, the urgency of empowering employees besides (or rather than) citizens, the need for simple and enforceable social media policy that cover employee behaviors both on corporate network and elsewhere. For many, my examples of how consumer social media are creeping into internal processes were an eye-opener, and so were the calls for a bottom-up approach, where government agencies should let go control to facilitate engagement

What I noticed in every single meeting, also when people came from a completely different perspective, has been the willingness to challenge themselves, to consider alternative viewpoints, to use some of my intentionally provocative views to reflect about where they can improve. Once again, it has been a refreshing experience, with officials at all levels debating issues, bouncing back ideas, drafting roadmaps they had not considered possible before. It has been an exciting experience where I have got from our clients at least as much as I hope I have given them, if not more.

While a typical North American celebration such as Halloween approaches, I can’t but think about how different many Europeans are when challenged on the same topics. I do distinctly remember a guy who sat in a minister cabinet explaining to me why I was totally wrong about suggesting that government agencies open social media access to their employees: his view was one where employees are not an asset but a liability, where management tools are the same as those used in the fifties, where time seems to have frozen at the gates of his agency. He is not alone though. Several officials in European countries that I have been interacting with are relatively dismissive of any advice that runs contrary to their beliefs. I never assume I am right in what I say, but I love to provide alternative viewpoints for people to challenge their own ideas and possibly improve them. While most North American clients will engage and react, most European clients won’t.

Of course there are exceptions. People in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands  or Ireland show similar characteristics as North Americans when it comes to debating issues. But in most other countries I have to be careful not to piss people off or to lower my expectations about the outcome of a debate.

Maybe the world is changing and I will find multiple counterexamples to this as soon as I start my next week at Cannes Symposium. I very much hope so, as I believe that in these turbulent times only those who are bold enough to accept that they may be wrong will thrive.

Most of my criticisms to some of the common wisdom is the excessive focus on the role of organizations (e.g.. government institutions, parliaments, political parties) and the very limited concern for the role of individuals within those organizations.

There is a lot of talking about individuals, but they are citizens, i.e. somebody to whom government is a service provider. In previous posts I have already articulated the complexity of the relationships between government and citizens, and highlighted why government cannot simply be equated to a platform.

Now, as the biannual European E-Government Conference is approaching (it will be held in Malmoe, Sweden, on 19-20 November), I have come across a draft Open Declaration on Public Services in the European Union, which – as far as I understand – will be presented at the conference, where we can expect a ministerial declaration expressing the willingness of EU member states to continue pursuing initiatives around e-government, government 2.0 and the likes (this has been the same every other year for a few years now).

The Open Declaration is being finalized with the help of several people, in pure crowdsourcing style (could it be otherwise?). It is certainly an interesting initiatives, but surprises me for stating the obvious and missing the key point.

Don’t get me wrong. What is obvious to those who do research on Government 2.0 may not be to the “person in the street” or the average, not too IT-literate politician. Therefore it is very good to restate that the three core principles for European public services are

1.       Transparency:  all public sector organizations should be “transparent by default” and should provide the public with clear, regularly-updated information on all aspects of their operations and decision-making processes. There should also be robust mechanisms for citizens to highlight areas where they would like to see further transparency. When providing information, public sector organizations should do so in open, standard and reusable formats, but with full regard to privacy issues.

2.       Participation: government should pro-actively seek citizen input in all its activities from user involvement in shaping services to public participation in policy-making. This input should be public for other citizens to view and government should publicly respond to it. The capacity to collaborate with citizens should become a core competence of government.

3.       Empowerment: public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation. In particular, government data and government services should be made available in ways that others can easily build on. Public organizations should also enable all citizens to come together and solve their problems for themselves, by providing tools, skills and resources.

Now read the above a few times. Do you find anything missing? There is transparency (some commentators suggest to add “openness”, but that does not really change the basics). There is participation (citizens get at the center of government processes). And there is empowerment (with the platform concept taken from O’Reilly).

What this declaration misses – and in my view it is a big miss – is the role of those who work in government, i.e. its employees. Indeed they are citizens, so they will participate and be empowered but… wait a minute… they are bound to a code of conduct that could somewhat constraint their ability to participate Further, they are likely to know more about government objectives, procedures, processes, than the average citizen. So, wouldn’t it be appropriate to single them out and finally recognize that they are an asset government should leverage, through a wise use of “government 2.0”?

I am still amazed to see how little employee-centricity there is in today’s government 2.0 conferences, debates, positions and articles. It is as if employees were considered legacy, just part of an organization that will be transformed, and not the real fuel and soul of those organizations.

Until when their role will be given equal dignity as “citizens”, government 2.0 will remain an interesting subject for discussion, will marginally contribute to service improvement,  but won’t realize a fraction of its potential.

What does it take to take a step in this direction? Is the Malmoe ministerial declaration going to say anything about government employees?

There are two facts that stem out of this election.

First of all, European citizens hardly care about Europe. One could say that this is incorrect and what the election shows is that they are between skeptical and uniformed about the role of institutions like the European Parliament. It is certainly true that in difficult times people tend to retract within their borders and topics like “a single European market” are seen more as threats than as opportunities. It is equally true that the European Union has not accomplished much to face the current economic crisis, leaving different member states (such as Germany or France) to take their own measures.

Secondly, there has been a considerable shift to the right. Left-wing, labor governments and political parties have receded, and conservatives (both those running their countries and those at the opposition) have gained considerably. This seems counterintuitive, since at times of crisis people usually look for a greater role for governments in the economy and not for policies that speak to the privatization and free market. Ironically, the effective functioning of a free European market is one of the foundations of many European policies.

At face value this should mean more pro-business attitude, less emphasis on regulations (including consumer protection from software product liabilities), less fervor in fighting proprietary software, a more focused approach to R&D and more in general a positive attitude toward free trade.

However, the economic downturn also means that politicians will aim at protecting national rather than European jobs and sustain national rather than European businesses. This mean that protectionist measures can still be taken that may affect the European IT internal market (for those who believe this is not possible, just look at how many EU countries are now over their debt-to-GDP threshold) and technology sourcing decisions may favor national employment over efficiency.  In the government IT space areas like public procurement, the establishment of an effective European interoperability strategy and even the creation of European cloud services may all be affected.

Other important elements in all this are the agreement on a European constitution, which should allow the EU institutions to become more effective that they are today in their decision-making processes, and the new European Commission, which will start in January 2010.

So, while it is too early to derive any sensible conclusion about the impact of these elections on IT-related policies, there is no reason to believe that the struggle between national and European interests will not continue, and that this will do very little to help Europe return on the IT innovation map any time soon.

In those days, I was submitting project proposals for this program and leading European projects that were successful in getting funding. A few years later I joined the European Commission and spent part of my four years there arranging the evaluation of proposal, negotiating contracts with successful proposers and monitoring on-going projects.

After leaving the European Commission in late 1998, I have not been involved in any proposal or project, since Gartner is not in the business of seeking for EU R&D funds. I’ve had a few chances to keep in touch with former colleagues or participate in the evaluation process, but I’ve always remained very detached from the machinery of European R&D since-

After more than two decades of investment in Research and Technology Development (the EU is currently running the seventh edition of its framework program), there is little trace of anything the EU was investing on in the early days. There is very little left in terms of European hardware manufacturers, and not much in the area of software products either (indeed, Europe has SAP, and that’s about it in terms of tier-1 vendors). Of course there are plenty of IT service providers, such as Capgemini, ATOS Origin, T-Systems, Engineering and so forth. But if one is looking for intellectual property, patents, licensed results, it is fair to say there is little left.

On the other hand, these European programs have gradually increased their size, they have been constantly advised by experts and policy-makers in (now) 27 member states, they have spent money in all sorts of networking, best practice, study activity to support projects reach critical mass, network, have an impact. Yet, in the international landscape, software and Internet major brands are from the US, hardware as well as cool consumer electronics are from Asia and the US.

No wonder European authorities have been so vocal about open source. No wonder they have had major cases against companies like Microsoft and Intel but nothing comparable against European players.

The EU Framework program was conceived for an industry where players like Nixdorf, Olivetti, Bull, ICL and few others were seen as the innovation drivers. In the spirit of European integration, the very good idea behind the program was to establish a platform where they would cooperate, complement each other strengths, making European industry more open (inside the EU) and more competitive (outside the EU).

I guess it’s fair to say that if one looked now at what is the percentage of European IP on IT infrastructure and application platforms, results would be quite appalling. This being said, there is nothing wrong with this, provided one recognizes that European strengths are in services and not in hardware or software products. But this would require different ways of investing EU money. Such money should be either spent to foster upstream, very basic research, in areas where joining forces and financial support can lead to breakthroughs that could re-establish European leadership in selected topics; or spent to develop frameworks to help the IT service industry.

To be fair, the latter has happened to some extent, The NESSI initiative is a large collaboration among large service players in Europe: its main goal is to develop “a coherent and consistent open service framework leveraging research in the area of service-based systems to consolidate and trigger innovation in service-oriented economies”. I do not know what this initiative has achieved besides launching a number of projects, but it may be too early to say.

It is possible that the 7th Framework Program will have a greater impact. However I suspect that some of the challenges experienced with previous editions are still there. Let me list a few, and I will be very happy to read that these problems are solved:

1. EU-funded R&D has become a market.
There are research centers, particular branches of universities, as well as many small-and-medium-sized enterprises and boutique consultancies that have specialized in EU R&D funds as a market. Although EU funding is meant to cover a portion of costs, they often have these projects as revenue generators in their accounts. There are different ways in which this can be done, many entirely legal, some more questionable and vulnerable to EU audits: on the other hand, with hundreds and hundreds of projects, the likelihood of an audit is pretty low.
Like in any market, there are specialized sales people, who deal with the European Commission as a specific account. There are also specialized proposal writers and R&D project managers.
Actually one of the relatively new measures in the program, is that the cost of project management – overhead inclusive – is totally refunded by the contract, which has led to the growth of a market of small and micro consultant companies specialized in helping write proposals and manage projects.
There are also additional support actions that look like consulting projects to help the European Commission services run the program, determine priorities, devise roadmaps: these get published as call for proposals pretty much like those for cooperative RTD, as opposed to going through separate calls for tender through the normal procurement process. As a consequence those remain mostly accessible to those organizations that have familiarity with the EU R&D program.

2. Unlikely consortia.
From its inception the EU R&D program calls for consortia included organizations from different EU member states, with a balanced participation of academia, research and industry (both suppliers and users of technology). While different parts of the program clearly call for a different balance, one can see plenty of projects where it is hard to detect what keeps project partners together (apart from the common EU funding), who would leverage project results and why, and what dynamics could ever be put in place to make these projects succeed.
Evaluating, negotiating and monitoring a fair amount of these projects when I was at the European Commission, I could tell from the actual consortium composition (who were the partners, and what role they claimed they would play in and beyond the project) whether the project would have any chance to succeed. And I have not found a single case where this was not true.
Of course time has passed and the EU R&D Framework Program has evolved: however I wonder how comes that – although the industry and the world have changed so much in the last ten years – I can still find the same players (through mergers and acquisitions of course) that I was dealing with between 15 and 10 years ago.

3. Little incentive to manage by outcome.
Like any government organization, also the European Commission has no strong reason for killing projects that are not successful. First of all – and this is what happens in almost any government agency – money saved on a project may disappear from the program budget. Second, measuring success and failure is pretty difficult on R&D projects and goes back to the selection process. Third, there are always “political” considerations to be made, since there are organizations from different countries involved and each of them may appeal to their national authorities that in turn sit in the committees approving the budget for the EU R&D program. Fourth, defining measurable outcome to hold project performances to would require a more throough and lengthy contract negotiation process, which may delay fund disbursement and lead to further budgetary and political problems.

4. Small communities of interest, with abundant conflicts of interest.
Most of the experts reviewing projects and evaluating proposals participate in some EU-funded projects. While the European Commission is very careful to prevent any possible conflict of interest, the community remains small and potentially incestuous.
On the other hand, the EU R&D Program covers a variety of areas, and specialized expertise is required to assess the validity of ideas and the progress of R&D projects: it is unavoidable that those skills reside with people who also work in the field and submit proposals.

All the above leaves with a fundamental question. Is there anything that the European Commission and other European institutions involved in funding R&D can do? In my opinion there are a few things that would help:

• Cross check project and proposal participation across different part of the program, to see whether participating organizations have the capacity and resources to carry on the intended work. This should be done before any technical evaluation is conducted
• Assess the quality and availability of any result from previous EU-funded R&D projects that are claimed to be an input to a subsequent proposal. If people are looking for further funding, there has to be evidence that they accomplished what they planned in the ancestor project.
• Provide European Commission’s staff who monitor project with appropriate tools to assess project and participant performances, giving them a complete and up-to-date view of what each contractors does and has done with the European Commission.
• Start crowdsourcing some of the proposal and project assessment work to overcome the “captive market effect”. While the existing and well tested processes for evaluation cannot be revolutionized, it would be ideal to involve larger constituencies on evaluating specific aspects of proposals or projects (such as a one-page executive summary), asking people to rate them. If the crowd is large enough, possible conflicts of interest would be counterbalanced.