Gartner Launches Open Government Maturity Model

Last Friday we published the new Gartner Open Government Maturity Model, which is available to our clients.

It provides government CIOs and strategic planners with a framework to measure the maturity level of their organization’s capabilities to effectively and efficiently engage constituents and other stakeholders in transforming service delivery and operations.

It should be used as a key tools in managing the direction of an open government and government transformation program. It consists of five levels, ranging from scenarios in which organizations are unaware of or denying the pressure for socialization and commoditization of processes, data and services, through to higher levels in which open government becomes a funded, enterprisewide strategy covering all relevant aspects of stakeholder engagement.

The ultimate level of maturity is where constituent engagement fuels service and operation transformation, leading to measurable and foreseeable improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of government action.

The five levels are illustrated in the picture below.

The research note describes the characteristics of each maturity level in terms of:

• which element of public value is most important: citizen service? operational efficiency? alignment with agency mission?
• the balance between the use of government-controlled media (such as own web site or own Facebook page) and engagement on third party communities;
• who should be in charge for open government in the organization (and I am sure quite a few will be surprised about our suggestions here):
• what technologies are most relevant;
• the attitude toward participation of employees to external social networks;
• the main purpose of and drive for open government.

We will socialize this model in forthcoming events and are looking forward to comments from our clients and the broader open government community in the coming weeks.