• Heralding “Crisis Management 2.0″ at CrisisCamp DC May Lead to Actual Crisis

    11Jun
    Comments Categories: Uncategorized

    According to ever accurate Wikipedia, Crisis Management is:

    “…the process by which an organization deals with any major unpredictable event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. Three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time.”

    And if someone, or some people at CrisisCamp DC this weekend made a case for a new form of ‘Crisis Management 2.0,’ it may unleash A, B, C and much the rest of the alphabet. Particularly in four letter combinations.

    CrisisCamp DC, which kicks off Friday night at the World Bank and extends through Sunday at George Washington University, is a barcamp-style event billed as ‘part of a global movement bringing together volunteers, academia, non-profits, companies and government officials to share best practices and lessons learned to advocate for further use of technology and telecommunications to assist citizens and communities during crisis.’

    Having specialized a bit in crisis management, from which sprung what my friends know as the ‘hydrogen bomb story,’ I’ve been looking forward to this particular barcamp more than most.

    What I must admit makes the thought of this weekend that much more desirable, however – on top of the impressive, experienced attendees who are certain to be both informative and engaging – is that this barcamp, along with the specialty of crisis management, is yet to be trivialized and pseudo-scienced to pot by the 2.0 fad that has trivialized and pseudo-scienced much of everything else around here into nothing I would like to take home to mother.

    Now few people get such a rise as I from the prospect of integrating new technologies with traditional mediums in order to improve them, so understand this is not the fad I speak of.

    What gives me a dull nausea far too often is not motion sickness from watching Tweetdeck feeds tick by – no, its the content of those Tweets. Its the blog posts, the boasts of exclusivity grown from those who somehow took a concept that is supposed to deliver greater participation from the community and warped it into a teddy bear’s picnic that creates an elite caste of outside innovators in government, health care and whatever else they can slap a 2.0 on the end of and climb up another level on the steps along the prison yard.

    Innovation doesn’t happen in numbers, its not rolled off the assembly line like a new IPhone or domestic automobile you don’t want to buy anyways – its fluid, evolutionary, and ever taking steps forward and backwards. The greatest feats can be overlooked for decades, the minor failures can gain celebrity just the same by claiming to have more Twitter followers.

    2.0 has become shorthand for that innovation, however it oversimplifies this fluidity, it does no justice to the evolution – it’s innovation for dummies that explains a concept to those who don’t see the details yet, just as Santa Claus is a charming, nostalgic way to make youth special.

    And when I hear or see the digits, I think of the Carpetbaggers previously mentioned in this blog.

    2.0 has become accepted shorthand none-the-less. This blog itself categorizes posts into Gov 2.0 and Health 2.0, as torn as I am about it, because quite frankly its become such the norm that a newcomer may not understand what ballpark I’m playing in without it. Some of my favorite social network organizers, bloggers and friends use these terms, most all aware to one extent or another that its superficial – but you chose your battles.

    And the main admirers of these terms, these buzzwords, these conversations on Twitter promoting a pseudo-science think piece blog post about Twitter not really being a conversational platform – they don’t sound very self-described transparent to me.

    Not CrisisCamp DC, however – not this barcamp, not this year.

    You don’t need to convince me cheeseburgers are sizzling on the grill, because I can smell them. And you don’t need to basely categorize innovation to sell us that its occurring, for it is, then we can experience it.

    While crisis communicating, monitoring and contingency planning will be made more effective through the integration of Web 2.0, the profession has fluidly adapted to innovation since the days of fire and brimstone. By their very nature, crisis managers must be cool headed and not given to flashes in the pan, and ever adapting to any situation given.

    The person who drops the concept of crisis 2.0 may identify themselves as either a newbie or an opportunist, but given the barcamp-style it will be discussed respectfully, and thoughtfully. But to declare a new age of Crisis Management 2.0 would make superficial a level-headed profession far more than I think it would be willing to tolerate, and I’m not sure if anyone is prepared to handle the crisis of so many eyes rolling so often that an entire barcamp goes blind before Happy Hour.

    We don’t need to assign a marketing term to demonstrate that innovation is occurring in Crisis Management – we know and expect it always is.

    I’ll be recording much of CrisisCamp DC this weekend and broadcasting it on YouTube or Viddler, with links on this site – we will see indeed.

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  • Government 2.0, Social Media and the New Stockholm Syndrome

    05Jun
    Comments Categories: Gov 2.0

    Everything old is new again, and with innovative technological advances granting the public greater access to government, businesses and the community, the rules of traditional social psychology still apply. As users tap into a new era of transparency and direct dialogue, it is important to consider that more access does not always lead to empowerment without an equal advancement in understanding, critical perspective, and most importantly, an upgraded BS meter to know when seats at the table may still only be intended for spectators no matter how its presented.

    In historical context (as in six years ago), the mainstreaming of embedded journalism in the Iraq War was heralded as a breakthrough allowing media across the spectrum direct access to the war front and troops, comparatively unfiltered, for broadcast to the American people. This new level of transparency was instituted in response to criticism from the media themselves, unsatisfied with the access provided to them during the first Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan.

    What resulted in many cases, however, was classic Stockholm Syndrome – objectivity and critical perspective blew away in the desert sands when those tasked with reporting on the war conflictingly owed their lives to the protection of the very people they reported on. And while this effect may not have been completely apparent to the media as it was occurring, there was one gatekeeper who saw the benefits of this perceived access in a controlled environment – the government.

    As a military Public Affairs officer at the time, I had the honor and opportunity to play an instructional role in the troops’ preparation for embedded journalism with the goal of warding them from Lima Syndrome. In the final stages of the elite Army Ranger School I would pretend to be an embedded journalist during the full-on operational simulations, crawling through ambushes with the troops, jumping out of helicopters, wallowing in the more than ample Florida panhandle mud.  Unknown to the students, I would attempt to subtly influence them – telling them their families would see them in the newspapers back home, offering candy to men who were deprived of food and sleep to the limits of their bodies, making bonds that I would later attempt to exploit the sweet hell out of to gain sensitive operational information.

    By the end of the day, if I wasn’t under guard with half a dozen dirty looks cast at me from men sick of my stories back home and Twizzlers, then I failed to demonstrate that mutual cooperation must not come at the expense of critical judgment.

    Now, in this new era of Government 2.0, Social Media and the rest, a new level of access promises to provide even greater transparency, participation and information sharing – and as a result, better service. Just like many citizens cannot be bothered with educating themselves on how government and politics work outside of the soundbites they hear on the news, Cian Dawson observes:

    What is desired, however, is the perception that more information and more opportunity to provide input equates to greater access to the decision-making process. There is a large disconnect, however, between what is popularized as transparency and dialogue and what effectively is in reality – and in between these perceived outcomes is the potential for a new Stockholm Syndrome that can steer opinion and sacrifice critical judgment for newer, shallower access to the same observation window outside the real game.

    While true Stockholm Syndrome generally involves life and death situations, I use this as an example to demonstrate the power dynamic that exists today none the less, whether you are a constituent, elected official, government employee or blogger. And besides, the perception of access and power is a life or death struggle for many in DC. We must take more than a few moments at each turn and separate ourselves from the hype and the promise of Government 2.0 and Social Media, and refocus on the end goals and how to achieve them without allowing ourselves to be subtly influenced in ways we won’t anticipate.

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  • Sub-Atomic Politics – Gene Patenting Lawsuit Raises Broader Question in Gov

    12May
    Comments Categories: Gov 2.0, Health 2.0

    “You know your hand, your right hand? Would you like to use your right hand? Not so fast, my friend -  that will be ten dollars. After all, I have a U.S. patent on the right hands of all human beings.”

    In simplified terms, but disturbingly not so simplified to be absurd, this is in fact the law – but instead of something as large as a hand, companies are slicing up patents of your even more valuable genetic sequences.

    While the U.S. has been granting patents for chemical compositions for more than a 100 years, a 1980 Supreme Court decision – Diamond v. Chakrabarty – granted companies to ability to file for “certain genetically altered bacteria that is not naturally occurring.” But like taste in music, what did they know of genetics in 1980?

    Ever since, from head-to-toe you have been sold at the market in microscopic servings – the rationale being that without patents to profit from, research organizations would not aggressively study the human genome to unlock its secrets, which then would hinder all the benefits that could be revealed to mankind.

    In an effort to increase transparency into the human medical condition, decisions were made to give gatekeepers the authority to grant access and take it away – the consequences of which are startling.

    Now that innovations in medicine and genomics have allowed more scientists to study the human genome, and provide personalized medicine based on these inherant sequences, the same companies who got into the gold rush early can now grant or deny patient testing using that patient’s own genetic sequences, can now prevent research organizations from using the full scope of a sequence to conduct cancer reseach in order maximize profit on a commodity that is questionably immoral to claim ownership of.

    A lawsuit challenging the legality of genetic patents was filed today, however, by five cancer patients, the American Civil Liberties Union, pathology organizations with more than 100,000 members, and genetic researches. The landmark lawsuit seeks to end this post-modern drama, and facilitate the promises of genomic testing and personalized medicine that, through upcoming legislative healthcare reforms, the American people will come to expect as much their right to their… well… their own genomic sequences.

    During the 1980’s we came upon a precipice overlooking a new era in medical transparancy. We gave the keys to who ever was willing to put in the work, giving rise not to more transparancy, but an oligarchy. And through this landmark court case, hopefully we can take the keys back from people who should never have been granted legal authority to begin with.

    It makes me think of another field that is on the edge of integrating new technologies on a massive scale for the intended benefit of all – government. Like genetics, government innovations seek to provide transparency and efficiency while empowering the individual – addressing large scale issues in subsets of microcosms.

    As new innovations inevitably give rise to new gatekeepers – as discussed in my last post – we must ask ourselves, who are we giving the keys to, and will it only lead to us having to strip them away 20 years later?

    Currently, most innovations are coming from outside of the government. Can something as powerful as civic empowerment be really trusted, however, in the hands of non-government companies who profit off of it? Or, as Ayn Rand posed, is the market economy the only solution to… well… anything.

    After all, I can’t afford to lose my right hand to Government 2.0 like I did to genetic patenting – in politics, we need the backs of our right hands for slapping.

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  • Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss? – Gatekeepers in Gov 2.0

    04May
    Comments Categories: Gov 2.0

    For as long as elected officials have had one set of ears to listen to thousands if not millions of constituents and interests, there have been gatekeepers – the legislative staffs and lobbyists.

    One of the goals we can gather from Government 2.0, e-Democracy – or ‘just the way things are these days’ as I like to think of it – is to use technology to break down the barriers for the average citizen to communicate with their elected representatives with greater transparency, without the rose-tinted spin or dark-tinted windows that shadow agendas and decision making.

    What have any of these grassroots, technological innovations in politics done to minimize the roles of the gatekeepers then, the very people who remain agenda-blurring barriers to open communication?

    Nothing really, if not increased them in the walls of a barrier by a different name.

    In order to gain the buy-in of constituencies and legitimacy in the eyes of decision makers, and therefore true influence, any participants in government innovation will have to start at the root of the tree and develop a code of ethics, a brand, a standard for their own gatekeepers that can be held up to scrutiny, and hold the public trust to a greater degree than our current gatekeepers already have – and we won’t get there without first taking an honest look.

    An example of this effect gone awry occurred back when I was a Congressional staffer after the 2006 elections. We were the young, idyllic staff of a Freshman Representative – they were a constituency with hopes buoyed by grassroots empowerment, ready to change the state, change the country, and eventually, change the entire status quo in American politics – all of which they, you, we did.

    One unnamed grassroots organization that found itself empowered in the process became political celebrity, “working to make effective citizen participation by building electronic advocacy groups.”

    It sounds pretty good, very 2.0 if you please. A day came, however, when from the moment we opened the office to the minute we closed, our phone lines were jammed by hundreds if not a thousand callers, passionate, motivated, empowered callers who had received the call-to-action from this e-Democracy organization to contact their Representative and demand that they change their minds and support a particular piece of legislation on the war in Iraq.

    And as we had to devote most staff on hand – mostly interns, a popular gatekeeper – to fielding these calls from empowered, informed citizen participants, it took some time and reckoning to explain hundreds of times over that not only did we support the legislation, but that the Representative was even a Co-Sponsor of the bill.

    The grassroots, Government 2.0 gatekeeper with the same role but a different name had gotten it wrong, sent out bad information to the constituents, and effectively brought productivity to a halt in an office that was furthering what should have been their cause – instead using the grassroots power as stray bullets.

    And the mistake was not admitted to their members.

    Credibility in the eyes of decision makers? Effectiveness in opening lines of communication between voters and elected officials without the spin of traditional politics? Despite the good intentions, let’s just say they’re lucky a bedrock of their “family of organizations that bring real Americans back into the political process” is traditional fundraising/lobby dollars.

    The problem is that, like many Government 2.0 initiatives, we’re developing new ways of doing things but not asking ourselves if more information broadcast faster equates to better effectiveness and quality in our communications. The gatekeepers still exist, whether they are in a technology lab crunching data, in a grassroots advocacy roundtable ’speaking on behalf of the people,’  whether they’re sitting at their intern desk looking in abject horror at a phone that’s been blinking like a Christmas tree for 8 hours – or, until any of these questions are adressed frankly without agenda – the lobbyist who actually does their research and delivers what is needed.

    We must look at what we are trying to communicate, who we’re trying to influence – or be influenced by with more transparent information – and answer first the question of how best to utilize that inevitable gatekeeper before we place an 6-cylinder engine in a circus bumper car.

    In my last post, I posed an idea for discussion about applying the dynamic analysis of Electronic Health Records to the compiling of information from constituents, presentable in a format that would most be useful for elected officials in their decision making process.

    Right now, however, that model would not work.

    Right now there exists no gatekeeper role that could be seen as so removed from agenda that it could both be seen as a good-faith instrument by both the elected official and the constituent, and that would go for a government-backed initiative like the Electronic Health Record itself.

    Until this question is explored, the politics of tomorrow are the politics of today no matter what number you place at the end of it because no one person can hear thousands if not millions of wishes except for Santa and my bartender.

    In the meantime I’m thinking like Hell on the subject, and if you are too please share your thoughts.

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  • An Idea: Applying Dynamic Analysis of Health Information Technology to the Constituent/Representative Relationship

    27Apr
    Comments Categories: Gov 2.0, Health 2.0

    Provisions in the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the economic stimulus package signed by President Obama Feb. 17, include 19.2 billion dollars in incentive funds for physicians to abandon piecemeal paper-based health records for an electronic systems that will allow for greater efficiency and more indepth data collection for the diagnosis and treatment of patients.

    Patients will be able to access their standardized personal medical records from the privacy of their home, adding transparency to an often confusing, complex information world.

    Physicians can then utilize the expanded information, now free of the institutional jargon unique to each region and medical specialty, to both provide more personalized care on an individual basis as well as conduct collective medical research.

    Just think of the benefits to cancer research, diagnosis and treatment alone. Obama certainly did – he pumped billions of dollars into the program and set timelines requiring its adoption.

    The lessons learned in this ambitious ‘Health 2.0′ innovation be applied to another public concern that, despite great efforts in voter empowerment and education, still lacks focus, transparency and clarity – that of the relationship between the constituent and the elected representative.

    If the most recent election was any indicator, both voters and elected officials, or those who striving to become one, are capable of using Social Media and information technology to broadcast their message.

    Voters of all ages engaged in online and mobile networks to bring their voice to local and national campaigns, empowering themselves collectively through grassroots organization. Candidates distributed more information than has been made available before to voters before through not only traditional means, but YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs and podcasts.

    New Media became king, queen and court jester of American politics – though to quote Joe Pesci in the film Casino, “Nobody knew all the details, but it should’a been perfect…. and in the end we @#$ed it all up.”

    Its not that the techie, the grassroots, the government 2.0, the me, the you and them, the whatever you want to call it communities didn’t have an entrance strategy for getting a seat at the table, or an exit strategy for that matter – its that there was no viable strategy to hold the seat at the table.

    In political peacetime – in between elections – the seat at the table requires meaningful exchanges of information between constituents and elected officials. Citizens can flex their muscles collectively or individually all they want, but that may not influence the 24-year old Legislative Assistant who works 70 hours a week, makes 35k a year, and handles all healthcare, defense, or economic issues for your representative.

    We must reconsider shifting focus from improving external communication strategies between voters and elected leaders and making the process internal – and using an Electronic Health Record model for discussion can be one way to do that.

    Imagine you are a staffer in your member of Congress’ office. Your boss – the Congressperson/Governor/”The Football” wants you to provide a report on an economic recovery bill – and due to the legislative schedule and other factors, you have an hour to compile it. The more information you can provide, solid numbers and facts, the more legitimate your argument.

    Your sources: You can sort through phone messages from eager callers muddled with others reciting commentary they heard on The O’ Reilly Factor mixed in with obscene calls from others who have nothing better to do. You can delve in to information provided by the new spat of grassroots organizations, one of the most well-known which has an equally well-known reputation for providing as much flawed information as it does thinly veiled threats in the name of anyone who provided their email and address to receive a free sticker.

    Or there’s the neatly arranged, concisely presented information packet provided by the lobbyists – with the facts and language you need, because many lobbyists were the 24-year old Legislative Assistant once.

    Decision made.

    In order to gain real, sustainable influence, voters must provide legislators the vital information they need in a format that is equally resourceful for the decision-makers to use. As a former Hill staffer, I speak from experience.

    Just like how an Electronic Health Record standardizes personalized data for individual and collective use by physicians from their home towns to the top medical research facilities in the country, constituents need a portal that allows them to identify: their top issues in importance; factors in their opinion on the issues; what sources or experiences they use to form those opinions and more.

    The result would be taking the constituents already engaged in broadcasting their message, and focusing the message into a platform that would make the information actually useful to the decision-makers they are trying to reach.

    In order to make this idea work, however, the process would start with interviewing Congressional and Gubernatorial staffs, and asking them how can information be most effectively communicated to them – which analytics do they need to make informed decisions. Since most people reading this post will use analytics themselves, it should come as no surprise to you that political staffs use the same.

    It could be Microsoft Empowerment. Or Google Citizen.

    Once the voice of the constituents is focused into a format useful to the decision-makers, the reliance on lobbyists and third party organizations for information can be reduced, and communications between the two groups will shift from external to an internal relationship – and that’s what Government 2.0 is supposed to be all about: transparency, efficiency and effectiveness.

    If you are or were a Congressional or Gubernatorial staffer, would this direct, categorical data be helpful in your operations? And for the rest, would you use such a platform if it had the necessary privacy safeguards and customization options that would allow you to communicate your opinions on the matters most important to you? I hope you leave us a comment for discussion of this concept, and propose alternatives.

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  • Yellow Journalism 2.0 – The Marriage of Gov/Tech Media and the Gov 2.0 Carpetbaggers

    26Apr
    Comments Categories: Gov 2.0

    You almost can’t blame some of these government and technology journalists – with the print industry folding as neatly as a Sunday edition of the Boston Globe, and the pressure to bring in more readers coming on as strong as a swine flu epidemic, now more than ever they need the hook, the interest item that will compete with TMZ for the public’s attention.

    Regretfully, some have brought tabloid credibility to the Government 2.0 debate in a one-two punch aimed at raising paper tiger leaders of “the movement” as a shortcut to reporting a complex subject, and in the process, have in fact promoted the very agendas that are counter-productive to reaching whatever end results define Gov 2.0.

    We start with the pit of this withered fruit – the new found Social Media/Gov 2.0 gurus, or as Geoff Livington’s Buzz Bin so aptly referred to them: Carpetbaggers. The “national security and social media experts” who have only recently even discovered social media, and don’t even have a security clearance much less an active role in national security; the consultants who arrive on the scene after the Presidential election, had never promoted themselves as “part of the movement” and now flood Twitter with their foundationless proclamations under the #Gov20 hashtag.

    Its enough to make any actual government employee responsible or even able to influence innovative change a little ill in their stomach – unable to decide whether to laugh or cringe, brush it off or brush the back of their hand against the next self proclaimed #goverati they see.

    The truth of the matter is that the government insiders who are the backbone of whatever Gov 2.0 pretends to be are not to be found at the cocktail parties in DC getting their photos taken with “#hotties,” nor are they flaunting their positions at the drop of an almost impressive name.

    They went into the government afterall – a comparatively low-paying, behind-the-scenes career that is often devoid of much thanks besides the quiet satisfaction one feels from public service, and every so often, making our nation as good as we dreamed it could be.

    But those often nameless, often faceless catalysts of much of the achieved innovation that can be credited to Government 2.0, they have a new obstacle: an exploitative Gov/Tech media, as seemingly needy for relevance and credibility as the ‘Gov 2.0 experts’ and buzz word creators they so readily promote in what can be described as a Yellow Journalism of Government 2.0.

    As we discussed, the drivers behind government innovation, as one would expect, didn’t go into the government for fame and recognition. The changes these people are making, however, have caught the public imagination, and more importantly, the attention of businesses who want a piece of the action. People want to read about Government 2.0 – conferences want to pay people to speak on their panels.

    You have a movement that doesn’t have a face (nor should it, since a goals include transparency and collective information sharing) – you have New Media press who desperately need a face to focus on and a catchy pull-quote to buzz – thus the marriage of convenience occurs. Willing to exploit and be exploited, #Gov20 has become so watered down I fear its only good for hyping blogs and adding to my Scotch whiskey to make a Highball.

    Focused on the self-promoted celebrity personalities of #Gov20 and not the actual content of the conversation, glossing over the substance of a statement to capitalize on the potential buzz of it, this is the noise that is coming to increasingly define the ever-evolving effort to innovate government.

    TechInsider wins the prize for the best example I have seen this weekend. I hope someone got a free Cosmopolitan for that one. The examples, regretfully, are countless and often circulated with a collective groan from the community, and far more dubious than this light-humored piece I use as an example. Writers for Huffington Post and Federal Computer Week have even more reason to follow each post they write with an Alka-Seltzer and a hard look in the mirror.

    In conversation I had before the writing of this post, Steve Radick told it like it is: “@JustinHerman Oh definitely – I could pretty much pitch anything with the term #gov20 in it and the media would LOVE it!”

    They do. But as consumers, as participants in this effort, we must expect more – those who know better must speak up if Government 2.0 will ever amount to more than the Virtual Reality of our era, and I say that because if all the hype for that came true, I’d be having simulated sex on Mars right now and not writing this blog.

    And those online journalists complicit in this Yellow ruse: you may be fooling one of two core audiences – those who work around government but have no knowledge of social media, or those who work in social media and are eager to apply their trade to the government for the first time – but in the end you will benefit no one, as when those audiences do marry the two disciplines together, they’re going to remember who told them Santa was real and a #goverati, and they will rate your credibility accordingly.

    Though its hard to blame them – if you can make a living in these tough times selling snake oil from town to town, it beats starving, doesn’t it? A racket is a still a business model, isn’t it?

    Perhaps both the Carpetbaggers and their ‘journalistic’ facilitators would see the backlash coming if they had an better understanding of the Government 2.0 discussion beyond the superficial.

    Its a shame, though, for the real story is pretty damn good.

    (Note: As often gets mentioned in posts, there are many excellent participants in Government 2.0 out there, or as I like to call this note, ‘The Sunlight Foundation Clause.” Look for a post soon on who is doing it right, and what can be learned from them.)

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