3. Loppukiri Senior housing community NopolaNews Citizen-based journalism Cycling Channel Cyclists as the eyes of the municipality YLE National broadcasting Company's enabler-strategy
4. ...and enable people to coproduce more. Provide the Basic services opengov.fi session tomorrow 1.10.2009 at 14:30 in MindTrek at room nr. 7
Editor's Notes
Good aftornoon Open Minds! My name is Antti Poikola. Nowadays the government collects taxes in order to build central institutions dealing with the central needs of the people. This model is getting obsolete. 1. ”Central needs” are only a part of the diversified needs of the citizens. You simply can't keep generating that sort of tax revenue to make it ALL happend 2. People are willing to do reasonable things that make their life quality better - participate in coproducing the services that they like POINT: Public sector shouls PROVIDE the basic services and AT THE SAME TIME ENABLE people to do more. Therefore the title ”from providers to enablers”.
This ink-blot here represents the fact that there are allways much more services that people would like to have than there are public resources to provide the services. For example the public transport company has the great journey planner. It even allows to plan rotes for cycling and walking. Still some people would prefer to plan routes for roller skating. Roller skating planner is a example of ”nice-to-have service” that is out of the skope for transport company to provide. Could the transportation company somehow help the rollerskater to do the service for himself and the other rollerskaters?
For you, the open source community it is easyto understand that people are willing to do all sorts of things for the benefit of their own and the others 1. when they can decide themselves what is the priorityof things to do 2. when they are let to self-organize 3. when the credit is given for the contributors 4. when the diversity is appriciated Here are few examples: These ladies decided that they don't want to grow old in one of the public senior houses. They built their own house with the community. NopolaNews has made over 5 % of the inhabitants of Kyyjärvi to be proud coproducers of the local community portal. Cycling Channel in Helsinki is turning the cyclists to moving observers and helpers of the urban planning and city works departments. YLE the Finnish broadcasting company has a new so called "enabler strategy" that guides to participate, facilitate and find new ways of developing services with other partners and users in the spirit of openness and sharing.
This figure of long tail effect must be familiar to you. In the case of public services it goes like this. HEAD: People participate every now and then by voting. Government PROVIDES the most important services. What is still widely unused potential is the TAIL: People would participate by DOING and the government would ENABLE them to coproduce more services that fits into their diversified needs. In order to be an enabler the public organization should share the tools and resources for creating the services, so that people could build upon the existing work. One special case about this is the opening up the public data. If you are interested to do something for the www.opengov.fi please come tomorrow to room 7.