How blogging can be a public service

In the world of open source, the ethic of voluntarism and the improvisational and open nature of online collaboration have led to a culture in which social recognition is a function of the quality of contribution as judged by the community around a particular project, whether it's Wikipedia, Linux software or some community congregating around a blog or blogs. Formal status doesn't rate as it does within organisations.

In the future I'd like to see governments draw volunteer enthusiasts from the community more closely and explicitly into their own activities in policy design and service delivery. And they can go further still. Shouldn't the best volunteer contributors - whether they're correcting text or discussing policy alternatives - be afforded greater recognition? Over time we could see if they were interested in being given greater responsibility, just as public servants are offered promotions. This could widen the pool of available talent to the public service and provide alternative pathways for recruiting people and developing their skills and authority.

If those pathways of promotion were built, as structures of authority are built in the world of Web 2.0, they would be based on self-selection, enthusiasm and a record of aptitude and contribution in the field. Firms in the Web 2.0 world are successfully adapting aspects of this kind of volunteerism to their own organisational structures.

Thus, for instance, Google and the Australian global software maker Atlassian allow employees to spend one day a week on projects which are for the firm's benefit, but which they are free to choose. Those with a creative idea can work on it and, equally importantly, persuade others to use their own time to collaborate. The process can create many of the organic possibilities and associations typical of the undirected spontaneous activity of markets and civil society. It's certainly created a lot of Google's myriad products.

Introducing "Google time" by edict into the public service would probably just reduce productivity. So we recommended a much more incremental approach, proposing that government agencies give their staff opportunities to experiment and improvise with Web 2.0 tools to enhance their agencies' work.

I wonder how long it will be before we get our first head of a government department who initially came into the orbit of the public service as an ''online Web 2.0 volunteer''.