Professor Beth Simone Noveck Discusses Open Governance with South Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper

Last week, the GovLab’s Executive Director Co-Founder Beth Simone Noveck spoke with South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper on a number of topics related to governance innovation. Professor Noveck discussed lessons learned from working to innovate governance from within the US and UK governments, fostering public participation among those traditionally uninterested in politics, the challenge of innovating governance in countries with limited technological infrastructure and her vision for what governance will look like ten years from now.
You can view a reproduction of the article here and the full interview on which the article was based below.
Q: During your TED speech, you talked about the White House in the 19th Century. Through this example, you showed how ‘closed’ the governments have become. Why do you think governments have become more ‘closed’?
BSN: The professionalization of public administration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was designed to apply scientific principles to how we govern while reducing corruption, patronage and inefficiency. The inadvertent consequence of believing that only professionals should govern is the exclusion of the public from meaningful participation and the concomitant belief that people are either unwilling or unable to engage meaningfully.
Q: What exactly is the Open Government that you dream of? How would you define it? Is it OK to understand it as a direct democracy system? Why is Open Government so important?
BSN: Open Government has become a much-used albeit not a well-understood term. As his first executive action in 2009, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, calling for building a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. This was followed in 2011 by the founding of the Open Government Partnership, which now boasts almost sixty member countries, including South Korea, which have crafted national open government action plans.
Fundamentally, open government focuses on how to obtain more diverse and collaborative participation at every stage of decisionmaking akin to open innovation in business. Opening government is only partly about greater legitimacy. Rather, when more people – with diverse forms of know how and expertise engage — the promise of open government is that it leads to more effective solutions to  challenges. In much the same way that companies have found that turning to customers and suppliers for help has improved performance, open government is about rethinking the relationship between state and citizens.
Q: In Korea, government redesign is a hot issue. This is due to the problems witnessed during the aftermath of the Sewol Cruise Ship Disaster. Government-Public Service Institution corruption, bureaucratic government structure, lack of expertise were some of the problems. To solve this, the government has announced that it will change the way it hires public servants and adopt a more parallel government leadership structure. Taking this into account, how would you advise Korea in terms of how to redesign the government? At the moment, there is not much debate on implementing an Open Government system, as you would call it; making use of technology to upgrade governance.
BSN: Korea has filed an Open Government Action Plan (http://www.opengovpartnership.org/country/south-korea/action-plan)
Under the commitment entitled, “Creating a Communication Channel for Government and Citizens,” it says “details to come later.”
All of our governments, whether in Seoul or Washington, DC have to invest attention and energy into innovating in how we make policy not simply innovating in the choice between two policies. This is a hard thing to do for traditional policymakers, who are responsible for safeguarding the public trust. This is why I advocate for undertaking pilot projects to test the impact of the new ways of governing on real people’s lives. It’s only by seeing first-hand the downstream outcomes from more open ways of working — including the greater use of data, the application of crowdsourcing and the use of expert networks to connect smart people to hard problems — that decisionmakers can understand how open government is more effective government.
Q: In an Open Government, the role of government seems to be very little, almost non-existent. The knowledge and info comes from the people, and the decision making power is handed to the people. What exactly is the role of the government in an Open Government system?
BSN: To the contrary, institutions are essential because they safeguard the public interest. Whereas individuals and organizations possess a great deal of creativity and knowledge that should be harnessed for the public good, it is only public institutions that legitimately wield the power and the budgets that make it possible to implement and scale innovations that work.
Q: Do you believe that the people really care about policy and politics, enough to actively participate in it? What about those in the low-income class. For those who are busy trying to make an honest living, active participation in policy making would not be an option. Don’t you think that they could be left out of the Open Government system?
BSN: We all care about something but it’s not the same. One person worries about the planet while another worries about schools. Whether hunger, poverty, public health, or the future of the arts, we all have passions. More important, we all possess  intelligence, experience, and insights for those issues that matter to us. Asking everyone to participate in the same way fails to take advantage of these differences. But if we move from a system in which the only way to engage is by voting or the occasional comment in response to a policy already enacted or opinion in response to a poll, we miss the chance to engage people on the topics and in the ways that they care about. I might want to write a commentary but you want to create an app and a third person would rather share her first-hand experiences. One size fits all does not make for a stronger democracy.
Q: Open Government relies on technology. What about countries with not enough tech infrastructures to adopt an Open Government system? What should they do? On the other hand, countries like Korea, with relatively advanced IT infra, could take full advantage of Open Government.
BSN: Working more openly and collaboratively is not only for the tech-savvy. Think about the work of MKSS, an NGO in Rajasthan, India, which paints the town budgets on village walls and invites people to scrutinize them for fraud, waste and abuse. Around the world, public sector innovation labs like MindLab in Denmark are convening citizens face-to-face to get their input on the improved design of services. Open government isn’t fundamentally about technology. It is about the mindset of collaboration and co-creation — about a trust in and belief that citizens are smart and have something important to offer.
Q: You’ve worked for the US and UK governments. In trying to make use of technology for better governance, what did you learn the most?
BSN: Most people in public service are dedicated, passionate and committed to the improvement of the human condition. Often unexpectedly, you discovered among them are visionary entrepreneurs and radical innovators who are hampered by a legal and political system that systematically discourages innovation. Often the very rules that were designed to safeguard the independence of the public sector end up impeding the ability of state and citizens to collaborate to the end of getting stuff done that works.
Q: In 10 years, what would be the major changes in governance in your view?
BSN: That all major decisions are made with the benefit of citizen engagement and that the outcomes from the resulting policies in terms of educational attainment, physical and community wellness, economic security and environmental sustainability are improved as a result.