Author of machiavelli.net, proud father of three, interested in shaping network society. Welcome to my blog.governance in network society
On Monday, I was in Mexico City, invited by Lourdes (the president of CIAPEM) to a workshop on governing by network. Bill Eggers was doing the presentation on his book governing by network, which is a great introduction into the challenges and opportunities of postmodern governance.
It was amazing that more than 100 government officials showed up and that our food was stuck in AMLO-induced traffic (or so they said in the end they fed us BigMacs).
At the event I noticed that whenever we talk about networks in public administration there is a confusion how we use the term. Three different meanings come to mind:
a. Lifeworld Networks: In our lifeworlds the network vocabulary comes very close to what we experience day-to-day. We do have the feeling that with MSN, MySpace, Secondlife, OpenBC, or LinkedIn our social networks are being augmented, but not substantially transformed.
b. Network Society: This concept describes the radical transformation of how societies understand and legitimize themselves as collectivities. Castells speaks about the move from “space of place” (territory) to a “space of flows” (cyberspace), I refer to the move from Hobbesian “contract society” to today’s “network society.”
c. Public Value Networks: This is what Bill Eggers was talking about, the question of (if we assume that a transformation to network society is actually taking place) how can we design networks that allow us to create public value effectively and efficiently and achieve accountability (through transparency).
One of the questions Bill and I were debating in the break, was if a specific prior structure of the society would be necessary to implement public value networks. I think two things are necessary, (a) a broad appreciation of network society as the base metaphor for social and political life, and (b) a shared work culture of creating public value through networks.
Now, what does that mean for Mexico? After talking to many public officials on all levels, it seems that much of the frustration voiced by public officials is a frustration with hierarchies and a missing focus on outcomes. If that is the case, there should be surprising pent-up energy that could be channeled by policy entrepreneurs implementing public value networks.
Where in governements should we expect those policy entrepreneurs to come from? From talking to very few public officials, my hunch is they will come from the IT-departments. Governmental CIOs are taking more public roles today, they are designing the technological infrastructures, network-centric thinking comes natural to them, so expect them to come out of the basement…
