Spaghetti Testing | Peter Smith

I discovered two PS Renewal focussed blogs this week – CPSRenewal.ca and Contrarian Thinking. Like me, these folks are federal public servants blogging from a personal point of view in an effort to push things forward. Both good reads, worth the time to check them out.

One of these bloggers asked me what my focus was — while this blog is mainly about exploring social media and web 2.0 from a government communicator’s perspective in an effort to see what sticks (like a spaghetti test, see?), I think there are obvious links with the GoC’s current PS Renewal agenda. After all, if you are looking to attract digital natives to come work for the civil service, you are going to have to accept online social networks, wikis and similar technologies.

And it would seem that federal policy makers are saying the right things about this. Here’s an infographic from that presentation on Govt 2.0 that I mentioned recently:

(click on the graphic to see it at full size)

I think that this shows quite clearly how adopting Web 2.0 in government can support PS Renewal efforts: according to this slide, the GoC’s Web 2.0 strategy aims to “help create a modern, vibrant government workplace to attract bright, young talent to the public service.”

But it’s more than just the technologies themselves — it’s what they imply, too. F’r instance, using Web 2.0 technologies requires open collaboration and sharing (a Wikinomics approach). Contrast this to the usual “silo” setup where different government organizations don’t talk to each other unless they absolutely have to. There has to be a cultural shift in order to really make Government 2.0 work — and that kind of change is going to take a LOT of time and effort. Much harder to effect than getting the adoption of the technologies alone.