Minimum Government, Maximum Governance – Slippages and Solutions

The challenge of the day for Political Leaderships around the world has been how to reduce the size and spend on Government while yet making governance more effective.

Most have been beating the war drums and spewing vision statements for a long time, and had some limited but notable success too. The pace of change however has been sub-optimal owing to the incoherence on the subject, and a lack of understanding of the essential nature of the change within internal stakeholders on the one hand, and a lack of clarity that results for external stakeholders on the other. Of course, there are those who profit from this lack of clarity too; always at the cost of the intended beneficiary ie. the common citizen.

Slippages

Minimizing government while maximizing governance, is about creating stakeholder ecosystems that largely self-govern and evolve based on universally accepted rules and standards, offering a level playing field and alignment of incentives that is a win for everyone. It seeks to replace regulatory coercion with proactive participation. The key role for governance essentially then devolves to creating inclusive, democratic rules-based ecosystems to operate; and defining the common standards for interoperability amongst the stakeholders in that spirit.

The legacy mindsets of stakeholders internal to governments are derived from the command style industrial age mindsets that seek to control rather than govern. Their perception of ecosystems continues to be linear and unidimensional as opposed to the multi-dimensional 360 Degree, evolving, largely autonomous and sometimes infinite spaces that ecosystems are. The control mindsets are just not suited to deal with the unknown Unknowns’, and the nurturing, that fosters ecosystems.

Thus, operational decision makers currently see everything as a project - that has finite dimensions, instead of an evolving space and design for such; with defined start and end points, and thus the need for control is inherent to project style management. Ecosystems however demand leadership attributes such as creativity and innovation as a corollary, in order to deal with an open-ended evolution process or phenomena.

Given this orthodoxy, innovation and creativity die a quick death in the absence of nurturing in the nascent stage. Legacy procurement policies make it impossible for innovation to survive, until they fall in line with predatory interests that are invested in, and profit in the status quo.

The dependencies that such orthodoxies create reduce governance to a Zero-sum game, hardwired with the belief that some must lose for others to prosper.

Where does that leave the intended beneficiary? Invariably being the ones that must lose, for others to prosper, creating more disparity and benefitting those who see opportunity in increased disparity.

Solutions

Checks and balances have been a key design principle of command and control based governance systems, often focusing on the risks exclusively; while turning a blind eye to outcomes. That is an approach based in a scarcity mindset appropriate for a couple of centuries ago, when growth was based on control of natural resources or monopolies over knowledge and innovation.

The evolution of knowledge and technology since, have changed all that. There is a profusion of evidence around us that economic prosperity is no longer just about physical resources. Ironically, we deny it even after having broken that mould and profited from it; and discovered the power of markets and ecosystems that are open and inclusive, efficient and innovative, improve access and equity while being capable of discovering equilibrium and alignment to address common good.

Ecosystems thrive on efficient exchange of information and data in real time for each stakeholder to function. Thus, accounting for much of the innovation economic value generated in recent decades. Technology has been making that increasingly equitable by leveraging public infrastructure that is generic and need not be built-for-purpose. The rise of opensource software solutions has added an exponential dimension to this possibility of reducing disparity and improving access for the citizens of the world.

What one can do with an Android (opensource) based phone; or the fact that most of the world’s IT infrastructure that brought about this revolution runs on Linux, an opensource operating system are just two examples of the trillions of dollars of value created for human kind.

These are great examples, of what could have resulted in becoming expenditure for governments, businesses and individuals; should it have been done in a proprietary environment, going on to become social capital and making public investment more efficient on the one hand and spurring innovation and growth around the world on the other.

 Businesses and governments can benefit greatly from using open-source software. Here are some of the key reasons:

1.     Cost-effectiveness: Open-source software is often free to use and modify, which can save businesses and governments significant amounts of money on software licensing fees.

2.     Security: Open-source software has a reputation for being more secure than proprietary software. This is because the code is open for anyone to inspect, which can help to identify and fix vulnerabilities more quickly.

3.     Flexibility: Open-source software can be customized to meet the specific needs of a business or government agency. This can be a major advantage, as it allows organizations to avoid being locked into a particular vendor's product.

4.     Innovation: Open-source software is often developed by a large community of developers. This can lead to a more rapid pace of innovation, as new features and bug fixes are constantly being added. This can also avoid obsolescence and source lock-ins or other which can be fatal vulnerabilities, particularly in the public context.

With all its upsides, opensource innovation does suffer from vulnerability arising from half-hearted or poor quality of governance that can subvert its true essence, and let exclusionists gain control of opensource initiatives and negate its potential for collective good.

There are numerous examples in the public space of bogus narratives being built to create such exclusion mechanisms, unmindful of domain requirements, which have costed public exchequers large sums of money and derailed public good for long periods of time. That however only warrants enlightened governance and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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