Prediction: The Digital Economy Strategy will fail unless drafted on GCPEDIA

Prediction: The Digital Economy Strategy will fail unless drafted on GCPEDIA

12 May 2010 | David Eaves

So I've finished up at Canada 3.0. I've got a copy of the Consultation Paper on the Digital Economy Strategy and hope to write about it shortly (when, I don't know since I'm traveling between Ontario and BC twice this week, and 5 times in the coming 5 weeks...). I also hope to post some deeper thoughts and reflections about the conference since... no one is saying much and there is much to be said. Some sneak peeks: 1) It is telling that it seems no one was live blogging the conference, 2) The conference was a little heavy on commercialization and how the internet can work to save the current crop of content distributors and 3) the gap between my colleagues and friends and those - particularly senior leaders - is stunning.

In the meantime, my post from Monday has gotten good traction but I wanted to repost the last section since the post was long (and I know few people read long posts) - and, frankly, the point needs emphasizing:

A networked economy can only be managed by a government that uses a networked approach to policy development.

An agrarian economy was managed using papyrus, an industrial economy was managed via printing press, typewriters and carbon copy paper. A digital economy strategy and managing policies were created on Microsoft Word and with email. A Network Economy can and only will be successfully managed and regulated when those trying to regulate it stop using siloed, industrial modes of production, and instead start thinking and organizing like a network. Not to ring an old bell, but today, that means drafting the policy, from beginning to end, on GCPEDIA, the only platform where federal public servants can actually organize in a network.

Managing an industrial economy would have been impossible using hand written papyrus, not just because the tools could not have handled the volume and complexity of the work but because the underlying forms of thinking and organizing that are shaped by that tool are so different from how an industrial economy works. In short, how you do it matters.

With that said, I'm going to predict this right now: Until a digital economy strategy is drafted using online but internally-connected tools like wikis, it will fail. At the moment, this means GCPEDIA. I say this not because the people working on it will not be intelligent, but because they won't be thinking in a connected way. It will be like horse and buggy users trying to devise what a policy framework for cars should look like. Terrible, terrible decisions will be made.

To manage a network you have to think and act in a network. Painful? Maybe. But that's the reality of the situation.