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So I'm here with Vivek Kundra, he's here in Australia touring around and talking to a
lot of people and I just thought I'd take the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions
for the Gov 2.0 community peeps out there, around Australia.
So, hi, welcome to Australia.
Thanks for chatting with me, I appreciate it.
Yeah, that's cool. Can you just give us a bit of an overview about your ideas on driving
tech innovation in government. What you see to be the core things you need to do?
Well obviously it always starts with the people and one of the most important things that
needs to happen in government, around the world, is they need to be able to hire the
right kind of people to drive innovation and be change agents. You can't legislate and
you can't essentially mandate innovation itself so it starts with that.
Secondly I think you need need bold leadership. If you look at what President Obama did, he
made technology a central part of how his administration was going to achieve some of
the policy objectives that he had set out.
And the third, you need to be able to distrupt the status quo by making sure that you have
a culture that celebrates failure. That doesn't actually go out there and punish those that
are at the bleeding edge.
And, I mean, if you've got that leadership at the top level and you've got your, you'll
always have your enthusiastic geeks at the grassroots level, how do you drive that change
in that rather large middle level?
I should think it's easier if you have a number of people on the front lines. The geeks kinda
banding together trying to find a new way. But you've got to be able to make sure is
that the middle management, unfortunately a lot of times you have people who are incentivised
by the number of dollars that they manage and the number of years they've been in the
job and that's where from a political leadership perspective it's very very important to make
sure that you're reaching out and embracing those that are on the front lines that understand
the issues and understand the innovation that must be driven, and frankly reward those managers
that are going to support, encourage and embrace that notion and that culture and those people.
At the same time the reality is, and we don't talk about this often, we also have to be
able to make the hard choices. If there are managers or people that are getting in the
way, the Dr No's, they are basically in deleriction of their duty. And what I mean by that is
that's not what the people of a country expect of their government. They're basically putting
their personal interests over the interests of the people.
OK, and finally 'cos we don't have a lot of time, what are your observations and thoughts
about what is happening in Australia and some of the opportunities and challenges for Australia?
Seeing you're here and seeing what's going on.
Well I'm actually very excited. I think it's amazing country with an entrepreneurial culture,
to the number of meetings I've had and meeting people like you who are doing some amazing
work in the public sector, whether it's been public participation, fundamentally rethinking
what a modern democracy looks like. I've also seen some of the really really bold steps
that are being taken to invest in strategic infrastructure. So the National Broadband
Network is one example. You look at what's happening as far as the government's concerned.
You're seeing some of these technologies come into the goveernment.
But the fear I have is that you want to make sure you continue on that trajectory. It's
very easy for those people in the government who want to preserve the status quo to win
out. And I think there is an epic battle going on between the past and the future. And it's
really really important that, from a policy perspective, that there are appropriate incentives
for those who are architecting the future, to be the ones that are driving the country.
And do you think that epic battle presents a bit of a power shift from small groups of
people to the broader community to engage...
Well absolutely, it's clear. We see it every day, whether it's in Australia or anywhere
else in the world. Therre is this shift in power from a few government officials behind
closed doors to the masses, it's real. And technologies that didn't exist before exist
today that have made this possible in terms of the very structures that are needed.
So the ability for anyone with a front row seat to their government with a mobile device.
That's amazing! We don't think about it, we take it for granted, but now every citizen
can be a co-creator. Every citizen can be a watchdog and hold their government accountable.
Every citizen can actually go out there and be part of the digital public square and that
is what I think is super exciting about the time we are living in.
Yep, sure. Well thank you very much.
Thank you.
And I look forward to next time you come to Australia.