Going a step further, we need to build a free, open source platform specifically for government, making it easier for government to install and implement and leverage plugins or modules for anything from standard contact forms to 311 citizen requests applications.

Fundamentally, we need a central repository for code and a governing organization, private or non-profit, that coordinates specifications and provides a reliable management process for deployment. Additionally, there needs to be sample usage and, ideally, implementation case studies that highlight how government is leveraging this tool and how others can follow suit.

We need a GitHub meets Taproot meets WordPress or Drupal for government.

Matthew Burton’s A Peace Corps for Programmers, comments like Kevin Curry’s recent “We need craigslist for government” tweet and inside open government baseball chatter echo these sentiments.

To date, contests to create killer Web and mobile applications from open data combined with developers with gumption have spearheaded much of the tech efforts. This approach has showed positive results, however, they don’t effectively address a customer-driven approach to product development (see Steve Blank), where the customer (government) defines the specification, instead of developers building applications of no direct benefit to government.

Government must begin to define the specification. Instead of putting it out to bid, government needs to put it out to BUILD.

Government needs to break the mold and take advantage of what Clay Shirky calls the cognitive surplus, leverage the enthusiasm of the civic developer and significantly lower the cost of its technology projects. Government must also move away from a ‘build our own’ approach to technology. This mindset is a waste of time and resources and financially irresponsible.

Sure, there are procurement hurdles around non-licensed software, but many of these can be re-defined, as done in places such as San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver.

Philanthropists or foundations with deep pockets need to step up and support a new organization or a current one truly dedicated to making this happen. Government could also ‘pay back’ with funding of its own, at a significant discount to what it would otherwise pay. Something like this needs sustainable investment and support.

If the private or non-profit sector and government could each eliminate any hurdles and actively engage an idea like this, we’d change the way government uses technology and how it serves its citizens.

Who can make this happen and how do we get started?

The General Services Administration recently announced it will create FedSpace, a ‘new social intranet for federal employees and contractors.’ The project will be managed by the agency’s Office of Citizen Services and the initial version is expected to launch late summer.

GSA describes it as follows:

FedSpace is a secure intranet and collaboration workspace for Federal employees and contractors. Designed to be “for Feds by Feds”, FedSpace will enable government employees to work collaboratively across agencies, through the use of Web 2.0 technologies like file sharing, wikis, a government–wide employee directory, shared workspaces, blogs, and more.

Gartner analyst Andrea DiMaio has interesting thoughts as to why it’s too late for FedSpace (with spirited and substantial comments). Whether you believe the federal government should create another social network or intranet is another discussion. I understand Andrea’s 30,000-foot assessment, but disagree, mostly because an officially-endorsed government network has huge potential to cut through the open Web clutter and protect the privacy of people who just want to get their jobs done.

FedSpace was inevitable and will survive the test of time, regardless of its success. Longer term (1-2 years), if effectively executed, it will have a huge impact on GovLoop, the largest unofficial social network for government employees. To his credit, GovLoop founder Steve Ressler shared his suggestions for FedSpace.

To learn more about FedSpace, there’s a great FAQ and overview page here.

This is a great opportunity for the federal government to do something creatively epic and have a major impact on the way government works. Below are some questions and recommendations.

Questions:

• What is the budget?
• What will it be developed in?
• Will it be hosted on a government cloud?
• How many people are on the development team?
• What contractor firms are working on the project?
• Who’s the project lead?
• How will success be measured?

Recommendations:

• Change the name. Government needs to stop mimicking dot-com social network branding and get creative. Use a naming contest as an opportunity build interest. While this may seem trivial, branding is a big deal.
• Read Steve Blank’s customer development classic The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Joshua Porter’s Designing for the Social Web is a great reference for non-technical team members and will help others get more excited about the potential.
• Leverage experts outside of the government tech bubble. Smart people are working internally on this project, but engage with in-the-trenches product and marketing development experts from popular commercial networks. Bring them in for brown-bag discussions or video-conference Q&As.
• Start an open blog to chronicle your progress and solicit input. You’ll get free advice and feedback from all sectors, increase project visibility and create a resource for state governments looking to do the same.
• Get serious about marketing it. Its usefulness will determine long-term success, but short-term, you’ll need to get very creative to get 2 million employees actively engaged.

A growing trend in the startup and Web 2.0 space is a concept developed by Steve Blank called Customer Development, which essentially is a set of processes and best practices around incorporating user feedback and demand into every step of the product development process. Sounds pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised how many startups fail to get out of the building and talk to their customers until after they’ve already built most or all of their product. You can read more about Customer Development here and here.

Anyway, we’ve been thinking and blogging a lot at MightyBrand about Customer Development, and I started thinking about government, and how some of the same lessons might be useful to government agencies, so I thought I’d walk through the four steps of Customer Development and how they might be applied by government agencies as a kind of “Citizen Development”.

We’ve seen some really encouraging trends around openness and transparency in government, and that’s exciting. It’s very important that we as citizens get data and information out of the government, but equally important is the idea of getting data and information and feedback into the government, in terms of how we want our tax dollars to be spent, and how the government can be more effective with those dollars.

This raises a question we should address: why should government agencies care about feedback?

The pragmatist reason:

If you do this, you can do more with less.

Government budgets are getting slashed at the same time that citizens expect more from the few dollars that remain. And as more data flows out of government into citizen hands, more scrutiny will be applied to how tax dollars are being used (or misused). Increasingly, citizens are going to demand that their voices are heard, that government projects adhere to best practices, and that every dollar is spent most effectively. This means NOT spending money on large projects and initiatives that there’s not sufficient “market demand” for.

The idealist reason:

It’s the right thing to do. Taking taxpayer money and spending it on expensive boondoggles and pork projects is theft, pure and simple.

So where does the rubber meet the road? How do agencies actually effectively listen to their constituents and incorporate their feedback into management and budgeting priorities? The four steps of customer development are a great place to start (and how they might translate in the context of government):

1. Customer Discovery -> Do citizens want this project? Will they pay for it?
2. Customer Validation -> What’s the minimum viable product we can launch?
3. Customer Creation -> Refining and growing project based on citizen feedback
4. Company Building -> Integrating project into larger organizational structure and management team

We’ve seen others talking about some of these ideas and actually doing some very cool things, but what we need is for the government to actively engage with its citizens. We see some small-scale and very encouraging examples (even at the Federal level), but is anyone listening on the bigger projects? How is medicare listening to its customers? What about the trillions we’ve spent on bailouts? What about the trillions we’ll spend on the health care plan? Who is listening to us on that?

What specific strategies and techniques can the government use to start engaging in conversations with their citizens and moving the needle towards passionate citizens?