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 Collaboration for Collective Benefit

by Timothy Watts | 4-Dec-2009 | Comments (3) Tags: Co-operatives, Web 2.0, What does It Mean to be a Progressive Policy Maker  43 ratings. Please log in to rate and comment

Working together for the common good has always been a feature of progressive policy making. Throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, progressives utilised a number of vehicles of collaboration for collective benefit including trade unions, co-operatives, mutual societies and political organisations. However, in recent times, the role and influence of these collaborative organisations has declined in progressive policy making.  Entering the second decade of the 21^st century, it’s time for progressive policy makers to reclaim what Australian Fabians’ scion, Race Mathews, has described as the movement’s “rich reformist inheritance” of “mutualist, associative, and communitarian thought” . Taking advantage of the community building potential of new online communications tools, progressive policy makers should once again begin looking for ways to promote collaboration for collective benefit.

One of the most extraordinary developments of the first decade of the 21^st century has been the technological revolution that has occurred in the way that people are able to connect to and interact with their peers. New communications tools like email, blogs, wikis, forums and social networking sites have dramatically lowered the transaction costs of finding and maintaining contact with likeminded individuals. The result has been what US academic, Clay Shirky has described as ‘ridiculously easy group formation’ and the emergence of informal online communities of interest within every esoteric niche of human interest one could imagine. Helpfully, academic research has also found that these communities of interest are generally populated by self-selecting groups of subject matter experts and obsessives who are able to aggregate and filter vast amounts of information relevant to their area of interest. By pooling and sorting information in this way, these communities of interest have produced high quality public goods in areas as diverse as software (Open Source communities such as Apache and Linux), reference (Wikipedia), news and comment (The Huffington Post), technical support (Whirlpool) and cultural production (Flickr). In the vast majority of cases, the individuals who contribute to these communities do so with no expectation of remuneration or direct individual gain.

The principle of collaboration for collective benefit that underpins these online communities of interest places them squarely within the progressive movement’s history of “mutualist, associative and communitarian thought”. In fact, Tom Watson, the former United Kingdom Minister for Transformational Government, has explicitly drawn this parallel, noting in 2007 that:

The 19th century co-operative movements had their roots in people pooling resources to make, buy or distribute physical goods. Modern online communities are the new co-operatives.

Given the progressive movement’s heritage of seeking collective benefit through collaboration, progressive policy makers should be actively seeking ways of harnessing these ‘new co-operatives’.

One area that holds immediate potential in this regard is government service delivery.  Improving the ability of Government service providers (for instance health, education and human services etc) to be responsive to the needs of citizens, whilst also minimising the cost to taxpayers, has always been a challenge for policy makers.  Engaging with existing online communities and harnessing their commitment to collaboration for collective benefit offers much promise for progressive policy makers wanting to improve government service delivery. Not only do these online communities allow members to learn from each others’ experiences, improving information flows and reducing the cost of the Government’s education function, but they also allow Government to learn from participants’ experiences, providing a low cost way of identifying areas of underperformance or unmet need.

How might this work in practice? Let’s take health care as an example. A sufferer of a chronic health problem will obviously receive expert medical care in a public hospital. They may also receive ongoing medical care out of hospital from specialists or their GP. But who do they turn to when they are not in the doctor’s surgery? Who do they talk to when they are trying to work out the best way to deal with the practical, day-to-day issues presented by their condition? This is where online communities of interest could come in.

A large number of online patient support communities for the sufferers of chronic conditions like Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have organically formed to allow patients to share their experiences of living with their conditions. These sites allow users to interact with one another, track how treatments are working for other members, and explore the side effects patients are experiencing with certain treatments. One prominent site, “PatientsLikeMe” sums up the role of these communities in its slogan “Patients helping patients live better every day”. These online communities are already providing significant benefit for their participants in the long tradition of collaboration for collective benefit.

Progressive policy makers could improve public service delivery by putting in place a framework for Government to actively engage with and support these communities. In the GP’s office, newly diagnosed sufferers of a disease could receive an “Information Therapy” prescription connecting them with the online communities of fellow suffers. Government representatives could also participate in these communities as trusted authorities, dispelling any inaccurate information distributed in the communities and offering advice for participants about the government services available to them. These government representatives would also have the critical role of identifying short-comings in existing government services revealed in the community and feeding this information back to policy makers.

This is but one example of the role that online communities of interest could play in government service delivery. Usefully, online communities of interest already exist across the full spectrum of government services. Progressive policy makers just need to look for them and consider how the collaboration for collective benefit that is currently occurring in these communities can be harnessed to achieve policy goals. If we do so, perhaps in the 21^st century, progressives can reclaim their heritage of “mutualist, associative, and communitarian thought” as a central philosophy of the movement once again.

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