12.6. Extend the Network

Once governments have figured out how to create platforms for their own employees, we can begin to think about how to enable citizen participation. One thing that is frequently frustrating is that we treat these types of approaches as new (and thus different or scary). The fact is that governments have been accessing a long tail of information from the public for a long time. Indeed, municipal 911 services are an excellent example. Here is a system that, to a limited degree, is already a platform. It relies on constant citizen input and is architected to be participatory. Indeed, it works only because it is participatory—without citizen input, the system falls apart. Specifically, it aggregates, very effectively, the long tail of knowledge within a community to deliver, with pinpoint accuracy, an essential service to the location it is needed at a time it is needed. Better still, people are familiar and comfortable with it, and virtually everyone agrees it is both an essential component of modern government service as well as one of the most effective (see Figure 12-2).