eDemocracy, innovation and the risk of failure

It's an old adage in the technology sector that, when working with innovative start-ups, nine out of ten will probably fail. And this is not considered either a problem or a bad thing. Why? Because, it's recognised that doing something different is a high risk strategy, but one that can lead to enormous reward. True failure only happens when nothing is learnt and we fail to carry those lessons forward to future projects.

I mention this because yesterday a select group of civil servants were told by cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell to become innovators. As O'Donnell rightly put it, "We have no choice but to innovate."

Coming from the heart of perhaps the most risk-averse culture known to man, this is promising stuff. It's rightly tempered with some caution, "officials [shouldn't] start taking unplanned risks", and he notes that the current national outlook can make being imaginative more of a challenge.

Overall this should bode well for eDemocracy. Why? Because eDemocracy is inherently innovative and requires a culture of innovation to work. To put it bluntly, good eDemocracy changes things: It transforms processes, makes people more accountable and it throws the doors and windows of government wide-open, allowing for greater public scrutiny. That's risky. Which is why most government-led eDemocracy projects to-date have been narrow in focus and tightly managed so as not to expose too much of the soft-underbelly of government.

I whole-heartedly encourage this shift towards entrepreneurial thinking. But I would go further and encourage those in charge to ensure that new ideas are fully and firmly embraced. Innovation fails within systems because the system is not responsive to change. Innovation fails because the people who are able to innovate - to come up with the new ideas - are not the people who have the skills (or the enthusiasm) to operationalise those ideas. End-to-end innovation - and, therefore, eDemocracy - takes in the whole of the organisation.

Going back to my first point, a large part of innovation culture is the acceptance of failure and how that is managed and learnt from. Not every eDemocracy project is going to be a success but, that's not the problem. Not trying in the first place is the problem.

Andy Williamson
Director, eDemocracy Programme
a[.]williamson[@]hansard[.]lse[.]ac[.]uk