Our Government needs a Reboot, and Citizens need to Boot up
In his book, “What Is Government Good At?”, Donald J. Savoie argues that political leaders and public servants are good at generating and avoiding blame, embracing and defending the status quo, adding management layers and staff, and keeping ministers out of trouble.
Conversely, they are not as good at defining the broader public interest, innovating and reforming themselves, efficiently managing human and financial resources, recognizing and dealing with non-performers, paying sufficient attention to service delivery, implementing evidence-based policies, evaluating their impact, and being accountable to citizens. Ha!
Meanwhile, research has shown that for many governments, the phenomenon is less of a policy issue; it’s a delivery crisis. Public services around the world are known to be expertly inefficient. Interestingly however, there is never a shortage of opinions and voices on how government can or cannot work. What is in short supply is wills and hands — people disposed to doing the hard work of making governments function the way we want.
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow
The Nigerian Manifesto
Notwithstanding her youthful population, the relationship between most citizens and the government of Nigeria varies from voting every four years to no relationship at all. Her young, vibrant, highly educated, and somewhat helpless population are often guilty of backseat driving, resorting to social media whining to ease off the pain of maladministration and subpar public service. But it is not sufficient to know or talk about the malady, it is important to seek and be part of the remedy.
Code for Nigeria is reaching out to technologists, journalists, designers, social entrepreneurs, community managers, activists, data scientists, map makers, lawyers, medical practitioners, subject-matter experts, and just about anyone passionate about taking hands-on community action to make public institutions work better by designing and building systems, applications, and tools that help citizens and governments take informed data-driven decisions, optimize public service delivery, promote inclusive, transparent, open, accountable, and invariably efficient government.
Our government needs a reboot, and we the people need to boot up. Using open data and tech, we will create a government that works.
