Posted on March 6, 2010 - by Vic Desotelle

Collaboration “IS” the New Government

My twine.com webbed a good one today. Although extremely simple, this video triggered a BIG insight for me.

Imagine a new definition of government. Rather than provider of fixes, it becomes a convener of ‘we the people’ and we generate our own solutions. This act shifts a STATIC ‘government’ institution into a DYNAMIC ‘governance’ system. The governing body becomes a manager (or governor) of the ecology of interactions that happen by us the people. Collaboration then becomes the vehicle that acts as this governor, as it enables the flow of action and change. In this way, collaboration and governance become almost synonymous.

What does this do? Well. We no longer have to wait for government to get on board to see the change we want. Instead the governing body builds the infrastructure that allows connection and decision-making to happen. Decisions are no longer made by them. Instead they are made by us and they merely create tools and processes (many via the internet) that allows everyone much more access to the learning and decision-making process. This then becomes a healthier form of control. Rather than government directing and making the decisions, it instead becomes an enabler and ‘governor’ (as it was meant to be) by acting as policy makers but with a different understanding of the meaning of ‘policy’. Now, government monitors rather than polices the outcomes that occur when publicly induced design occurs. Government evolves along with the society by being entwined in the overall feedback system. They become watchers of the difference between consciously derived guiding principles and actual applied experiences that occur in communities of practice.

clic pic for correlation to regenerative commerce system

This diagram shows how the interaction between PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE, and POLICY. It shows that none of these three can sustain the system on its own but each must instead act interdependently with the other two. Here, the policy box is government, or in other words, the convener of a dialog between principle (which is generated out of desire, need, vision, and design possibility) and practice (which is how the design is experienced in the real world). Policy becomes a way to keep the FEEDBACK going between these two subjects the same way a governing value acts on a pipe – too much or too little puts the system into instability. The people inside the government do not make the decision to adjust the flow of choices. Instead, they create and maintain the channels (or policing) that allow the collaboration process to INFORM itself. This is a self-generative behavior and occurs via the interactions between the engagement of the people involved in each of the principle, practice, and policy domains.

Yes, Collaboration “IS” the New Government.