Recently, I have written an article Power of citizens vs. Government, the story of Gray in which I shared a story that read within the first chapter of Open Government by O’Reilly Media. As I continued reading and in future chapters, Tim O’Reilly explained the concept of Open Government and related it to Apple’s iOS (developer) platform for iPhones and iPads. After reading this, I realized Apple is doing something amazing. I have never really been impressed by Apple (as the corporation) until I finished reading that.

When we (general public) think about the government, we typically think of a very large organization that its internal process of getting anything accomplished is very slow. This process can take days, weeks, months, if not years to get a single thing done. With a process being very long and dreadful, innovation in government agencies is typically very low and rarely seen.

When explaining or talking about “Government 2.0″ (Gov 2.0) and Government as a platform, many try and use the analogy of “Web 2.0″. (Interesting fact: Gov 2.0 actually came from the idea of Web 2.0 – the “re-birth” of the World Wide Web.) However, with today’s market – a more appropriate analogy of Government as a platform is actually Apple’s iOS (developer) platform for the iPhone and iPad as a similar concept.

So what am I really talking about? I am talking about Apple creating a product and building a framework for innovation by its users. It started with the iPhone but now includes the iPad and iTouch devices. Apple provides some of the best and innovative devices available to consumers today along with a system which allows them to evolve the device and its applications. Apple allows third party developers to come and develop apps for their device which is currently being used by millions. There are now millions of apps developed and sold on the Apple App Store today.

But what can government really learn from Apple? There are a couple of things:

  • Create a platform which we (citizens) can join forces to use your device (in this case, the millions of data records) to innovative.
  • Allow us to innovate for free while combining and mashing up multiple data sets to create useful and innovative apps across a multitude of devices for the citizens and businesses.
  • Manage certain aspects of the platform so that it is not become a form of the Wild Wild West.

Most importantly, there is one thing that must be done and I believe Apple has done that very well. And that is to:

Design a system in which all outcomes are not specified before hand, but instead evolve over time – through interactions between the organization and citizens as a service provider enabling its user community to contribute to its evolution and success.