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DIGITALWORLD
Emer Coleman
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ‘Governments need to reestablish trust
more and officials need, Iwould argue, to becomemore visible and accountable ’
The new role, which she took up in January, sees her working
withBracken as part of the new, open government put forward by the UK’s ‘Digital Champion’ Martha Lane Fox in her Digital By Default report in 2010.While Coleman’s role sees much work in the social media sphere and the opening up government to the public,much of her job is about cultural change, she says. “When you start talking about digital, really what you’re talk-
ing about is behavioural and organisational change, not technol- ogy. Even talking about use of social media in government, the conversation often becomes about risk.” Inmost countries, the civil service is by its nature risk-averse,
so Coleman’s role is quite a challenging one. “The UK civil serv- ice has come a longway andmost of the departments have aTwit- ter account for example, but it is still often seen as a broadcast tool. Some tend to try and do the same thing across Twitter that they would do in a press release – which sort of defeats the pur- pose. “So it’s about trying to explain to people that this is about build-
ing relationships and trust over time, not about headlines. It’s about trying to get government officials to understand that these tools can help to build trust, because that way you can get a lot more
consensus.Governments need to reestablish trustmore and officials need, I would argue, to become more visible and accountable.” In some ways she would like to see departments functioning
more like young start-ups. “We have to look at where corporate communications go in a socialworld.You are surrounded by chat,
60 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012
so government can’t hope to control the debate. There is an element of letting go, and that’s a good thing. “It’s always the same when you’re trying to change behaviour.
You have tomake strong arguments and lead by example. That’s why having people like Martha Lane Fox out there is so impor- tant.We’re never going to get change until people stand up, and I think thatmeans a different contract between public official and politician too. It’s a bit like Euan Semple says in his book – organisations don’t tweet, people do.We need to growup.” Coleman is passionate about openness and transparency at
government level, but the other side of the coin, she says, is the economic benefit of opening out data for the economic good. Coleman made her name in the world of open data when in
2009 she went on secondment from Barnet Council to London City Hall for a year. “Obama had come to power shortly before and the whole global movement towards open data was gaining strength,” she says. Her responsibilities at theGreater LondonAuthority included
the development of theLondonDataStore, a project to release all of London's public sector data into the public domain. She recalls howit all got started. “Rather than the state decide
to do this on its own, we put an open call out to the software de- velopment community in London and asked would they like to come and help us.We didn’t build anything, we didn’tmake any decisions until we consulted with who we felt would be the first primary users – the developers,” she explains. “Some 60 developers turned up on aSaturdaymorning for that
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