Declan Kavanagh, CEO of IT services company Sogeti Ireland, insists that social media should be implemented to assist in the transformation of the public sector and deliver the savings promised by the Croke Park Agreement.
Kavanagh was discussing a book from the research department of Sogeti which included a study, From Crowd to Community, which reveals the internet and Web 2.0 technologies have established “traditional management structures and bureaucracy obsolete for today’s knowledge-based industries”.
Kavanagh states that, “Using Web 2.0 technologies to really innovate the way we do things, rather than tweaking the traditional management model is both a huge opportunity and a significant challenge”.
Kavanagh suggests social media and collaboration technologies can cost effectively harness for the first time front-line public sector employees’ ideas and recommendations in order to analyse the best methods to eliminate waste and maximise savings.
He also adds that “the talents and intelligence of the crowd to make better decisions for organisations and society” should be employed. “‘Crowd sourcing’ is an ideal way to harness the talents and experience of public sector workers and help to deliver change from the bottom up rather than top down.”
Kavanagh strongly believes “Web 2.0 and social media has a role to play in delivering citizen-centric services direct to the user on a 24/7 basis without the need to go through the long and bureaucratic process inherent in many of today’s delivery models.”