Some governments such as France -- as far back as 1976 with its long-heralded Telematique initiative launched by then-President Giscard D'Estaing -- have been very eloquent in putting forth a vision of what must occur in government. The French report, The Computerization of Society by Simon Nora and Alan Minc, was the earliest example of how one government saw the revolutionary role technology might play in the government.
Other governments, began to develop some kind of "national information strategy," for example, the U.S. Clinton-Gore National Information Initiative, Singapore's IT 2000 and Japan's Technopolis Project, which have been more comprehensive in their intended impact.
However very few of the national information strategies have focused on the core issue of governance. They do not address the basic concern of how decisions are made; how the public is best served in an economical and efficient way, and how all sectors of the economy -- particularly industry and government at the local level -- can and should work together to make this transition. This is at the core of what governing in the digital age is all about.
A critical component of solving our modern-day dilemma revolves around understanding the forces of "devolution" -- the flow of power from national to local and regional communities. A fact, which must be recognized, is that technology (the technology of telecommunications and computers) and economics (the economics of a global economy) have already converged causing disruptions in patterns of life and work as well as existing institutions. So too, has it affected the locus of governmental decision-making because of a "reverse flow of sovereignty." States and local communities -- not national governments -- increasingly are making or are capable of making the IT decisions most affecting the economic prowess of their communities.
Unfortunately there is too much evidence to support the fact that many governments, particularly in Western democratic countries, tend to see government and industry at opposite poles on many issues when in fact the body politic would be best served by more cooperative and collaborative decision-making mechanisms to better serve communities. Sadly, with the growth and development of more global enterprises, the interest and concern about the community where a company is headquartered -- or in some cases, where a large number of company employees live -- becomes a very distant priority. Indeed, as the company becomes more global, most often its local interests are reduced as a priority.
In The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation, author and researcher Daniel Yankelovich argues there is a "struggle between two one-sided visions of our future; the vision of the free market and the vision of the civil society. Underlying the first vision," he says, "is the conviction that in the new global economy, the free market, driven by technology and entrepreneurship, will shape a more prosperous, democratic and secure world than we've ever known. The conviction for supporting the second is that to renew our society and halt its moral decline, we must return to the noble -- and profoundly traditional -- dream of America as a city on a hill. In practice, this means finding a way to strengthen the values of community, faith, responsibility, civic virtue, neighborliness, stewardship and mutual concern for each other, values that are not inherent in the free market economy."
This trend away from corporate community engagement must be reversed as we increasingly must compete for the high-tech knowledge worker. Corporate America needs to lead the way to help reinvent our communities for the global knowledge age. Together they need to find a way to start a community-wide dialogue to help define what our common future looks like and, in the process, bring these two forces or visions together.
The timing for such an effort is more urgent than ever, for as we enter the 21st century, creativity and innovation will be our greatest assets and, hopefully, lie at the heart of our greatest exports. But we must do so fully cognizant that a business-driven society that fails to embrace the values of its civil society, as Yankelovich has written, "without showing respect for its employees or customers, without inspiring people to give their creative best to their jobs, without employees and management understanding each other and without employees' buying into management's vision of the future (will) inevitably slip into mediocrity or worse."
