Future of government? engagement of course

David Wilcox blogs at the Designing for Civil Society site. He posted a long treatise on the future of government services, arguing on behalf of the principle of engagement. Regular readers of this blog know that we totally agree. Wonderful ! Wish we'd written a chapter on goverment. In writing about the UK e-goverment initiative, David blogs:

"Will it be hard sell, or more, well, engaging? The choice might well be influenced by how attractive the e-democracy 'brand' is, and draw on lessons from commercial marketers.
In public there is optimism that e-democracy will help refresh people's flagging interest in conventional politics."

Reading further with the blog, it suddenly refers us and our book. What is amazing is that this is not a review of our book, but rather uses our ideas as examples for government to follow. David writes:

There may be some lessons in the latest commercial marketing wisdom, which focusses on how companies develop conversations with customers. Communities Dominate Brands, by Tomi T. Ahonen and Alan Moore, argues that now many consumers are online they are forming their own communities of interest where discussion take places on products and services offered by brands. If something is wrong, word spreads fast. On the other hand customers can become fanatical evangelists when they identify with brands and their offerings. What brands need to do is identify Alpha Users in online communities who will be crucial in determining which way enthusiasms flow.
I'm sure there are some Alpha User e-democracy enthusiasts among citizens involved in the local pilots - and one step the national project might take is to help them identify each other so they can share their experiences and hopefully help spread the word.

Brilliant posting and application of our thoughts to the environment of government. And for sure, the Alpha User concept applies there just as well as it does in all of business and other organisations such as among employees or in fact, any community, formal or informal. Very very fascinating. Anyone who is interested in the area of government should take a look at the full posting.

And yes, one of the most advanced companies in developing the Alpha User concept and tools to identify Alphas, is Xtract Ltd of Finland. I know for a fact that they have also considered Alphas for the government needs. Visit their website for much more on social networking, from Alpha Users and Omega Customers to much more advanced applications.

One remarkable example I can think of is police and the mafia. Imagine if someone captures a known mafia gangster. He has a mobile phone (prepaid and no name). Just by tracking the Alpha User analysis around this one phone (using then a legitimate court order of course), the police can find out who has received calls from this phone, or who has called this phone. It makes no difference if these are prepaid and with bogus names or no names. The data is all there, to the accuracy of the phone number. These are then analysed until the full community is identified. The non-members are removed, as their phone behaviour is clearly different. So if one of the gangsters has a mistress and calls her, none of the other gangsters calls that phone, and thus it is not a part of the community.

Using Alpha User analysis, all members can be identified in the actual network around that one gangster. Makes no difference if this is the "godfather" or just a muscle-man on the fringes. Once you find one member of this community, an Alpha User analysis will identify ALL mobile phones that truly belong to that community.

The police can rapidly isolate the exact criminal community. Taking Alpha User analysis even further, the police can also identify the HIERARCHY of the criminal organisation. This is like the advent of finger printing to criminal investigations. or the advent of DNA, both which were innovations that must have seemed like magic and totally shook the criminal world, when suddenly the police could prove things that had seemed invisible/impossible before. When we watch cop shows of the next decade, they will all talk about Alpha User analysis when the prosecutors and defense attorneys argue about evidence.

Obviously read our book from chapter 12, The Emergence of the Community, for more about Alpha Users. And PS - these are not "alpha males" ha-ha, that is a totally different theory. Alpha Users are called Alphas because they are the initiating node in a web of connections in a digital community. Its like the centre of a spider's web. The most influential node (consider the mafia Godfather as the example) is the Alpha User.