Yvon Le Roux of Cisco Looks Ahead to the 2008 Public Sector Summit at Nobel, Ponders Role of Web 2.0
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June 9, 2008
What will the public sector of the future look like? For years, the annual Cisco® Public Services Summit at Nobel Week in Stockholm has been providing clues, offering guests a unique sample of some of the most advanced perspectives on government, education and healthcare innovation.
The invite-only event, co-hosted by the City of Stockholm, will be seven years old this December but the thinking on offer promises to be as fresh as the day the Summit was conceived.
To find out more about what is likely to be on delegates' minds this year, and what kind of speakers might be on hand to provide inspiration and guidance, News@Cisco caught up with Yvon Le Roux, Cisco Vice-President for Africa and Levant Region.
"The question we are posing, in a nutshell, is: 'how can innovation help all sectors of society advance in a sustainable way?'"
What makes the Public Services Summit at Nobel Week such a unique event?
Yvon Le Roux: Every year the Summit brings together several hundred senior policy advisors and high-level decision-makers committed to technology-enabled transformation in the public sector, including central, regional and local government, defense, education and healthcare.
We always endeavor to bring together a powerful mix of thought-provoking speakers and valuable breakout sessions, but that is only half the story.
Because of the closed-door nature of the event, attendees are able to discuss their challenges with peers in an open, friendly environment, free from the external scrutiny that accompanies many public sector gatherings. For many, that in itself is worth the ticket.
What kind of speakers does the Summit attract?
Yvon Le Roux: We are still finalizing the speaker lineup for this year, but already we have confirmed:
- Jorge Sampaio, former President of Portugal and currently United Nations High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations.
- Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School professor, founder of its Centre for Internet and Society and also founder of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and share.
- Carlotta Perez, professor of technology and socio-economic development at Tallinn University and author of Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages.
What is the theme this year?
Yvon Le Roux: This year we will be focusing on 'Innovation, Sustainability and Inclusion'. We think the public sector is really beginning to embrace innovation, but they want to do this in a way that is sustainable and inclusive.
In a nutshell, the question we are posing is: 'how can innovation help all sectors of society advance in a sustainable way?' There is some evidence that the current wave of 'Web 2.0' Internet applications could have an important role to play.
To what extent are Web 2.0 applications being adopted in the public sector?
Yvon Le Roux: Surprisingly, the public sector is not as averse to these applications as you might think. At last year's Summit we interviewed 88 senior delegates on this issue and as individuals most respondents were already using these applications.
We found 78 percent used (or intended to use) blogs and 67 percent contributed to their own or someone else's, as a work activity.
Similarly, 78 percent did (or would) use wikis, 75 percent used (or intended to use) Really Simple Syndication readers, 67 percent favored social networking sites for work use and 60 percent were open to bookmark managers such as deli.cio.us.
These results were from a cross-section of public sector organizations in central, local, regional and state government, education, healthcare and other areas.
So is the public sector embracing technological innovation more generally?
Yvon Le Roux: Again, our survey was surprisingly positive. For example:
- We discovered 68 percent of the respondents said their organizations were using new technologies to enable people to work together easily and productively regardless of their physical location.
- Of those questioned, 59 percent said their organizations were moving away from command-and-control structures and placing more emphasis on non-hierarchical cooperation and collaboration, which is heavily dependent on Web 2.0 applications.
- Nearly 57 percent of people said their organizations were using new technologies to maximize the extent to which people outside the organization could contribute to the goals the public sector body is seeking to achieve.
- Almost 56 percent said their organizations were empowering and involving citizens and other external stakeholders in new ways and to a much greater extent than in the past.
- Finally, a significant proportion of respondents-44 percent-said their management understood Web 2.0 and had considered its implications for the organization.
Evidently this demonstrates a great deal of eagerness on the part of many public sector organizations to use technical innovation as a way of changing the way they work and improving citizen service.
It is precisely those forward-looking organizations that are likely to benefit most from the dialogue in store at this year's Cisco Public Services Summit.
