The following is in response to Nick Charney’s post here:
http://www.cpsrenewal.ca/2010/01/column-risky-business-deputy-minister.html
My comment is too long to fit in the comments field, so I quickly threw it up here.
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Nick,
With all due respect, the notion that the early public servant movers in the social media place have paid some kind of price for their activities couldn’t be further from the truth. I was among the first generation crop that started evangelizing on the significance of social media, and I can say that the effect it had on my career was entirely positive.
In fact, some of the most rewarding opportunities that arose for me were due entirely to the risks that I took in this area between 2005-2007. I would also like to clarify a point: The fact that someone stops blogging can not be in any way linked to a mythical “price” that they paid for their openness.
Speaking from my experience, I would suggest that it can also signify a maturation in one’s perspective about how to engineer change in a large organization. In my case, I now realize that the most important work I can do to influence and hopefully improve life in the public service is through my day-to-day interactions with colleagues, in which I attempt to demonstrate solid management of my files, speak truth to power when necessary, be prepared to brief up about bad news, and encourage cooperation and identification of connections between people working in different organizations.
In more cases than not, my experience has taught me that this risk-taking behaviour manifests itself through discretion, reliability, and a very unglamourous steadiness that builds trust around one’s colleagues.
The fact that most of these behaviours are often (interestingly) anathema to the core principles of social media, can lead to confusion about whether one is active or not.
This leads me to some suggestions around the notion of ‘risk’. As you rightly identify, there are a bunch of risks that are present whenever one “speaks out” publically about problems/issues in the public service. However, these are an extremely small subset of the risks that public servants face every day, and we all need to be very cautious about overstating their significance. If we are to focus on our core responsibilities (see Values and Ethics Code), then I would say that the most important risk-taking behaviours would be things like: focusing on improving citizen service by getting the operational issues right; internalizing the democratic values portion of the code that demands we are “helping Ministers, under law, to serve the public interest”; and never losing sight of the need to “demonstrate respect, fairness and courtesy in their dealings with both citizens and fellow public servants.”
These are the important risks that, when taken appropriately, can lead to the creation of a public service in which we can be proud, and one that excels at playing the part we have been assigned.
-Ian Ketcheson