The Accountability Newsroom uses social journalism tools to connect residents’ needs with frontline workers to co-create an honest organizational culture and improve services.
Give employees a real voice for change and they won’t need to grouse so loudly. Give bosses the view from the front lines and — one would hope — they might change what really matters instead of what is politically expedient.
The desired outcome is government more responsive to the public, more invigorating for employees, and more informative to executives seeking to better manage their businesses and agencies.
Organizations and businesses committed to quality principles are moving toward this dashboard of organizational change. I saw potent pieces demonstrated at a gathering of executives exploring the social management tools of Salesforce.com, including Rypple and Chatter, which are reinventing the HR function and flattening old hierarchies.
The social web is a monumental opportunity for changing government. The internal culture — the front lines of an organization — can lead the way and make visible to the leadership at the top of the hierarchy how things go wrong in the process of delivery. The front lines can also show what needs to change internally to make what is delivered right, appropriate, needed and desired. The public can help the front lines manifest that vision, working hand in glove through the social web to make it known.
The work of OpenGov is an enormous start, but it’s not enough, because the most important work — the human work — is not getting done. Work must also begin internally to set straight the gnarled processes that have been created by years of patchwork “solutions,” often fashioned by politicians in response to journalists’ investigations.
Without an effective tool for organizational change, politicians’ and investigative journalists’ claims to cut “waste and red tape” of government are empty and harmful rhetoric. That’s because government “waste” is commonly thought of as the line items in a budget. These lines reflect salaries and benefits to workers — some good, some bad, some necessary, some unnecessary. But in reality, although waste might reside in line items, more often waste resides between the lines, in the processes.
These wasteful processes are often fallout from the usual investigative journalism model, where corrupt politicians are exposed but corrupted systems remain. The corrupt politician points a finger, the fall guy is whisked away, and a patchwork fix is planted over the damaged system, simulating repair to the public eye. In reality, these patchworks often add only paperwork, bureaucracy and cost. They not only make working in government unpleasant — they are also the root cause of most residents’ complaints about services.
This is a May 2013 refinement of the idea for the Accountability Newsroom. I entered a synopsis of this in the 2013 Knight News Challenge. I still think it’s an interesting idea. Others with more resources, technical and otherwise, are working methodically toward similar visions. I believe some government agencies are moving themselves forward toward a vision of being a Social Enterprise. Although these internal efforts won’t have the newsroom aspect of this proposal, I commend them. My best wishes to all working earnestly in this arena to improve government and its services.
The Accountability Newsroom
Presented by Sally Duros
Poynter Institute Digital Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, 2011
In 2007, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan began his prison sentence. In 2012, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagoyevich began a 14 year term in prison for corruption.
What ‘s wrong? Why do investigations cut the weeds but not the roots of corruption.
I see a solution – Facebook meets Undercover Boss in The Accountability Newsroom.
We use social media, journalists, citizens and public employees to uncover government problems and create solutions. TAN takes a tip, confirms it, discusses it and finds a solution.
My name is Sally Duros and I have worked for The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Sun-Times and as a reformer within Chicago city hall. I understand why investigations seldom improve public services.
Everywhere publishers are under pressure to connect the dots between investigation and accountability, to engage audiences and to do more with less. Meanwhile government is in crisis and in some states even shutting down. Newsrooms play an important watchdog role and could help improve government. But traditional investigations don’t get at the root of problems or make it a priority to offer solutions to government inefficiency.
The Accountability Newsroom would change all of that. The Accountability Newsroom uses social media, journalists, citizens and public employees to uncover government problems and create solutions in a kind of ombudsmen role. TAN proposes a unique collaborative system that would move a tip from an employee through confirmation to discussion to solution, while uncovering information appropriate for investigation. On the inside, The Accountability Newsroom would employ six sigma and quality improvement
techniques to fix the processes that are neglected when political will alone is applied to problems.
On the outside of government, TAN shares affinity with the open government movement and the Sunlight Foundation. Others operating in a similar investigative space include the Public Insight Program at American Public Media, which connects expert sources with journalists.
The Accountability Newsroom’s clear public purpose is to use the collaborative power of social media to fix services to the public, improve working conditions within government and provide a better return for the taxpayer dollar. Sally Duros has been an editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time business journalist and an internal consultant on good government in Chicago city hall.
Sally Duros is a social journalist working toward the next generation of successful, credible online newsrooms.