Government Innovation: Pursuit of Happiness (Part 3 of 3)

When people talk about government innovation the discussion tends to revolve around new projects, new buildings and new technologies that the public sector either should be creating or should be directly investing in.

But one of the most potentially breakthrough innovations that our government could do to be a Gov 2.0 leader in arts and culture doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t expand the government at all.

Copyright laws, often thought of as laws meant to protect those who invest time and money into creating something new or unique from others financially gaining off of their contribution for free, were actually created under more utilitarian principles, not personal or commercial interests.

The ‘Copyright Clause,’ Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

An idea like this would probably be called socialist by mainstream media or an equally superficial source today. However, between James Madison and Charles Pinckney, the idea of allowing the government to grant someone temporary ownership of, at the time, mostly literary creations, was born on August 18th 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, and solidified when the Constitution was written.

But the goal wasn’t necessarily protecting private financial gain, but rather a larger societal advancement of ideas and innovation, and the constitutional framers recognized that providing some protection was necessary towards that end.

In this spirit, I think it’s necessary to re-evaluate what exactly copyright laws are doing, and to make sure they are accomplishing what the people who created the law intended them to. Let me ask you this: Could you see James Madison cheering the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on when they sued a 12 year-old girl who lived in subsidized government housing with her single mother for damages up to $150,000 per song that she downloaded over a service she paid for and thought was legal? Doubt it.

Although the RIAA, or sister organization for the movie industry, the MPAA, claims these lawsuits aren’t about money, does anyone actually believe them? They are upset because they haven’t been able to keep up with changing technology and consumer landscapes and have lost business to a totally economic market-generated solution, which is online file sharing and DRM-free (Digital Rights Management) music and video downloading. Yet, so far they have been fairly successful in using the government to promote their own financial interests.

However, if the government wants to spur innovation or the progression of culture and the arts, they could start by standing up to these special interests and creating a legal landscape where kids aren’t afraid to use their favorite song in a spontaneous YouTube video or school project.

Relatedly, one of the interesting ideas floated out recently in the spirit of helping leverage the public sector to advance culture and arts is creating a cabinet-level position of “Secretary of the Arts.” Qunicy Jones, all around music/arts mogul and winner of 27 Grammys (79 nominations) said, “My passion in life now, and one of the first conversations I’ll have with President Obama, is to beg for a Secretary of the Arts.”

When looking at public sector innovation, people tend to imagine a great behemoth of a federal program slowly eating up tax dollars while providing either very little or very specific benefit to certain people. But it doesn’t necessarily have to happen that way.

Perhaps just having a public advocate for the arts, which we are seeing getting cut left and right from public school, even though studies routinely show the enormous benefit of music and arts education, might be enough to spark larger change.

I’ll leave you with a story from a professor from George Mason University, that my father mentioned to me recently: In the 1700s as England was shipping off inmates to Australia, routinely 1/3 of the passengers died and the majority of surviving passengers were sick or badly beaten and injured.

They tried everything, except talking to an economist. And when they finally did, the economist suggest one simple tiny change: Instead of paying shipping companies for number of passengers they took on the ship they should instead pay based on how many got off the ship. The next voyage had a 99% survival rate.

Sometimes it just takes a small carefully thought-out change to provide the impetus for a groundbreaking innovation.

The Declaration of Independence as a Framework for Modern Government Innovation

After spending the better part of the first week of September in Washington, DC for O’Reilly Media’s Gov 2.0 Summit, I am re-invigorated and re-energized as to the enormous potential that exists for innovation in the public sector, especially as it relates to using technology as a springboard for innovation.

Although the public sector is not always the first place one thinks of when considering innovation, especially with technology, it has always been there, directly or indirectly since the beginning. So many technologies — GPS or the internet itself even, have been offshoots of government projects, usually coming from the Department of Defense. And understandably so,  what is more fundamental and important in government than protecting its own citizens from harm?

Now, however, new technology offers something so much more than advancement of military technology or public safety functions. Technology, if properly implemented, has nearly limitless potential for improving our quality of life, maximizing educational opportunities, improving the efficiency of government services, connecting people who otherwise could not have been connected and boldly offering the promise of actually ensuring what could reasonably be considered our most fundamental trifecta of basic rights: Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Perhaps one of the most well-known phrases in the English language, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” a guarantee of one’s unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, is the perfect way to think about how important and profound the government’s role in technological innovation can be.

A theme of the Gov 2.0 Summit, and a generally interesting concept to consider, is rethinking how we get the public services that we increasingly demand. Traditionally, government is looked at as a vending machine of services —where we put money through tax dollars in and get services out. But we would be missing an opportunity if we didn’t at least attempt to re-conceptualize that relationship.

What if the government provided the ability and platforms to allow us - the citizens - to innovate and improve our quality of life? What if ‘public’ didn’t mean the government but if it actually meant the public: us?

Over three forthcoming posts, I will focus each one on how the government is, can be, and should be innovating in each of those sectors, taking care to ask how best we can accomplish guaranteeing each of those rights and what role the government should actually play in:

Life: This analysis will focus on the military, public safety, medicine  and healthcare, emergency services and consumer regulations. In 2010, how can we re-guarantee the live’s of our citizens and what role should the government play in doing so?

 

Liberty: This will focus on criminal justice, judicial equality, ensuring social equality and freedom and the ability for all to succeed to the degree to which they desire and work towards. In 2010, how can we re-guarantee liberty, justice and equality for all of our citizens?

Pursuit of Happiness: This will focus on providing the platforms for our continued engagement in the arts, culture, shared experiences and leisure. In 2010, how can we re-guarantee the ability for all of our citizens to be part of activities and legacies which they most enjoy and which provide cultural value to our society?

Each of these fields is worth a volume of encyclopedias and I will barely do justice to each by limiting them, for now at least, to a singular article.

I do not claim that any of these analysis will answer all of these questions. In fact, I would prefer if they raised more questions than answered, as asking questions, and figuring out how to ask the right questions is, or at least should be, a precursor to progress and innovation, especially when it relates to blindingly fast moving technological innovation that can easily change fundamentals of our society without us even noticing.