Ten Trends Shaping Government Today
Futurist Jack Uldrich has posted an item to his website looking at Ten Trends shaping Government today. Although each item is arguable and may be context specific depending on ‘which’ Government you’re looking at, it’s a good overall take suggesting things to do with data, the interenet, crowdsourcing and the like. However I think Jack is missing one HUGE trend, the rise of what I call MOGRA’s
What’s a ‘MOGRA’ I hear you ask? A MOGRA is a: Massive, Organised, Grass-Roots, Activist group. Examples of MOGRAs can be see in the likes of MoveOn.org, Getup.org.au, 360.0rg, AVAAZ,org.au and many others. Here’s what I posted to Jack’s site in response to his article:
Jack I think you’re missing perhaps one of the more critical elements changing the face of Government and Governance, what I refer to as MOGRA’s – Massive Organised Grass-Roots Activists which are increasingly seen to by pass entrenched Government barriers, or force the awareness of Governments into a new perspective space. The tech, without the action element, will be unlikely to shape Governments
I see MOGRAs as different from previous activist groups that have been around for signficant periods of time – say Greenpeace, World WildLife Fund, SeaShepherd and so on in that MOGRAs tend to ebb and flow based on a variety of issues of importance to their membership, where as a World Wild Life Fund would typically care only about issues affecting animals. MOGRA’s leverage online spaces in an organised and fast paced manner. They understand that people will drop in and out of campiagns and focus areas as both suits their time and interest levels.
This adds to their dynamic nature as much as it does risks their longevity. But what they do well, is spread a message quickly, widely and targeted to ramp up awareness and gather support. The approach may seem impulsive but it is almost ALWAYS organised, relying on crowdsourcing to carry the workload.
Expect to see more MOGRA’s influencing Government policy in the future
Columbia University’s Earth Institute have just made publicly available their World Happiness Report, joining the expanding list of happiness reports emerging ultimately from Bhutan’s Happiness Index. There’s some interesting results in this one and some that you might expect were more obvious, like the idea that at a certain point, more money won’t make you…
Read More >Whilst the main thrust of Australian economic activity is said to be in the hands of the Federal Government, we should not overlook the significant role that Local Council Government’s can have. As the Federal Government wrestles with falling taxation revenues and an apparent inability to get the message across about distributing the income of…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber chats with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin about the challenges facing the Northern Territory, the farming and mining sectors. In summing up the emerging signs of a clash between agricultural uses of land and land use for resource and mining needs, Marcus uses the phrase ‘Eat or Extract’ as the…
Read More >As most of you know I nominated this year as the 2012 International Year of Resilience because frankly, that’s what I reckon large chunks of the world need right now. The twitter feed is #2012YearofResilience. I sent a few of these tips out at the start of the year and have seen a few of…
Read More >A new city is due to emerge in Darwin over the coming couple of years and the key question is – what sort of attention is being paid to weather related disasters in the design phase? Paul Dale on ABC Radio Darwin chats with futurist Marcus Barber about planning and weather. You can download the…
Read More >Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ is best known for its second verse – “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains”. As vast tracts of Australia again face the prospect of massive floods I wonder if our Urban Planners ever consider the significance of…
Read More >Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…
Read More >There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…
Read More >Simple question really. Or is it? In this quick article I provide an overview of the difference between strategy that is D.E.A.D and A.L.I.V.E Think of it as a potential ‘do this’ collection for your Organisation You can download the article for free here – ‘Is your Organisational Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?’
Read More >Lots of thoughts for the year already underway, with some covering a range of ideas from ‘don’t cut corners on relative incidentals when the project is significant for you’ to ‘you can’t change your approach if you keep thinking inside the same box’. But for now a reminder about planning for your future: If you…
Read More >