AS THE COVID-19 pandemic forces people to think of new ways to live under the “new normal”, the national and local governments must be open to collaborating with citizens. Given today’s complex and fast-moving world, we must rethink how outdated forms of governance and economic growth have not served us. We need new paradigms and new ways of thinking.
Take for example a group of community organizers and volunteers in Brooklyn, New York; they developed a COVID-19 response system using chatbots, artificial intelligence and data analytics. The system aimed to help the people in their neighborhood, especially the vulnerable ones, by providing meals and groceries, among other things. In about six months, the system served about seven percent of the community’s population. That’s community-driven change, people responding to the urgent challenges they face and the long-term challenges.
We must welcome community-driven responses. After all, the pandemic has also highlighted the limitations of institutional responses. The highest levels of government, in their worst responses, can sometimes resort to denial of the problems (remember some officials saying COVID-19 is just like the simple flu and would disappear in summer?), blaming of citizens, corruption of stimulus funds and many other ways, unwillingness to face the truth about what is happening. There is gross incompetence, and the use of executive force to crack down on dissenters. All these handicap civil service and partners who are willing to work with the government.
Government alone will not be able to solve these problems we are facing now. The problems are too great, the scale is too extreme, and the problems are too embedded, the injustices too structural.
The national and local governments should take a “whole-of-society-approach” in dealing with the new normal. Taiwan is a good example. It has effective intra-government, private sector, and civil society collaborations.
The “whole-of-society approach” does not say that we are all trained to do the same thing at the same time. We need to think about how to structure and sequence these conversations to let artists and activists lead, let researchers and society determine how we set these paths in building on the creative work they are already doing. The government, companies, and private sector can then help us figure out how we set policies and organize markets to realize these more courageous futures. And we need to trust our people, not scare them away.
