There’s a great interview from last month’s Fortune Magazine with the Lieutenant Governor of California, Gavin Newsom.  He has taken his experience from the restaurant industry and wants to apply it to running a government.  More specifically, he discusses how Yelp changed the restaurant industry.  Restaurants went from serving customers how they wanted, to fearing bad reviews online.  This meant that the diners were now participants in the restaurants success, rather than the subjects of the restaurants desires.  Newsom thinks this is applicable to government because todays American citizen is more of a subject of government, not a participant in it.  He says that things are done to us, not for us.

I think this is a brilliant idea, but one that is difficult to implement.  It is smart because many Americans think that government can solve issues by throwing tax dollars at them.  This is not necessarily true, as some issues require better and smarter solutions, not gobs of money.  Also, there should be more accountability in government services, and it can be achieved in a “Yelp” like way.  For example, the DMV’s in the NYC area should all be reviewed online by users, and then rewards and punishments can be distributed accordingly.

The issue with this, is it is extremely hard to implement it on a large scale.  Sure, its easy to review the service at the DMV, or how clean your local county park is.  However, what happens if the president or congress get bad online reviews?  Do we just kick them out?  So in general, I think that Newsom’s idea is great for small government services, but far from revolutionary.  Thoughts?