By annie shum | June 4, 2009
Earlier this week, the nation’s first ever CIO, Vivek Kundra, urged the use of Web 2.0 approaches to address the needs of government and citizens at the Management of Change conference in Norfolk, Virginia. Kundra outlined several important areas where he believed Web 2.0 can help improve government: connecting with citizens and their ideas (social computing), routing around the horizontal and vertical silos surrounding government data (open APIs), and tapping into the potential savings of low-cost new software applications and processing capabilities (SaaS and cloud computing.)
Among the three areas, Kundra’s perception that citizens were a true peer group in the process of governing seemed to come through clearest:
“We’ve got to recognize that we can’t treat the American people as subjects but as a co-creator of ideas. We need to tap into the vast amounts of knowledge… in communities across the country. The federal government doesn’t have a monopoly on the best ideas.”
That the global, pervasive network known as the Internet can directly connect citizens with their government is obviously an idea well-aligned with Web 2.0 ideas. Not that the vision for something known as Government 2.0 is a new one. It goes back to the very beginning of the Web 2.0 discussion. But with a new administration in place in Washington and a passionate CIO that by all appearances is progressive and understands the modern IT era, the timing seems to be ripe for a remaking of government and perhaps even democracy itself.
The New York Times posted its interview the nation’s CTO, Aneesh Chopra, today. Half of his priorities fall into the Government 2.0 category.
So given the premise that we have new means to extend and improve our government in 2.0 ways, what might such a creation look like? What would the tenets be? While the notion of Government 2.0 is still just taking shape and it will take, by definition, the collective efforts of somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 million people to shape, the following general tenets seem to make sense:
Defining Government 2.0
Web as a Civic Platform. A direct riff from the first principle of Web 2.0, this simply means that the Internet will be the dominant channel for citizens to interact with their government and vice versa. It also means that it will be the foundation and delivery channel for powerful new applications, open data, and social computing related to government operation and by extension, Government 2.0. Thus, the Web is the most powerful tool for communication, delivery of services, and citizen engagement yet created, thereby enabling the following outcomes.
Social Governance. The government of the near future will be much more social than before, internally more at first and then externally, particularly as new candidates take office off of social platforms (think Obama’s Twitter account actually put to good use after the election.) The rise of global social networks and their displacement already of most forms of traditional communication online, including e-mail in many countries, has shown how we prefer to communicate. Human beings (and therefore citizens) are social creatures and tools which inherently leverage our nature will work better than tools that don’t. Governments are social systems and it only makes sense that a social tools will make government work better internally (collaboration amongst government employees with things like Enterprise 2.0) as well as with its citizens and other stakeholders. Certainly election campaigns have caught this bug (until they have political power, they have to use the most powerful tools available). Increased transparency and accountability will come about because of social governance, even if outstanding questions include how to create a government in which the default is to be so (though one would assume that network effects by default would create rewards enough for government participants doing the right thing).
Participatory Citizenship. One of the most powerful aspects of the Internet is the ability to be connected directly to everyone on the network, whenever both sides want that. With mobile phones, everyone can be connected to their government all the time (in fact, they are in many ways already, because of emergency response laws and other reasons.) But social governance will lead to participatory citizenship. Going far beyond today’s online mainstays such as instantly polling your constituency, participatory citizenship is about using the network to build a better, stronger government with both data and services as well as policy and decision mutually made together. It’s a remaking of how closely involved citizens are in government, how much power they have, and the walls between government and the people. Think about the rise of social media vs. traditional media and participatory citizenship makes government undergo the same shift. Again, those with political power today may not want this in true 2.0 form, but as we increasingly see with candidates, newcomers can offer this to their potential electorates in order to reach office, and so increasingly the walls will be torn down.
Electorate Intelligence. The most valuable resource the government has are its citizens. Combined, they have more knowledge and capability than any other capacity available. Tapping into it that knowledge, eliciting it, and leveraging it towards shared goals and mutual benefit will be one of the most powerful activities that the government will engage in. The analogue with Web 2.0 is the principle of “harnessing collective intelligence” and this aspect may ultimately generate the most long-term value of Government 2.0.
And there’s sure to be more as the ideas of Government 2.0 evolve. We are entering an era of uncertain times and it’s clear that some things need to change if we can agree on what they are. The current condition of our country is a mandate writ large to do something, and for the first time since our government was created, we now easily have the power within our grasp to do something that is both momentous, new, and valuable, (as well as, hopefully, wise) that wasn’t possible before for both technical and social reasons. Done right, improving the way we run our government will make us all economically, socially, culturally, and yes, civilly, better than we are today. Fortunately, like Web 2.0, the grassroots, bottom-up aspect will ensure that much of this will be done by the folks in government on the ground, or by you and I. Government 2.0 isn’t waiting for a federal mandate, though that certainly won’t hurt.
Posted by Dion Hinchcliffe, June 3, 2009
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Leave a Reply
« Google unveils powerful Search Appliance for businesses | Home | `Smart grid’ — power lines move into digital age »
RSS Feeds
