OK, so i may not be a truly early adopter of this technology – however, for the new year i resolved to embrace it, use it, and encourage other government professionals to do the same.
Not sure how much time i will have to keep things updated, but i am off to a good start.
I found a great web 2.0 document on the Muni Gov 2.0 group and sent it to my staff person who is redesigning our City website. We plan to incorporate some of the ideas into the redesign.
Yes, I think there is a bright future in government for Web 2.0; however, I am not convinced the future is now. I have seen some interesting examples, such as at Fairfax County VA, but I find government seems to only move at the same pace and level of technology adoption as the population it is serving. Until our elected leaders get more blog comments than e-mails, until they get more pod-cast hits than voicemails, and until the demographics of the government employee base shifts to have more people under 35 than people over 45…. are we just fruitlessly trying to push a string up a hill???
There has to be tangible and measurable outcomes for implementing a web 2.0 project. It feels like the right thing to do, but I am having trouble articulating the need and value beyond technology for the sake of technology (which I am fundamentally opposed to). After reading comments on other threads, the “underutilized” and “obstacles” to implementation around security are real challenges that we must find a way to mitigate before exposing our organizations to unnecessary costs and risks.
Here is a revolutionary idea based on an interesting point about government history I learned a while ago…. For the first hundred + years, the numbers of representatives changed with each census, ensuring that they could reasonably and rationally represent their constituents. Then they ran into trouble with the 1900 or 1910 census… The reason we have 435 representatives is that they could not put any more desks in the building!! Maybe it is time to use technology to go back to the founding fathers’ ideas about how many people could be reasonably and rationally represented. The House could literally be conducted from the houses’ of 3,000 or more representatives!
I would like to see a lobby group or company try to influence a majority of the House if they are scattered across the country.