Let me introduce myself to GovLoop community.
My name is Alena Popova. I’m developing the direction of Government 2.0 in Russia. I’ve created the project Duma 2.0 (in russian), which was established in December 2009 and operates on the principle of Citizen 2.0
Project Duma 2.0 is a social initiative aimed to improve the laws and to find effective ways of solving problems. This project is designed to help ordinary citizens to solve important social problems and seek effective and appropriate ways to address the realities of pressing social issues in the Internet and among experts and inform the public authorities about these decisions.The aim of the project is not simply to inform officials about the decisions and initiatives, but lobbying of these ideas at the legislative level with the maximum of their application. Duma 2.0 – the first project in Russia, which was created in the global world trend called Government 2.0 and Citizen 2.0, which lies in the effective interaction between society and government. Such a system operates in all developed countries, in Russia this trend actively promotes by the president Dmitry Medvedev. In order to make it clear what was going on and what goals we pursue, we recorded a video of Government 2. 0 Russia (in Russian)
Originally, the project was supposed to become a place to bring citizens and government officails together. The job of the people would be to discuss issues and changes to laws, while the job of the government would be to listen in. But, this megabyte democracy turned out to be too big a bite for the Russians to chew. We understood that right now this scheme does not work. Primarily because users give few suggestions, reverting to scolding instead. So the efficiency is low…We are the pioneers in this format. That is why we had failures that we learned from. But, Duma 2.0 picked up a lot of interest. And people are waiting to see what it will ultimately end up being
Not so far I’ve orginized russian round table on Gov 2.0 in Russia. You can see a small review of it here
I should notice that in Russia there are very few people and professionals who are engaged in Government 2.0. So my goal is to attract atention to this issue as IT-sphere, and the state and the society in general, because I believe that the development of Gov 2.0 – must be one of the most important areas of society today
I’ve created at GovLoop society – Gov 2.0 in Russia, where I’m going to tell you about all russian innovations and projects in sphere of Gov 2.0. Also, I’m will appreciate if you can help me to tell about Best World Cases on Gov 2.0 to be useful in Russia
And I want to announce about Russian Gov 2.0 Conferences and I’m ready to invite international experts as experts to tell Russian Community about experience
Gov 2.0 experts in Russia understand that citizens using government services should be the ones to decide what services are offered to them, that the politicians should be active online, and that the government can benefit from the social initiatives.
Our President has a Twitter account and a blog. On top of that, he actively calls on government officials to react to citizen appeals online in an efficient manner. But in Russia, there is no one platform for that, no government e-mail system…The use of agency work is not up to par either, which forces the government to take on the functions that are not the government’s primary job. So we are consulting with a lot with international experts to discover mechanisms of Government 2.0 that would work in our country
Welcome Alena…it is great to see Gov 2.0 cross international boundaries and cross both citizen and gov 2.0
Original post at http://www.ytfiles.com/2010/06/11/government-2-0-in-russia-megabyte-democracy-an-interview-with-russian-e-gov-expert-alena-popova/