Hero For A Day – Your Government 2.0 Heroes

I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the 30,000 strong in the GovLoop community, and I’m happy to interact with all the readers on this site. However, GovLoop is not the only place to find some of the top influencers in the Government 2.0 community, and today I wanted to highlight a great idea that our friends over at GovFresh are discussing.

They have declared today “Gov 2.0 Hero Day” to recognize citizens doing great work inside and outside of government. The site has already highlighted a number of the top members of our government community, including GovLoop founder Steve Ressler, and Chris Dorobek from Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s Daily Debrief here in Washington.

Among the other Gov 2.0 Heroes they recently highlighted is Anil Dash, who started up the new Expert Labs platform late last year to help government officials take advantage of the know-how of their citizens through already existing social networks. Anil is helping government officials realize the true power of social media by connecting policy makers with important resources in science and technology.

Also on the list is Mark Drapeau, a science fellow for the U.S. Department of Defense turned influential Gov 2.0 blogger, whose work can now be seen everywhere from Washington Life and Federal Computer Week to the Huffington Post. I think Mark has written some tremendous pieces on how social media can and will fit with government agencies. Mark was the Co-chair this year of the Gov 2.0 Expo, which brought together thousands of government officials and citizens to discuss the idea of government as a platform and the potential that technology and social media hold for our government.

Today, I’d like to nominate another addition to the list – Casey Coleman. Casey is the CIO at the General Service Administration (GSA), and is widely known as a leader in embracing new technology – especially Web 2.0. Like me, Casey is a strong supporter of teleworking, as you may be able to reason from her recent blog post expressing frustration with traffic or her post on the snowstorms earlier this year in DC. Casey is not just the manager of the agency’s $500 million IT program, she also has a very large following on Twitter, and is always on top of the latest developments in mobile technology.

Happy Gov 2.0 Hero Day everyone! I look forward to hearing your suggestions about who else should be recognized and who you see as influential in the government 2.0 space.