Talking Government 2.0

Originally posted Wednesday 10/8 at http://cparente.wordpress.com:

Last week I took part in a fascinating discussion around Government 2.0, i.e. the use of Web 2.0 tools by government agencies. I connected my client Scott Burns of GovDelivery with Mark Drapeau, who has made a name for himself locally by blogging on Government 2.0 on Mashable. Mark is an Associate Research Fellow at the National Defense University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy, and here’s a link if you haven’t read any of his stuff: http://mashable.com/author/mark-drapeau/.

GovDelivery had just released some new 2.0 functionality (http://tinyurl.com/3oyavw) for government clients and that was the original purpose for the call. But the conversation went far beyond that announcement, starting with Mark’s frustration with the status of 2.0 in government and even the term itself. He feels there is a lot more talk than action in DC around Government 2.0, and that many have learned the buzzwords but few are implementing. In his view government is very detached from a lot of the exciting things happening in places like Silicon Valley, Boston and New York.

So what does the term mean exactly? Mark and Scott distilled it down to “using new technologies for better communication between people,” which is pretty easy to understand. Unfortunately Mark feels government is NOT really taking advantage of social software for better communication internally or externally.

He mentioned some exceptions, and highlighted NASA’s CoLab project, which he later posted on. Scott pointed out that there are a lot of government success stories out there, but GovDelivery began with a focus on helping government agencies improve “the basics” of communication with the public first, and is now working in more 2.0 features. Here’s how he laid out the process the company has followed:

* Establish a secure, multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that automates, personalizes and ensures the delivery of government emails
* Offer RSS feeds and APIs so additional channels can be pulled into government web sites
* Beta launch the 2.0 Collaboration Network (earlier this year), which allows agencies to cross-promote topics of interest during the subscription process, a kind of Amazon “others liked this” feature that results in big increases in subscriber numbers
* Add the ability to easily implement blog management and tag clouds, and start to bring the citizen into the conversation

Scott and Mark tossed around some really interesting ideas. Possible projects included a wiki that contains best practices for start ups, a series of posts around how to gradually implement 2.0 functions into an agency’s communication strategy, and pulling together recommendations on how government decision-makers can get in better touch with early stage technology companies.

Whether you call it Government 2.0 or not, there is a lot of innovation going on around better communication with citizens. And these two guys will continue to be leaders around the issue.