Is It Time for #Gov20 to Become Just #Gov?

Three years ago, I used the #Gov20 hashtag for almost all the content I posted to Twitter. The community of government folks on Twitter was smaller and most of them were pushing the Government 2.0 movement forward, so the lion’s share of what we talked about centered on social media and the innovative use of technology. But that’s not true anymore.

With the rise of Open Government, some people began to use #opengov. In fact, you’d often see both tags in the same tweet, causing people to debate the difference between the two. Well, we’ve “hashed” over that topic enough and I don’t want to re-open it here.

My intention is to discuss a new reality – one that is both normal (it happens all the time with movements) and noteworthy (marks a stage of maturity). My sense is that we can explore that reality together through the following questions:

When you post to Twitter and it is not social media or technology-
related, what hashtag do you use? What should we use?

A bit more context: GovLoop just updated it’s Government-Related Twitter Hashtag Directory and released two new Twitter guides for government employees and organizations. Moreover, GovTwit announced it’s unfortunate demise a few weeks ago and Twitter just launched its @Gov handle.

With all of this government activity related to Twitter — coupled with my own new patterns and habits of posting — I’m realizing that there is no good way to have a conversation about general topics related to government on Twitter. So I’d like to ask the community if it’s time to be more intentional about how we communicate with one another in a public way on Twitter.

How do we want to have conversations among ourselves such that citizens can
watch a group of smart, committed public servants having key conversations…
and invite them to join that conversation in the process?

To me, this kind of shift just might be the clearest sign that #Gov20 has arrived.