The changing face of politics

Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 8 July, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking, Collaboration, Gov2.0, Innovation, Web 2.0, social media |
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The whole idea of Government 2.0 is changing the way government works. Traditionally, the government is the master of the country. They could say and do alot of stuff that can affect the economy and society in general. Good governments make life better and bad ones just create a whole lot of rubbish. However, the concept of Government 2.0 passes some of these powers back to people and allow citizens to speak and do more.

In Australia, we have the Gov2.0 taskforce and the government is looking at ways on how they can get people to contribute and collaborate more. Obama is one of the famous advocates of Gov 2.0, the Americans are a fair way ahead of other countries on this with many initiatives in this space. Other countries like Denmark, UK and Singapore have started some initiatives in this space as well.

First and foremost Government 2.0 is defined by Wikipedia as:

Government 2.0 is neologism for attempts to apply the social networking and integration advantages of Web 2.0 to the practice of government. Government 2.0 is an attempt to provide more effective processes for government service delivery to individuals and businesses.

I would say there are three key components to Gov2.0, 1) social media, 2) collaboration and 3) innovation. These three components are similar to that of Web 2.0.

Social media in Governments
This is a strong area in which governments can easily do. Look at how Obama connected with his voters during his presidential campaign. He has effectively use social media to create and mobilise his army of voters to donate and create awarness for his campaign. Governments can also use social media during disasters, examples of this are Australian CFA’s use of Twitter and facebook the deadly Victorian bushfires early this year. The ideas in this space are endless. Governments could use the army of connected individuals via their computers and mobile phones to provide information, help each other and aggregate information.

Collaboration
Collaboration in Governments is still relatively new. There are some reasons behind this. Political information is generally quite sensitive and secretive so collaboration in any form would generally be more in-house as compared to public collaboration. However, this is not stopping interested individuals from joining publicly created groups to discuss about political issues and in some cases, people within the government agencies have joined in the conversation to listen and discuss what these folks have to say. One of this example is the Gov2.0 Google groups.

I can see this space growing as the government is making decisions on behalf of their citizens who voted for them. In some way or another they need to listen to them and what they say. This could make the decision making process easier or harder but for sure it would be a more informed decision. Could we even have citizens voting on every single bill, law and jury that takes place in the country? Maybe, I do see some problems with that though. We could have the government having the final veto in all matters and controls the relationships with other countries and the agency that has the top talents and analysts to help citizens make the right and informed decision. (Having said all these, I am taking the assumption that government and their staff for virtuous and honest).

Innovation
Innovation is a way in which government can engage with experts in various fields. Tapping into the larger network of experts in or outside of the country allows a greater flow of idea contribution and hopefully these ideas is worth it thus providing a better solution. I really do not see much activity in this space so far. However, I do believe as points 1 and 2 evolve, Innovation in government will evolve as well.

Government 2.0 will change the way people work. Doing this well can help retain top talents in the country, improved satisfaction ratings, improve the economy and a better society in general. Government 2.0 is not without its challenges and we have to study and work through each of them.

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