One quote leaped out at me from Smart Mob’s piece on Web 2.0 and governments – the LA Fire Department’s comment that
We can no longer afford to work at the speed of government. We have responsibilities to the public to move the information as quickly as possible … so that they can make key decisions.
Raises a lot of interesting questions such as whether post web 2.0, governments must move to integrate themselves with their electorates as never before – or lose relevance. This is all very well during elections (I’ve been following Barack Obama’s Twitter postings for fun – who knows who actually posts them, mind you? And Apophenia has a good piece on the same area) but is there any real commitment to participatory democracy in everyday life? The UK has an eGovernment unit (but see below) but I’ve yet to hear of much that it’s actually done. So will the departments that actually do do something just start to drift away, back towards (for want of a better word) the people? And what will government do then?
And to what extent is this happening in organisations? Sorry, a lot of questions for a Saturday!
LATER: Oops – they shut down eGovernment. But you can find out if they made any substantive progress here.
Filed under: Web 2.0, government
