Web 2.0 and Government
yesterday at the Government 2.0 workshop in the ESPP Alexander Schellong and I discussed the impact of web 2.0 on government. Web 2.0 is a tag used to talk about technologies and practices that allow the aggregation of user-generated content into meaningful (or actionable) information by making data sharable across platforms. We used a simple framework distinguishing between the political process and public administration to describe government and then asked where in the model would web 2.0 applications make a difference. We found some interesting examples from insight communities in the intelligence field, youtube-questions to presidential candidates, to facebook revolutionaries in Pakistan. And the future is still to come.
The interesting aspect of Web 2.0 is that it is not a value-neutral technology that can be applied to more efficienctly structure processes, but a way-of-life that shapes and changes power-relationships. And this needs to be analyzed. tbc.