Government 2.0 - Two Cheers for the Romantics Part 2

We had a great discussion on the prospects and possibilities facing government from the growing impact of Web 2.0 tools and capabilities. These are just a few of the insights from the 3-hour discussion:

• In the end, the discussion about Web 2.0 and its impact on government was a discussion about redistributing power and authority and strengthening democracy. Radical change and deep structural reform would be slow and in some cases impossible. But anything that improved, even if incrementally, the way citizens could engage with and influence the public policy and management process was a good thing.


• The new more collaborative web offered a bunch of tools for engagement and interaction that were mostly good and useful. They tended to be less useful in the face of conflicting interests and making some of the hard trade-offs that are often at the heart of politics.


• There were mounting pressures for change in the way politics, policy and public services were conducted from rising generations of digital natives for whom the instincts and tools of Web 2.0 were not revolutionary, but simply the way they lived.


• We are witnessing a contest between the potential for disruptive change offered by the new tools and capabilities of the collaborative web and the potential for denial and delay from within the system. We shouldn’t underestimate the risks of these new tools being either blunted or co-opted by existing interests and those with entrenched positions of power and control.


• The best way to explore the potential of the new tools of Web 2.0 was to start inside, that is, to start using them in the day-to-day work of government agencies and politicians. If you don’t get a sense of what these tools can do and the value they bring in your own work, it’s hard to imagine how you can champion them as tools of reform for the wider processes of public policy, service delivery and citizen engagement.


• There’s a real question of just how long governments and their systems of public management have got to respond to the pressure for reform that these tools, and the expectations of those for whom they have become second nature, really bring.


• By contrast, there was some agreement that at some point there existed an irreconcilable conflict between the instincts and ethics of Web 2.0 – open, collaborative and trusting – and the need in some situations in government for secrecy and the need (or desire?) to wield raw power and authority to achieve policy outcomes.