DorobekInsider.com: Getting insights into Government 2.0

Wikinomics co-author Anthony D. Williams
Regular readers will know that I am passionate about this Web 2.0/Government 2.0 stuff. (I was speaking to the ACT/IAC 2008 Voyagers class today and I like to ask how people define Web 2.0/Government 2.0. The responses were ranged for collaboration to networking to Web-based… My definition is that Web 2.0 embraces the concept that all of us are better then each of us individually. Web 2.0 taps into the Internet and the Web tools that can really enable that collaborative theory.)
So Thursday at 2:30p ET on Federal News Radio 1500 AM and and online at FederalNewsRadio.com on our mid-day show, InDepth with Francis Rose, I am going to join Rose for a conversation with Anthony D. Williams, co-author of the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.
Williams, who spoke at IAC’s Executive Leadership Conference last year, is spearheading nGenra’s (formerly NewParadigm’s) Government 2.0 project. [See Williams’ 2007 post on the project here.]
OMB is one of the backers of the Government 2.0 project.
My connection to the Government 2.0 project… and Williams bio after the break…
So I — and Federal Computer Week, where I served as editor in chief, and FCW’s parent organization, the 1105 Government Information Group — like to take some credit for getting the U.S. involved with the Government 2.0 project. As I noted last year:
Tapscott was the keynote speaker at Federal Computer Week’s 22nd biannual CIO Summit, held earlier this year. At that event, he and others discussed those new ways of thinking and what it means for government, which piqued the attendees’ curiosity.
Clearly there was some kind of connection because Tapscott addressed the CIO Council’s annual off-site strategy meeting earlier this month.
“Unique opportunities exist to improve the effectiveness of the government,” the notice states. “With the ever-changing technology landscape, and the use of different technologies, it is vitally important for agencies to employ the current effective strategies and trends to implement technology to continue to meet the needs of agencies and, ultimately, the citizens.”
Exploring whether government is ready for the wiki world is a subject that will benefit from more research.
As FCW reporters sought to talk to those involved with the upcoming project, they kept hitting dead ends. It turns out that not everybody was ready to talk, so they deferred until they all could get on the same page.
It probably says that research into Government 2.0 is all the more necessary.
There is a lot of good work that came out of the FCW CIO Summit, now the Government Leadership Summit. I also got to meet EPA CIO Molly O’Neill, who has taken many of the ideas and tested them out. Read more about that here.
Finally, here is Williams bio:
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