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:

Don Tapscott has become something of a guru of the Web 2.0 world. A speaker, author and consultant, Tapscott focuses on business strategies and organizational transformation. His most recent book, “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” focuses on new Web technologies and the principles behind them, which he often calls peer production. Tapscott wrote that wikinomics focuses on openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally. An elemental part of that is the belief that all of us are collectively smarter than any one of us.

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.

So it probably didn’t come as a surprise when there was an announcement on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site last week titled, “Interagency management conference,” which will be awarded to Tapscott’s organization, New Paradigm. The research, to be titled, “Government 2.0: Wikinomics, Government and Democracy,” will look at how agencies can implement technologies that will help them get their jobs done and meet the needs of citizens.

“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:

Anthony Williams, Vice President and Executive Editor at New Paradigm, is co-author with Don Tapscott of WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. An avid researcher and writer, Anthony has pursued his interests in the wide-ranging impacts of new technologies on social and economic life for over a decade. His work has been featured in publications such as Business 2.0 and Optimize Magazine, and has been widely circulated in proprietary syndicated research programs. Anthony was previously Research Director with Digital 4Sight and has consulted to Fortune 500 firms and international institutions, including the World Bank. He holds a Masters in Research from the London School of Economics and is a Ph.D. candidate there in the Department of Government.