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30 June 2008

Why government is ahead in Web 2.0

In the late 1990s everything connected to the Internet got an "e"–say eGovernment or eCommerce. With the evolution of mobile technology we saw the "m" appear by 2002–say mGovernment. Eventually we also saw the rise of "i" a little later. Now its a "2.0" frenzy every time ideas and principles of Web 2.0 are applied to a subject matter. To name a few: War 2.0, Politics 2.0 or Cyberlawyer 2.0. Of course there is also Government 2.0. A little research reveals that O'Reilly who coined the term Web 2.0 had briefly addressed this topic in May 2006. Though NYT's David Pogue stated in May 2007 that we have only picked the "low hanging fruit" of Web 2.0 ideas. Among his suggestions of what had been missed were applying Web 2.0 to government. Further research gave me the impression that with a few exceptions, the discussion of Government 2.0 has not been truly connected to work in eGovernment, political or administrative science. While I am still working on a paper to address this issue, I would already like to put one of my arguments out for discussion, that is the philosophy of Web 2.0 was more revolutionary for the business world than for government.

A fundamental aspect of Web 2.0 is user empowerment. In Web 2.0 this is done in different ways. Information that was formerly rated as proprietary, is now openly available. Users may rate or comment on products or firms in general, whether facilitated through an enterprise or by using their blogs. Moreover, firms make various resources available to the users so that they can satisfy their individual needs or create something new. In the early 90s, enterprises recognized the need to build closer relationships with their customers. While many companies have not lost control, they have significantly opened up. They have also followed public expectations and are active in government domains. We could, therefore, say that there has been a democratization of the consumer. The individual and collective power of the voice option increased.

Shouldn't governments do the same? Well, yes you might say. However, let me ask you the following question: Haven't they done so in the past? For centuries political philosophers have discussed the obligations of government and citizens and the relationship of the two sides. For hundreds of years it has been a common practice to offer citizens (offline) alternatives of participation/ empowerment. For hundreds of years we have also seen many ways of disempowerment. Today, there are citizen consultation groups, commentary sections on websites, virtual/real town hall meetings and many more ways of participation. Of course there is a lot of information government does not want to share with the public for other reasons than national security. Government could also do better by including Web 2.0 ideas into their eGovernment offerings. In particular, in the field of public participation which is still rated at a low maturity stage in the latest eGovernment survey be the UN. In conclusion, a government's experience in integrating the "consumer" should not be forgotten when talking about Government 2.0.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 6:32 PM | Comments (1)

26 June 2008

Al Qaeda and 2.0

I read an interesting op-ed in todays NYT. The basic argument is that the basic notion of Web 2.0 counters the terrorist group's overall communication strategy and philosophy. An additional argument is that the empowernment of the online community through Web 2.0 in the Arabic-Islamic world is Al Qaeda's weak spot in line with the former argument.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 6:45 PM | Comments (0)

19 June 2008

Networks in Political Science 2008-- a postmortem

A quick note to say that the NIPS conference seemed to hit a nerve. When the incipient organizing committee discussed this last August, we were originally envisioning a conference/workshop of 30. Instead, we had 200 attendees, 3 parallel sessions with 40 presentations, 80 posters, and 2 days of packed workshops. There were papers representing the full, diverse, spectrum of political science. In the plenary discussion afterwards there was a clear consensus that this should not be a one-off, but that further steps should be taken in terms of facilitating the entry of network methods into the field. These steps include exploring holding another conference next year, methods workshops at APSA, creating an organized section within APSA, creating a listserv, and creating a paper archive. I would be interested in hearing reactions from the broader interested community in thoughts as to what should/should not be done—feel free to express as comments in the blog.

Posted by David Lazer at 9:57 PM | Comments (1)

4 June 2008

VisiblePath is dead .... Long live Hoover's Connect

As many of you know, VisiblePath, the company I was "involved with" for more than five

years, was acquired earlier this year by Hoovers. The business network software is

now available as Hoover's Connect.

Another social network software firm disappears ..... It was a fun ride.

Posted by Stan Wasserman at 2:07 PM | Comments (5)