All looks great, but why do we need Gov2.0?

I was working with one of our teams in the Middle East to help them prepare for a presentation to a group of Government CIO’s around Gov2.0.  I put together some slides for them, got some background reading, example sites etc and sent it over.  Then came the question - ‘Thanks James, all looks great, but why do we need Gov 2.0’.

Andrea Di Maio (who's blog you really should subscribe to) has written an article for www.governing.com called ‘The Blurring of Government’.  In it is this paragraph that sums up one of the reasons why governments need Gov 2.0

Generation-Yers are entering their productive lives, and their different set of values and expectations will impact governments both as service delivery organizations and as employers. In particular, social networking behaviors and the greater demand for transparency clash with the traditional top-down hierarchical and one-way style of interaction that is typical of government organizations

Perfectly put.  The structures of governments were designed for an age that seems to have come and gone; and they need to change rapidly as the gap between citizens expectations and what they are delivering is getting bigger every day.

A personal favourite of mine is still the video from www.unitedminds.ie, a guy from Dublin who is campaigning for a new form of government.  Whether you agree with him or not, the frustrations and questions he raised in the video are very real.  Governments need to deal with citizens who want to use blogs, Twitter, YouTube, etc to ask these questions.  Citizens want more transparency, they want to get more involved; unless government organisations change, frustration will only increase.