During the Gartner Research offsite last week, a group of analysts discussed the topic of what Web 2.0 will mean for governments and the public sector in general. While there is no single Gartner definition of Web 2.0 (see "Web 2.0: Structuring the Discussion"), it can be looked at from three different viewpoints: as 1) a set of technologies with 2) community and social dimensions that enable 3) new business models.

From a technology standpoint, Web 2.0 implies the development of the Web-oriented architecture (a subset of service-oriented architecture; SOA), which provides a globally linked, decentralized model that is network-centric (vs. device-centric) and extensible. Relevant technologies here include Ajax, Web services, plain old XML (POX) and representational state transfer (REST). From a government perspective, one interesting spin is the impact that these next-generation application programming interfaces will have on government interoperability standards: The use of REST and POX leads to the development of more-generic, more-reusable services (that is, components), moving the complexity from code into data. Today's government interoperability frameworks have been developed with Web 1.0 in mind, and the way SOA is being deployed tends to favor the development of large numbers of relatively specific services with rich and complex interfaces that have a lower reuse potential.

From the community and social perspective, technologies like blogs, wikis, user-defined content tagging and others will clearly change the way constituents interact with governments. The most frequently used example is participation in policymaking, where community blogs or even policy wikis could be used to more directly engage people in proposing and shaping policies and laws. However, while these new forms of constituent participation and quasi-direct democracy will take a relatively long time to have a real impact (as they may require constitutional changes), there are areas where their impact can be felt quite rapidly. Today, customers' ratings play a major role in influencing online buying behaviors. Equally, citizens and other constituents could use ratings as well as blogs to provide feedback on service levels and even influence their design. In cases where online intermediaries compete to deliver online government services, constituent feedback can be a powerful influencer and actually shape this market. However, all this will be influenced by social and political factors

This leads to the business dimension. The use of mashups to achieve finer-grained integration between government and private-sector services and data can give rise to completely new services. Examples include the integration of location-based services with land, building or vehicle registers to streamline revenue collection, incident reporting and human service delivery; integration of financial management applications with tax e-filing and payment; integration of online travel services with immigration, revenue and health systems to provide clients with a seamless travel booking experience; and so on. The breadth and depth of integration will be influenced by several market, regulatory and political factors.

Scenario planning can be very useful in understanding how deeply Web 2.0 will impact government. We discussed whether the same axis used for Government 2020 (that is, citizen attitude toward privacy and government intervention in the economy) would be appropriate. While they certainly remain candidates and one can see quite easily how our four existing scenarios would lead to interesting conclusions, we felt that it may be more appropriate to 1) ask ourselves a more-specific question than just "how will Web 2.0 impact government?", 2) establish a list of driving forces that shape the answer to that question and 3) make sure that we can draw conclusions that are relevant in different timeframes, since Web 2.0 is going to have both a medium- and a long-term impact on government.

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Dear Andrea di Maio,
I found this piece extremely interesting. We are doing research in the same line of thinking here at IPTS and I have a few comments.
On technology and interoperability, I am wondering what could be the impact of KML on framework of interoperability of geographical data.
On social and community, it's important to point out that competition does not only happen in the private sector but also in the public sector, for example with choice between different providers of health and education services. Here the impact could be higher.
Finally, as for any technology, the simple adoption of web 2.0 solutions will not have a strong impact. Web 2.0 is not only a technology, but also an attitude towards openness, transparency, many-to-many interaction, users as producers, which by the way are very much at the core of the original Internet culture (e.g. Usenets). We already have many example of this failed adoption of blogs, in the private as in the public sector, precisely because of this lack of understanding of the spirit of it.
Thanks again and looking forward to further exchanges.
David

IPTS is a research institute of the European Commission DG JRC. Of course, the views expressed in this comment are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.

Always interesting to read this blog. If you are interested in some Web20 related government case study from Japan visit our blog at: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/b... . I will also post an entry soon on the question "Did government is missing out on Web20?"

David,
thanks for your feedback. I do agree about your comment on moderate technology impact, with one notable exception, that is how government interoperability frameworks will be influenced by REST/POX. So far, the kind of SOA developments that we are seeing rely on relatively complex services, with rich and complex interfaces. This inherently limits their reusability. Taking a "RESTful" approach to web services is likely to increase reusability acrooss a variety of applications, processes and tiers of government.
As far as blogs, wikis and folksonomies, I agree these take a different attitude by government agencies to really make a difference. On the other hand, the latest news about what Sweden and France are doing on Second Life suggests that governments won't be able to ignore for long significant societal changes.
Looking forward to future exchanges
Andrea

The presidential campaigns used new tools in their strategies to engage people. The financial manager and their staffs need to become familiar with these new tools and incorporate them into their strategies. The major change required for these new tools is that finance must be more proactive rather than reactive, with results examined in real time.

· Internet —We need to monitor the changes in the Internet (the enormous network of networks connecting disparate computers using languages called protocols). Internet Protocol Version 6 (aka IPV6) has now expanded the addresses and tags that can be used. Have our governments transitioned to IPV6?

· Web—We need to accommodate the different vehicles that customers use to travel on the “http” protocol to visit our sites. Can the different vehicles (MS Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari or on a Web-enabled phone or PDA) that visitors use to access out sites allow them to seamlessly navigate through our Web pages?

· XML—Do our Web pages use of “eXtensible Markup Language” utilize well-formed and valid smart tags with corresponding end tags to get the user where she or he needs to go?

· XBRL—Are we presenting our financial documents—PAR, budget, CAFR or PAFR—into “eXtensible Business Reporting Language” to our customers so that they are not seeing a large financial document as a mere block of text but rather as a set of smart tags for the different parts (assets, liabilities, net assets, revenues, expenditures) that can be drilled down to the lowest level?

· Wikis—Are we using “What I Know Is” tools, internally and externally, to aggregate and share financial information on an ongoing basis in a collaborative manner?

· Blogs—Are we utilizing blogs to discuss financial topics and issues, internally and externally, to enhance and refine ideas, opinions and approaches in a collaborative manner?

· Social Bookmarking—Are we engaging the customers of our financial information by inquiring what they want to know (categorize whether it is a salary or revenue query) and where they go (assigning a tag—bookmark) to find it? Do we examine these social bookmarks to modify or adapt our financial information based on user trends?

· Social Media —Are we creating financial information forums utilizing blogs, Wikis, podcasts, MySpace, Facebook, Youmeo, Twitter or Plaxo to keep in touch with our users of financial information?

· Collaboration—If we do not manage collaboratively now, then what do we need to learn about it to enable us to take advantage of collaborative tools like Google Docs or MS SharePoint? Do our Intranet websites allow for collaboration? What is our government’s or agency’s strategy on collaboration?

If you expect that citizens and customers will wait for you to implement the above, or come to you asking you to implement the above, then nothing will change. I believe that we must engage our customers about government finance with these existing tools. I believe that the government budget, accounting and auditing professions must incorporate these tools into their existing strategies. The easiest way to implement them is to incorporate them, where appropriate, into your defined business processes. If presidential campaigns can use these tools with people all across the country, many of whom never met face-to-face, then why can’t government finance do the same?