I have been dealing with the commandments of web2.0 in previous posts, as I really like the idea.
The first one by alorza was:
“you, government, should not build web2.0 applications in vain”.
Now I read that a report by the Socitm (society of local government
CIOs in the UK) recommends that :
Senior public sector managers must overcome their status as ‘digital immigrants’ and embrace Web 2.0 says new report from Socitm Insight – and should overcome their natural scepticism about Web 2.0
The report is not public (not very web2.0) so I didn;t check the source, but I think this is the wrong approach.
EMBRACE is NOT what civil servants should do. Experiment, try, but not EMBRACE. Some skepticism is absolutely justified. We have no clear evidence that web2.0 is definitely positive.
And it’s late! You can have this kind of hype at the beginning of a trend, not after 4 years!
So I have an instinctive rejection for this kind of messages. What do you think?
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September 20, 2008 at 7:39 am
You’re right about the language, experiment with, use, understand is what needs to happen. But only where it improves government.
September 20, 2008 at 7:41 am
My rule is that one industry year = seven government years. So Microsoft drops centralised global ID (Hailstorm/.Net/Passport) after a year or two. It will take goverment seven to 14 years to drop centralised online ID plans.
September 21, 2008 at 8:50 am
Very good point David – well put!
September 21, 2008 at 10:17 am
Hi David,
I completely agree with the underlying argument, but never thought of embracing being inaccurate, indicating that it would exclude experimenting with web2.0 and that it would mean believing in web2.0 without a critical attitude.
For me embracing has always meant an open attitude towards new technologies, as I have argued for instance, in our work on ICT and Learning (http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=1407). This is the first step towards learning about web2, about its possible positive and negative impacts, and possibly also leading to experimentation and use. The one, for me, does not exclude the other, meaning that I would not go as far as saying that it is the wrong approach. Rather, I agree that it is only a first necessary step, not sufficient in itself.
Regards from Seville.
September 21, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Hi David
for sure a minimum of prudence is always required.
I’m a bit confuse by William’s comment. I’m just back from Estonia where global ID is in place for years. It allows a great flexibility. A lot of services are connected around a citizen-centric approach, and the complexity is fully hidden to the end-user. A large set of e-services are personnalized based on the ID.
Regards from Lausanne
David, see you soon at the EPFL. I will be one of your student.