The Audacity of Government 2.0 – The Obama Era Arrives

As Canada’s federal government (under Stephen Harper) gears up to unveil its ‘economic stimulus’ budget next week, I’ll be watching to see just how well-aligned (or completely out of touch) our public officials are in Canada with respect to what is happening south of the border.

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In the digital age, there seems to be one (only one?) global leader who understands intuitively that open, transparent democracies have a responsibility to provide access to information – and that is the American President Barack Obama.

Obama has said that “[government] web sites, search engines and other web tools [will] enable citizens to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials”.

Obama ‘gets’ that digital cultures are critical in terms of revealing the faultlines and fissures in democratic discourse. Unlike other world leaders, he understands the inherent power of web 2.0 in changing attitudes towards government. As citizens hold governments accountable for the decisions they make, they engage in a new digital, participatory democracy called Government 2.0.

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Obama’s other promises? “To make government data available online in universally accessible formats”…..”and to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action [for change] in their own communities.” He plans to establish programs to open government up to more meaningful input and to require agencies to conduct public business in open forums that can be monitored online.

Obama plans to have national “town hall meetings” online and web 2.0 tools such as blogs in place (see the Whitehouse blog) to provide better access to the public record. In the long term, he plans universal broadband and ‘more open’ web networks to give everyone genuine access to the tools of 21st century democracy.

Welcome to a new era of global transformative government 2.0. Time will tell how successful it will be in revitalizing global democracy. Let’s be mindful of the changes in government in both Canada and the U.S. in the days and months ahead.

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References

1. Government 2.0 Best Practices wiki – http://government20bestpractices.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
2. GTEC Government 2.0 Conference 2009 – http://blog.gtec.ca/
3. Government 2.0 – A Theory of Social Government
4. Government 2.0: Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy, 2005.