Web 2.0: The new tools for democratic conversations – a snapshot of initiatives in government

This paper provides an overview of developments in the use of interactive online communications described as Web 2.0 and when applied in government, better known as Government 2.0. The term Web 2.0 takes in the new and emerging digitally enabled, interactive communications, pushing organisations, including governments, to reconsider the way they do things. The challenge in this process is expressed by a member of the Australian Federal Government’s Taskforce on Government 2.0, as follows: ‘Web 2.0 enables and accelerates the transition to a more connected world in which open, user-centred and self-organising networks create value, including public value. That’s the Web 2.0 proposition with which…people …around the world are experimenting to see … what kinds of value they can get from these new ways of organizing. As governments and the public sector start to do the same, they will encounter the same challenge, which is that these new tools don’t just change structures and processes, they change behaviour as well. In order to thrive in this kind of world – connected, contingent, collaborative – you have to adopt a set of behaviours that are similarly open, interactive and engaged. The conclusion is simple, but demanding – no change without culture shift. This is the big challenge …for governments to make the most of this new way of working and these new tools for democratic conversation. If they want to use them to improve the design of public services, to empower citizens to use information to create new services themselves or to harness more powerful combinations of knowledge for better policy, then they have to embrace the consequent shift of culture and behaviour too. We’ve spent time defining what it is that constitutes the requisite behaviour from a public servant, including things like impartiality, balance, fairness and the absence of partisan political advocacy. The problem, though, is that these definitions were shaped in a world fundamentally different to the one which ‘government 2.0′ is ushering in, including especially the speed with which issues emerge and change, the level of transparency about government activity and the complexity of the ideas and inputs now clamouring … to be influential. Somehow we have to find a way for public servants to be able to engage with this world on terms that are both satisfying and safe. Assuming that the twin extremes of prohibition and unfettered licence are unlikely to work, we have to set about finding some new territory somewhere along that spectrum that is fit for purpose’. Source: Gov.2.0 Taskforce Blog, Online Engagement, by Martin Stewart – Weeks, 27 July2009