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WEB 2.0 - THE NEXT
PLATFORMS FOR GOVERNING
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Governments should borrow technology ideas
liberally from those companies who have made their mark online
by intelligently and efficiently delivering services to their
customers.
 Information
technology (IT) is a daunting challenge at the best of times,
and it is even more difficult today as governments around the
globe face tightening finances and diminishing revenues amidst
the economic downturn.
Under such circumstances, which in today's world are simply not
sustainable, the smart thing to do is to look for opportunities
and to borrow ideas from other companies who have demonstrated
savings of time and money in solving major service delivery
challenges. But where to look?
This was the keynote address by Dr. Paul Taylor, chief strategy
officer, Center for Digital Government in the United States, a
national research and advisory firm on IT policies in state and
local government.
He leads the center's efforts in government modernisation
through benchmarking and analysis, the results of which are
reflected in a number of book chapters, juried journal articles,
reports and white papers on a range of public policy issues.
Taylor said that governments sometimes feel that the challenges
they face are unique. He also said governments must realise that
a lot of progress has been made since the earlier days of the
Internet, where a 'customer-centric' model of engaging with
clients was still only a fantasy.
He said Amazon.com, for example, not only pioneered the Web 1.0
arena, but also overcame challenges of information presentation,
managing a large amount of independent contractors, robust
search capabilities, as well as a user-friendly interface and
intuitive navigation, recommendation and feedback tools, to name
but a few.
Tyler said the Internet can be a rich yet affordable interface
to provide services to citizens, combining email and Web 2.0
social networking tools, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,
and should form an integral part of pursuing a web strategy. He
said this was even more evident during Barack Obama's election
campaign recently, which offered US citizens a more personal and
interactive approach while they followed the moves of the Obama
campaign.
He said the millennium generation, or those who have grown up
using the Internet, instant messaging and email as de facto
tools, are those which government should engage with to get the
most value out of, as well as feedback. Taylor said governments
should not underestimate the power of SMS as services can be
tailored by government without much customisation and
development cost to engage with citizens or provide information
services.
He cited one example of how the Singapore government encouraged
its citizens to make use of SMS to access information on
services offered by government, an affordable way to bridge the
digital divide and ideal for South Africa. He also mentioned a
US government department that made use of Wiki's to allow for
citizen participation on new or existing laws and how lawyers
used the feedback generated from these interactions in their
revision processes.
Looking to the future, Taylor said companies should wrap their
communication strategy around civic engagement, but plan for a
future that they have not yet imagined. Web 2.0 is only a
placeholder for what is coming, particularly with the transition
from web to mobile web, where it has the possibility to leapfrog
into a new era of service delivery.
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