Day One Conference Highlights:

• ReadWriteWeb “the cloud”
• GovLoop
• Australia G2 Taskforce
• Berkman Center for Internet & Society
• ZDNet
• Open 311
• G2 Radio
• Hinchcliff
• USNowFilm
• Andrea Dimaio

Do you have another Gov 2.0 resource you’d recommend?  Tell us about it in the comments field!

How will we ever satisfy everyone without falling into the proverbial black hole of satisfying no one?  So many interests, so many different lenses, thinking caps, needs and visions… shudder.  And snore.

But as I combed through the hours of video from the Open Government West conference last week, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that despite the heterogeneity of attendees, the extensive reiteration of only a couple words imbued optimism that maybe, just maybe, a mass conglomeration of hybrid ambitions could actually effect the change in the world we all want to see.

I love pop culture and Kelly Osborne’s “One Word,” (specifically the Chris Cox dance remix), seemed especially fitting for a 2 min video that to me, helped summarize the conference in that tasty and palatable way only a lowly pop culturist could enjoy.  But maybe you will as well.

Can you guess which word was heard over and over at the conference?

Americans who follow the news know that Ron Paul and other libertarians have “small government” as their central platform, and that Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other neoconservatives use “small government” as a primary talking point in their criticism against liberalism and progressivism, but what most Americans don’t know is that a third group is talking about Government as “platform,” vs Government as “complete solution provider.”  This group is composed of advocates for Government 2.0.

While libertarians want to cut government regulation far and wide, neoconservatives want to cut certain regulations and expand others, and liberals want the government fix most all social, economic, and environmental issues, proponents for Government 2.0 simply want a more participatory and efficient democracy, where open data and crowdsourcing are supported by the government in a way that allows citizens to create public value, while generating operational efficiencies within government.

While Government 2.0 advocates avoid wading into the argument on the size of government, for good reason, the idea of Government as “platform” vs. Government as “complete solution provider” through open data and crowdsourcing leads  logically towards the government being able to do more with less.  Applications that are emerging from open data initiatives, like Stumble Safely hint at what is possible when citizens are armed with good technology and information.

Stumble safely was developed by citizens and uses data from DC Crime Data, DC Road Polygons, DC Liquor Licenses, DC Water, DC Parks, and DC Metro Stations and puts them on a map that works with smart phones to help citizens navigate away from crime hot spots when returning home from evenings out with friends.  The result should be less need for police and emergency dispatchers to respond to calls for help from crime victims coming home at night, and a reduced need for government sponsored educational campaigns to keep late night party-goers safe.

These tools are just beginning to emerge and the possibilities are endless for creating efficiencies and increased public value.  While Stumble Safely is not a revolutionary  game-changer that brings huge efficiencies to government and redefines our democracy, it is a small, humble step in that direction.  Other efforts that incorporate social media in large-scale planning processes, like Future Melbourne in Australia, allow citizens to collaborate in unprecedented ways in government decision-making. While the United States doesn’t have any such tools in place, it is only a matter of time.

Stay tuned to see what emerges from the world of Government 2.0.  It will not lead us to “small government” as envisioned by libertarians and neoconservatives.  It is a new vision for government, that is more efficient, accountable, and valuable to people and our collective society.

In case you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad, you are not alone. Sunshine Week’s purpose, according to sunshineweek.org, is to “enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.”

Picture the sun’s rays illuminating the deepest government offices, filling the halls with light and providing a clear view of what’s inside the normally impenetrable and obscure depths… No back room deals behind closed doors, no dark corners where evidence of waste, fraud and abuse goes to die a dank and moldy death.

The Florida Society of Newspaper Editors launched Sunshine Sunday in Florida in 2002 as a reaction to several pieces of state legislation attempting to create exemptions to the state’s public records laws.  In the years that followed Sunshine Sunday evolved into a national Sunshine Week spearheaded by the American Society of News Editors and endowed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Last week Cass Sustein, speaking at the Brookings Institution, put the importance of transparency and collaboration beautifully when he said: “Outmoded, anachronistic practices are being eliminated, and new open ones are taking their place, being informed by the collective wisdom of the American people. What we’re doing is improving services and saving money and making regulation work better to boot.”

So what happens during Sunshine Week?  The organizers ask that elected officials, public servants, the media, engaged citizens, bloggers, community leaders, librarians, not-for-profits, and anybody else that cares for the public interest get into a discussion about the importance of open government, “whether it’s a speech or a classroom discussion, an article or series of articles about access to important information, or an editorial.

Obama started the week with an official statement: ”As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever, an effort that will strengthen our democracy and ensure the public’s trust in their government.”

But at the same time, a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) audit by the National Security Archive at George Washington University found that “despite President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s 2009 memoranda calling for reform in government agencies’ administration of FOIA, the latest government-wide FOIA Audit released today (March 15) … found ancient requests–as old as 18 years–still persist in the FOIA system, a minority of agencies have responded to the Obama and Holder Memos with concrete changes in their FOIA practices, and only four out of 28 agencies reporting–including Holder’s own Justice Department–show releases up and denials down under the FOIA.

In addition, there is hardly a word in the mainstream media.  The Washington Post highlighted Obama’s Sunshine Week remarks in their blog, and the Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, and Atlantic Journal Constitution have editorials about Sunshine week, but that’s the only light of day this story is getting from the larger newspapers.

Clearly there is a lot of work remaining to be done and more conversations that need to occur.  Join us in stepping up and taking part.

As many know, RVL is co-convening a conference later this month, OpenGovWest, a central premise of which is utilizing contemporary community engagement strategies and tools to improve governance. I’ve been thinking a lot about that last word: governance. I would argue that for too long, we have seen government as “them,” a faceless, accountability-less institution that has little to do with we the people. The exciting – indeed, amazing – thing about our current era is the opportunity to re-invent government the institution into governance, supported by and engaged with by we the people.

Back to Ms. Williams, she does a great job capturing some of my thinking on this zeitgeist in the below writing:

“Developing government’s human voice is about establishing a personality that someone can interact and talk with, not to; a more human like presence to what has always been a nameless, faceless beast. It’s about finding a way to build real meaningful relationships with others built on common interests and trust. It is also about having everyone in a society participating.

In a world where our issues and problems are becoming more complex and intertwined, we cannot hope to solve these things without the help of the community.

Government is no different. We now have the tools to help us be more inclusive (participatory) and trustworthy (transparency). Yet, we need to work harder at building collaborative relationships across agency lines, outside of government to the education community, the non profit community, non-government organizations, private sector and with other governments in ways we have never done before.”

These are exciting times of tremendous opportunity to re-think how we govern and organize ourselves!

First, government: right now, most of us take out daily governance (that is, the business of our being governed) completely for granted. We do not actively participate daily – or indeed, for most of us, anytime except an occasional election. Of course ,that’s not to say people aren’t involved in civic society.

Second, games: many of us, if not most of us, enjoy games. For some it’s on a board, for others a pitch or field, and for still others, on a screen. But games, and competition, are a core part of American society.

What if we could use that competitive, gaming instinct to do governance better? I’m thinking of games in which we pull actual data from our governments, turn it into (largely online or mobile) games, then activate people, using the competition function, to solve some of government’s problems? For example, what if a bored accountant could play a game wherein she deals with a particularly intractable part of the City’s budget? Her knowledge, gleaned from years of experience as an accountant, could add tremendous value to the City’s effort to balance its budget. (There’s precedent for this; Porto Alegre, Brasil has been playing with participatory budgeting for a while).

Likewise, your average marketing exec or sales person knows tremendous amounts about engaging people in dialog and convincing them to do something; what if that knowledge were harness, again via an innocuous (but fun!) game, to help the City better understand how to change behavior in ways that would help society at large? How else could gaming and the like be used (for another interesting example, check out Boston’s experiment with Second Life).

I’m excited to be exploring these ideas, and would love your ideas on opportunities to take advantage of the competitive urge to do governance better. What do you think?

Photo courtesy of educationallearninggames.com

This is an opportunity to address issues of open and transparent government at the first “Gov 2.0″ conference for the Cascadia region, including Oregon, Washington, other nearby states and Canada.

The conveners have put out a call for speakers.

Are you interested in sharing your unique insights into collaborative technology, social media and civic life?

Go here to sign up: http://bit.ly/4omb0Q

We will post more information about the conference as we get closer.

Author of WeThink Charles Leadbeater talks about how web communities are revisiting older, more traditional forms of order.   This is part of the Us Now film interview series.

Perhaps the biggest big idea to gather speed during the last millennium was that we humans might govern ourselves. But no one really meant it.

What was really meant in most places was that we would elect people to govern us and sporadically renew or revoke their contracts. It was enough. There was no practicable way to involve all of us, all the time.

The headlines from Washington today blare of bailouts, stimulus, clunkers, Afpak, health care. But it is possible that future historians, looking back, will fixate on a quieter project of Barack Obama’s White House: its exploration of how government might be opened to greater public participation in the digital age, of how to make self-government more than a metaphor.

- ‘Athens on the Net‘  by Anand Giridharadas published in the New York Times.