Cities across the USA are setting up mobile reporting systems, creating citizens' social networks and rolling out their own mobile Gov 2.0 applications. This trend is empowering local communities to play a much more dynamic role in identifying local government needs and improving service delivery.
Gov 2.0 is being used for a range of purposes. Most of them revolve around the reporting of service and infrastructure problems such as blocked sewers, litter in parks, faulty traffic lights or new potholes in the streets. Some of the networks are being used to track local crime trends or changes in road traffic density. If there is a way in which the community can help the city to perform better, then - to paraphrase the new cliché - there may soon be an app for that.
The increasing adoption of Gov 2.0 doesn't necessarily mean that every local problem will be fixed immediately. No city has the manpower or the resources to keep everything working 100 percent all the time. Nor does it automatically mean that communities will be reporting problems that the city may not have become aware of anyway. However, the Gov 2.0 concept does offer at least two considerable benefits, especially when it is coupled with the power of mobiles, GPS and geotagging.
Better than the vending machine
Gov 2.0 introduces much more immediacy. There are no more delays caused by filling in forms and posting them or trundling down to city hall to deliver them.
In addition, the precision of geotagging makes it quick and easy for the authorities to plot reports accurately on digital maps. In this way they can identify the frequency, location and trends in hyper-local reports about similar matters.
Thus the community voice tells the local government where the greatest number of people want the most urgent action. A failed traffic light is obviously a more urgent problem than litter in a park, but all things being equal, the people tell the officials where to do what instead of the other way round.
This is a far cry from what has been called "vending machine government" - you pay your money in and government pumps a service out, but quite likely according to a pre-defined schedule. With Gov 2.0 the community can considerably influence or change the priorities voted by committees of the city management.
Neo-civics primer - introducing Gov 2.0
Writing in Forbes magazine, Gov 2.0 advocate Tim O'Reilly gave a neat definition of what it is: "With the proliferation of issues and not enough resources to address them all, many government leaders recognise the opportunities inherent in harnessing a highly motivated and diverse population not just to help them get elected, but to help them do a better job. By analogy, many are calling this movement Government 2.0."
He adds: "Rather than licensing government data to a few select value added providers, who then license the data downstream, the federal government (and many state and local governments) are beginning to provide an open platform that enables anyone with a good idea to build innovative services that connect government to citizens, give citizens visibility into the actions of government and even allow citizens to participate directly in policy-making."
Through Gov 2.0, government data is presented as an open platform that non-government employees can access. Mountains of local government data and statistics are no longer buried in filing cabinets. That information is becoming available to web and mobile app developers who use it as the basis for community apps.
Some believe Gov 2.0 is already generating a quiet social revolution. One of them, Clay Johnson - director of Sunlight Labs, a developer and promoter of Gov 2.0 apps - says Gov 2.0 spells "the death of a passive relationship with government."
He elaborates: "Instead of people saying, 'Well, it's the government's job to fix that'... people are taking ownership and saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. Government is us. We are government. So let's take responsibility and start changing things ourselves.'"
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