Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Tim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of computer book publisher O’Reilly Media and a conference organizer. O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 five years ago. Now he is arguing it is time for Gov 2.0, and has helped organize a summit next week to talk about what that might mean.
Today, many people equate Web 2.0 with social media; three or four years ago, they equated it with AJAX applications and APIs. Many are now starting to think it’s all about cloud computing. In fact, it’s all of these and more. The way I have always defined Web 2.0, it’s been about what it means for the internet, rather than the personal computer, to be the dominant computing platform. What are the rules of business and competitive advantage when the network is the platform?
So too with Government 2.0. A lot of people equate the term with government use of social media, either to solicit public participation or to get out its message in new ways. Some people think it means making government more transparent. Some people think it means adding AJAX to government websites, or replacing those websites with government APIs, or building new cloud platforms for shared government services. And yes, it means all those things.
But as with Web 2.0, the real secret of success in Government 2.0 is thinking about government as a platform. If there’s one thing we learn from the technology industry, it’s that every big winner has been a platform company: someone whose success has enabled others, who’ve built on their work and multiplied its impact. Microsoft put “a PC on every desk and in every home,” the internet connected those PCs, Google enabled a generation of ad-supported startups, Apple turned the phone market upside down by letting developers loose to invent applications no phone company would ever have thought of. In each case, the platform provider raised the bar, and created opportunities for others to exploit.
There are signs that government is starting to adopt this kind of platform thinking.
Behind Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s data.gov site is the idea that government agencies shouldn’t just provide web sites, they should provide web services. These services, in effect, become the government’s SDK (software development kit). The government may build some applications using these APIs, but there’s an opportunity for private citizens and innovative companies to build new, unexpected applications. This is the phenomenon that Jonathan Zittrain refers to as “generativity“, the ability of open-ended platforms to create new possibilities not envisioned by their creators.
And of course, much as happened with the rise of commercial web services, “hackers” have been battering at the gates for some time. Adrian Holovaty’s chicagocrime.org (now part of everyblock.com) was the second-ever Google Maps mashup, back in 2005. It showed the world just how much value could be created by putting government data on a map. Most of the winners of Washington D.C.’s Apps for Democracy contest are direct descendants of chicagocrime. Similarly, Openstreetmap started out using crowdsourcing to create free maps in the UK, where map data is expensive; their move to build better maps for Palestine led to contributions from the UN and European community.
We’re starting to see formal efforts to develop an application ecosystem at the local, state, and federal level, via contests like Apps for Democracy, Apps for America, and other similar programs. Startups like SeeClickFix are pushing for standardized APIs to government services (like Open311). But there’s still a long way to go.
My goal at the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase and Gov 2.0 Summit next week in Washington DC is to encourage more of this kind of platform thinking. We’ve brought in leaders from some of the most important platform providers in the tech world—Vint Cerf, the creator of TCP/IP, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, and Craig Mundie of Microsoft, among others—to talk about what makes tech platforms tick. We’re bringing together people like GSA CIO Casey Coleman and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels to talk about what the government can learn from the private sector about building cloud computing infrastructure, and especially how to make interoperable clouds. We’re looking beyond the obvious, as in our on-stage conversation with Google chief economist Hal Varian, talking about the role that measurement and “real time economics” plays in the success of Web 2.0 platforms. We’ll try to apply these insights to some of the big initiatives facing the Federal government, including health care and education. And of course, we’ll be engaging with the architects of the government’s internet strategy, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, White House new media head Macon Phillips, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, as well as leaders from the military and intelligence sector.
In one of my prep calls with Craig Mundie, he pushed forcefully for the idea that killer apps drive platform adoption. It strikes me that the killer app may already be here; we just don’t give the government enough credit for it. I’m talking about the wonderful world of geolocation, with GPS devices in cars providing turn-by-turn directions, phone applications telling you when the next bus is about to arrive, and soon, augmented reality applications telling you what’s nearby. It’s easy to forget that GPS, like the original internet, is a service kickstarted by the government. Here’s the key point: the Air Force originally launched GPS satellites for its own purposes, but in a crucial policy decision, agreed to release a less accurate signal for commercial use. The Air Force moved from providing an application to providing a platform, with the result being a wave of innovation in the private sector.
Location is the key to the relevance of government to its citizenry, as well as to a host of non-governmental services. But there are already disputes about who owns the data. For example, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority issued a takedown order against the StationStops iPhone application. This is exactly the kind of bad policy that we hope to remedy by shedding light on best practices in government platform building.
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It’s easy to forget just how generative government interventions can be. The internet itself was originally a government-funded project. So was the interstate highway system. Would WalMart exist without that government intervention? Would our cities thrive without transportation, water, power, garbage collection and all the other services we take for granted? Like an operating system providing services for applications, government provides functions that enable private sector activity.
It’s important for the idea of “government as platform” to reach well beyond the world of IT. It was Scott Heiferman, the founder of meetup.com who hammered this point home to me. Meetup is a platform for people to do whatever they want with. A lot of them are using it for citizen engagement: cleaning up parks, beaches, and roads; identifying and fixing local problems.
In some of my recent talks, I’ve used an image originally proposed by Donald Kettl in The Next Government of the United States. Too often, we think of government as a kind of vending machine. We put in our taxes, and get out services: roads, bridges, hospitals, fire brigades, police protection… And when the vending machine doesn’t give us what we want, we protest. Our idea of citizen engagement has somehow been reduced to shaking the vending machine. But what meetup teaches us is that engagement may mean lending our hands, not just our voices.
In this regard, there’s a CNN story from last April that I like to tell: a road into a state park in Kauai was washed out, and the state government said it didn’t have the money to fix it. The park would be closed. Understanding the impact on the local economy, a group of businesses chipped in, organized a group of volunteers, and fixed the road themselves. I called this DIY on a civic scale. Scott Heiferman corrected me: “It’s DIO: Not ‘Do it Yourself’ but ‘Do it Ourselves.’” Imagine if the state government were to reimagine itself not as a vending machine but an organizing engine for civic action. Might DIO help us tackle other problems that bedevil us? Can we imagine a new compact between government and the public, in which government puts in place mechanisms for services that are delivered not by government, but by private citizens? In other words, can government become a platform?
We have an enormous opportunity right now to make a difference. There’s a receptivity to new ideas that we haven’t seen in a generation. Government at all levels has put out the call for help. It’s up to the tech community to respond, with our ideas, with our voices, with our creativity, and with our code.
(Photo credit: Flickr/Center for American Progress)
Government as a platform- Nice perspective! In crisis, there is opportunity. I believe there is an opportunity right now for the government to catalyze innovations in the network that create the next phase of the internet. This can involve adding new technologies and protocols that are as fundamental as DNS and TCP/IP that enable personal content creation and collaboration in a more fundamental way. Go Gov 2.0!
Okay. Lets change the pledge:
“We pledge allegiance to the flag…”
Since they changed the credo:
“We believe in one God…”
It’s all Marxist you see. Eliminate individuality. Perpetuate the organization. It’s easier to manage top down, that’s why. Objectives don’t matter. Organization IS the objective.
“It takes a village…” 2.0
Right. Scott Heiferman sounds exactly like the problem. Imaging the government could organize.
In your dreams, Scott. They can’t even organize a vacation, apparently. The last thing you should want is government organizing your life. We need less government, not more. More government is what Hitler and Mao delivered.
the objective is not for govt to control and organize, but become a platform which will enable citizens to be able to organize themselves and get more involved… it is not about control but empowerment.
You’re right but these types of folks are too stupid to understand unfortunately.
Ah ha. It’s all so clear now. I was just too stupid.
Guess I need to appeal more to grade school children. Perhaps I should address them on national television. That ought to get intelligent dialogue underway.
@Crosby
You voted for “W” twice didn’t you? You are indeed stupid. Have a good day.
Ahh yes Terry. When all critical thinking fails, the ad hominem attack provides a warm salve for your bruised ego. Good work.
>> it is not about control but empowerment.
That defies logic. The defintion of government is the empowering of tyranny at the expense of the individual.
The last thing any sane person wants is an efficient government (e.g. socialist china, russia, germany).
Like anyone who supports the existence of any government, Tim O’Reilly is a cock-sucking communist sociopath and a coward who ought to be executed immediately.
THe problem is not the government, it is the people in control. As long as we only have a few people in charge of everything, we are still stuck in the middle-ages time of lords and peasants.
Don’t fear the government; transform it into real democracy: http://metagovernment.org/
Democracy is only mob rule. It legitimizes 51% of the population to coercively control the liberty and property of the other 49%.
re: Joe — Democracy is NOT mob rule. If you had followed the link, you would find that the whole point of Metagovernment is to create a system that avoids the pitfalls of old-school direct democracy.
Everyone should read this article.
But it’s sooooooooooooo long..
nope, it’s toooooooooooooooooo long,
My summary: The government should expose APIs to its data, and it should aggregate good data. My opinion: yes, absolutely.
Cautionary note, O’Reilly is quick to heap praise on the wonders of government, “It’s easy to forget just how generative government interventions can be. ” However, that should be balanced with a note about how de-generative government can be. Think DMV lines, Gulf of Tonkin, million dollar Air Force toilets, and inflation. “Gov 2.0″ could also enable more checks and balances against bad government.
+1
+1
Interesting article: I have been working on a platform for transparency of the European Parliament.
The platform, epvote.eu, is in its first version now and I will be adding an API in a few weeks.
I also thought about a section where people can vote to for texts voted at the parliament and compare the results.
Laurent
Is there an API to get patent and trademark data bypassing the USPTO web site interface?
This is just like the European Commission’s drive to re-use Public Sector Information in all the member states in Europe, http://ec.europ...si/index_en.htm
We are currently building applications that re-use such datasets and add value to the original data with both web and mobile applications. Just look at the estimated size of the market = Euro 27 Billion. I wonder what the US market is worth. I would even go as far to say that this could be a major earner to the US government in royalties from the re-use of data.
Gov 2.0 seems to Socialism, or it will operate within the constraints of Socialism. What we are finding is that promises of transparency have not been kept and it’s getting worse.
We’ll have nice API’s into public data, but some of the data won’t be exposed. It will all end up being Orwellian where the so-called “transparency” will be used for control.
I’m quite disturbed by this argument. Why should our rulers expose themselves? They know what is rite for us and I trust them with making decision for me.
Government is not a platform. Government is a framework. Frameworks can have SDKs. Platforms have competing platforms.
Government is careerists working in their own self-interest by redistributing your money under the guise of altruism.
I know it’s out of topic, but I think I have to say it: Tim O’Reilly, you need a shave.
Why? Why are people so obsessed with people being clean shaven.
You read this great article and this is the first thing that comes to mind. Get over it.
Tim doesn’t need a shave. He just needs to add ponytail. Then you will understand him as part of the hippie generation, power to the people, socialist, self-annointed universal theologist he is.
Why? Why are people so obsessed with people eating with forks and knives. Joe M., I think I didn’t explain myself clear enough: my point was that this great article with a picture of a guy shaved and with a neatly combed hair would reach attention to high spheres.
Thank you for your advice (”Get over it”), I’ll try not to forget it.
All the best
For the developers reading this, I recently gave a talk at the Ruby Hoedown titled “Civic Hacking”:
http://sunlight...g-ruby-hoedown/
As our economy becomes more of a service/tech economy this is exactly the type of ideas we need to keep us on top.
Excellent Read and an Interesting Idea… Futuristic and envisioned road map now needed for the government, however the big question is: Can Gov2.0 evolve as the same way as Web2.0 has done or will it need a Leader with a clear & outlined Road Map??
great times ahead
Wow. This is pretty interesting stuff!
Great perspectives, Tim.
Web 2.0 and Government can combine to create a powerful new platform. And Social Media (the exchange medium, if you will) is a key enabler.
The hands-on (or “DIO”) aspect is a critical new way of thinking. No more vending machines for important services. It’s becoming more about personal engagement. As we’ve come together online, I’ve seen that we can move the needle through the act of purposeful, focused collaboration. As cross functional teams, we can achieve things that are simply not possible in a world dominated by silo-thinking.
Framing social issues as “ecosystems” is important too, in areas like healthcare, education and energy. It can be difficult to drive innovation from within a system, when most can’t articulate how the moving parts work in the aggregate. It’s especially disconcerting if the outcomes are not what we want. So besides solving for platform and engagement, we must learn to tackle ecosystem complexity.
And what about the pace of all this?
I see discovery, engagement and learning happening at a blinding speed. And I see acceleration. The adoption rate of Twitter alone is evidence. I’ve personally engaged with more thought leaders in the last 10 days than I had in the last 10 years.
I just hope Silicon Valley can keep up.
Maybe, this time, it will be people who blaze the trail of innovation, without relying on the next software release. We’ve always needed apps to move data and to process transactions. In the knowledge economy, ideas are the currency. Sharing them is the value add. ROI has a whole new formula.
Great piece Tim, as always. Thanks for providing the thought leadership on Web 2.0, and getting us thinking.
Meantime, we’ve got some vending machines to reverse engineer.
Are there #chat groups for that? (The short answer is ‘yes’.)
See you online. Let’s connect.
Chris (@SourcePOV)
Yes the government should operate platforms to build on … and the social graph should be one of these platforms: http://www.medi...t-run-platform/
Excellent article. Thanks Tim.
Looking forward to seeing how Gov 2.0 develops. Government is a leader in developing solutions to the most complex problems from energy, environment, health care, public diplomacy, and our wars abroad. Whether you like it or not, government has a large role to play in these endeavors.
These problems are huge and require a shift in how we think about them. The platform approach is really essential and lets us think about new ways and new communities we can leverage to solve problems.
As a govie, I’ve seen lots of interest in Gov 2.0 and there is an energy inside public service that wants to try new approaches to solve problems. And I think that is good for the country.
I knew I’d heard this before.
Dave Winer applied “platform” to open Gov’t back in 2008, in refernce to an API from the Bay Area Rapid Transit:
“Is your subway system a platform?”
http://www.scri...emAPlatfor.html
Brilliant article Tim, paramount even.
Good article, Tim, and I agree with your framing.
The thing that makes me most dubious about a serious embrace by our Government of Gov 2.0 is the law of unintended consequences.
To create a platform you have to be open to the prospects of people using your platform in ways not originally thought of.
So much of government thinking is stifling unintended consequences both from the perspective of CYA and from the perspective of not mucking with the official narrative.
This is no small part of the ‘how sausage is made aspect of governance’ that scares the living crap out of the powers that be.
Cheers,
Mark
Mark,
You raise a key point. Open collaboration tests the resolve of politicians (and corporate executives operating in the public domain); will they like the answers? Are they truly committed to seek the best possible outcomes for their stakeholders? Or is there an over arching agenda?
Certainly begs the question of transparency.
Open collaboration forces you to take a risk: your opinion and agenda may not come out on top. Yet collaboration is a powerful driver for innovation.
Politicians and CEO’s are people too. We need to define the problems, stakeholders and objectives clearly.
And then we hope for the best.
@Chris, my fear is that the powers that be will drag their feet or only allow transparency in edge policy areas.
Government is the antithesis of the axiom that you can’t improve what you don’t measure; as long as the data is convoluted enough that it’s subject to wide interpretation then it’s easily subject to the tyranny of the ‘All or None.’ – http://bit.ly/7RtJs
Read: Right/Left/Socialist/Marketer
To be clear, I am squarely in the camp that measurable knowledge is the cornerstone of change.
Mark
Bureaucracies resist all forms of objective measurement. Since government is, be definition, a ginormous bureaucracy, don’t expect many substantive changes or much of this Gov 2.0 to make much of a dent.
The only answer is to have smaller government.
Kool. A world where everyone is logical and motivated by altruism and all have an equal share of food, energy, housing, and music whenever they want it. Need a andy bar – just download it!
We are the world! All together now! “Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya . . . .”
The real question is what are we going to do with all the humans on the planet?
We? What do WE have to do with it.
99% of the earth is uninhabited. People who live in a metropolis are delusional about population issues, mostly because they cannot find a parking space. They should spend a year in the Rocky Mountains and then try to explain to us how the Earth is overpopulated.
Great analogy with vending machine. Sometimes you feel though that government prefers to be the vending machine to maintain their empire. The real challenge with the platform is how to make it easy for state and the multitude of local agencies to leverage it.
Tim’s vision on Gov 2.0 where he breaks down activities into 4 buckets is truly inspiring: 1) gov to gov, 2) gov to citizens, 3) citizens to gov, and 4) citizens to citizens.
We have put together a comprehensive news aggregator on Open Government 2.0 which follows this important topic: http://portal.e...tia.com/govnews
Correction on above link. it should be:
http://portal.e...tia.com/opengov
Great idea, Tim! Gov 2.0 should open up a whole new group of non-profits that you can sue for using the Gov 2.0 trademark! Sue everybody!
Occam’s razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”
Awesome article! Tim is a brilliant man.
One thing I’d like to see is some sort of web-based expert crowd-sourcing in the financial sector–it seems like the expertise gap between regulators and those creating risky new financial instruments left the latter group free to run wild.
I think geo-location data could be a double-edged sword, but the benefits would be great, if only we can keep government from abusing it. I do hope transparency is as valued in gov2.0 as it is in the web2.0 world.
It’s nice to see the definition of Web 2.0 expanded beyond just social media. Web 2.0 needs to include connectivity in general as that is the hallmark of the technology evolution that is happening now. We recently completed a project that allowed a school district to share it’s strategic plan directly with their constituents via the web. This broadening of the information ecology through interconnectedness is the essence of Web 2.0 and so also Gov 2.0.
Tim, you are right about the vending machine analogy but you forgot to mention that you also have to put in a few bucks to the vending machine operators first (congress and state legislators) before you get your tax money’s worth from the machine.
A better solution is to do away with much of what the vending machine offers.
Hi Tim,
The government already provides a platform to encourage private citizens to deliver services. It is our regulated market-based economy. The example given in the article about businesses chipping in to repair a road in Kauai when the govt decided not to seems like a clear cut case of capitalism in action (”Understanding the impact on the local economy, a group of businesses…”), and not some extraordinary case of govt2.0. The meetups to clean parks are pretty cool, though.
Many of the products and services we all utilize on a day to day basis are provided by private citizens, who are enabled by our legislation and regulation to capture some of the value they create, and thus are quite willing to continue creating value.
People don’t need the government to tell them how to engage with each other, and if they did it would be a lost cause anyway, since people should be running the government instead of the other way around. However, there does seem to be a mismatch between the level of civic engagement and the level of dissatisfaction with how government is run. So maybe what you are really looking for isn’t govt2.0, but citizen2.0, because when citizen2.0 happens, you can bet your bottom dollar that govt2.0 won’t be far behind, whatever it is.
-Erik
Regarding the Kauai bridge repair, it seems the state department that would have fixed the bridge didn’t have the money for it. Why was this? Would the people of Kauai have been okay with receiving a bill in the mail from the state to pay for the bridge? With Kauai’s population of 64,000, and the bridge cost of $4M, this would have meant a one time fee of $62.50 for every man, woman and child on the island, or about $180 per household.
Money doesn’t grow on trees, and neither to bridges. Everything has a cost, and government agencies need to prioritize their spending. What if the state had decided that the $4M was better spent on hiring more teachers to give students more individual attention, on programs to enhance sustainable agriculture, or on job training programs to help citizens transition to higher-skill positions? If these were the case, would the state’s failure to provide the bridge repairs still seem like a failure of the system?
And for all we know, there could have been ten other projects that the state deemed more important for the health of Kauai and the state than repairing the bridge. So, it may have been quite the appropriate outcome that the businesses most directly affected by the bridge closing were the ones who helped pay for it, just as businesses who want to attract customers pay for nice looking storefronts and well-placed advertising.
My point here is that ideally government already is a “do it ourselves” platform, and that making decisions to try to achieve the best result for everyone is difficult and non-obvious. Serious alternate solutions are going to have to use most of what we already have, but by having a good understanding of its shortcomings as well as its strengths, tweak it just a bit so it runs ten times better
Interesting Scott Heiferman mentions.
Something about this sounds slightly off. Government isn’t a thing, it’s a network of relationships mostly among organizations — themselves, networks of individuals — and individuals themselves. How it organizes is not a unitary executive decision, at least not in a democracy (and not even in most totalitarian regimes). Making decisions is a complex, multipartite process that can happen in a moment of crisis or over decades of societal evolution.
Frankly, I think the US government’s done a fine job of producing data but an inadequate job of distributing it, even of making it accessible. Sure, with the onset of all of the various “2.0s,” why not one for the government, too? But be clear: many highly touted programs in government, just like innovative companies and projects in the private sector, are visionary, incomplete, or already failed.
The disciplines of open planning and open policymaking are well known and road tested. They existed before there were personal computers and have been refined since to take advantage of digital technology including social networks. Reforming governance should begin with enhancing these powerful, very human processes (useful in virtually every domain of human endeavor), and then ensuring their application as widely as possible. That’s for formal governance. Personal and organizational governance outside of formal government can assume many forms that work equally well in informal settings.
I’m publishing an article on open policymaking in the next few weeks. Ping me if you’d like to receive a copy: bluefire@well.com .
I sense that it’s compatible with Tim’s way of thinking, but it intentionally avoids making technology the fetish that will chase away bad juju. We have social tools for improved governance. Let’s us them, with a technological assist where it’s appropriate.
Thanks to Bob for giving some examples of how government already provides a platform, in addition to enabling a market economy. Open planning and policymaking are already part of how most cities conduct their affairs. In the west coast cities where I’ve lived, the city council meetings, zoning commission meetings and transportation commission meetings have all been open for public participation and comment. Are these not platforms for private citizens to participate in the decision-making process? And indeed, those very same private citizens can run for a seat on those government bodies.
The question,”can government be a platform?” is not the right question, because it doesn’t acknowledge that government is already the largest and most influential platform in existence. However, many acknowledge that government (or as Bob mentions here, “a network of relationships among organizations and individuals”) as we know it today needs some major improvements. Since government is our way of taking decisions all together, a more instructive question might be, “how can collective decisionmaking be improved?” The answers to this question may guide us towards the governmental reforms we seek.
Bob:
Likewise, I agree with your opening statement. See my post below. I think we have to get away from seeing technology as a solution to the dysfunction of governance. No killer app exists to address mind set and ensuing behaviors that have created silos, mismanagement and voter apathy.
PS I think government, a very abstract term, gets short shrift among techies, most of whom were indoctrinated in free market ideology — see where that’s got us — in the heyday of Milton Friedman et al. Even economists acknowledge that idealizing markets and demonizing government is a bad idea.
I’m with Tim about many things, but the most important is an attitude shift: stop grousing about a bogeyman and get in there and start making things work better. If you know what better might be.
Everyone wants to dump on the Post Office, but having experienced postal service around the world, including FedEx and UPS, I’m damned pleased to be able to dispatch a letter in a box on the corner or using a kiosk in the PO for a package, taking five seconds and five minutes respectively, having it travel anywhere in the world while being completely trackable and insurable, and the letter costs me 42¢ and the package maybe $5. WTF is wrong with that?
Using our fabulous private healthcare system, I must wait to see a doctor for maybe two or three weeks, I then must pay him or her $35 just to walk in the door, plus I must pay half or more of my charges for care and medicine IF they’re insurable (usually over $100 per visit), and my health insurance (I’m self employed) costs close to $500 a month just for me.
Let’s not even get into our wondrous financial system, optimized to make everyone wealthy….
Hi Bob, I think you’re right that government today is a very abstract concept, and this may partly be why voter turnout in the US is so low: ~55% in presidential elections, ~38% in mid-term senatorial elections, and can be as low as 5% in mayoral, gubernatorial, and other local elections.
How have we arrived at this place where the perceived returns from participating in our democracy are so low?
Can we create a culture of civic participation where citizens feel they own the government… and where they do? And if we can achieve this, will government work better than it does now by actually being smarter due to the increase in collective intelligence which is participating?
source of voter turnout numbers: http://www.info...a/A0781453.html
PS There’s a difference between being a free market ideologue and understanding that markets can play an important role in efficient resource allocation. I don’t know who these indoctrinated techies are of which you speak, or whether they’re aware of Joe Stiglitz’s work showing that the presence of externalities and asymmetric information hinder the ability of free markets to find pareto efficient allocations, but in any case, the “government vs. free markets” debate presents a false dichotomy. Both are tools to be used complementarily in different amounts depending on the application. The system for providing health care should probably be structured differently than the system for providing mp3 players. We need to be intelligent, figure out what where we would like to end up, and use the latest data, research, knowledge and know-how to get us there.
In total agreement re: geolocation and some of the killer aps coming from it. My company, NextBus, contracts with large and small public transit systems, i.e. Muni in San Francisco, WMATA in DC, TTC in Toronto, and whole host of universities with shuttle and bus systems, i.e. Rutgers, MIT, UC-DAVIS, UCLA et al., to provide Real-Time Passenger Information for riders. Management gets a whole other set of tools to help them better manage their systems, i.e. schedule adherence, headway management, etc. Knowing when your bus is arriving at your stop – in real-time – is a motivator for people to buy iPhones and other Smartphones. Government provides the data because they own the buses – other third-party developers can provide ways to access the data. Riders can use their cellphones, iPhone apps, SMS text messaging, and can even receive alerts pushed to their phones or laptop when the bus is a set number of minutes away.
Check out WMATA’s website – http://www.wmata.nextbus.com
Web 2.0 is still at beginning period.
Transnational Organized Crime as a platform?
Good luck with that.
Why can’t this be where government as platform begins? Data Ferrett at the Data Web, at the Census Bureau. It attempts to integrate data across federal departments – not an easy thing to do.
http://www.thedataweb.org/
Tim:
Enjoyed your post and appreciate the added links to increase an understanding of your concepts. I think you bring remarkable conceptual thinking to the topic that sets the stage to encourage more discussion of these concepts (supportive or contrarian) which I read as varying from being rock solid to fluid. Some I found to be a bit blurry. Perhaps you could elaborate.
In reading your post about government as a platform, it reads as though you are addressing government as if it were a “machine,” (which may be your intent) rather than an institution upon which it was founded.
I think this is an important distinction because depending on the way we define or describe our subject, it will affect the way we portray its structure, processes and procedures. This, then, will further affect or influence how we characterize the problem or recommend applications/solutions to address or solve them.
A second observation I make is in some of your examples it reads as though you are describing government and civics like they are one in the same. While there is certainly an interconnectivity and interdependence between the two, they are not synonymous. For example, how and why we act as a body of citizens around a public policy issue is not the same way our government would act given the same set of circumstances, even if it is a representation of that same public.
So, yes, I can appreciate Gov 2.0 as a platform. But I would not lead with that position as the focal point for how to solve its many challenges. It is only one element, and in response to advancing communication technology, perhaps a very important one