Whoa, slow your roll Government 2.0, Twitter can#039;t do it all
June 9th, 2009 by Ernesto Gluecksmann
There’s a bit of a tech craziness is going around Washington DC lately with lots of twitter chatter about Government 2.0. It’s no secret that this new administration is looking for answers in these challenging times but I have some concern that signal-to-noise ratio is going to cause some trouble.
In the last two years, Washington DC has taken center stage regarding technology adoption across institutions at both local and national levels. Seems barely a few years ago that tech hackers never really saw much value in hanging out with PR and marketing people. We had to be forced to go network like it was a chore and play nice with everyone we met. Now-a-days, it seems like we’re all tripping over each other to exchange business cards, write on each others blogs and trying to score tickets the latest tech conferences. Why is that?
Lots of reasons. GenXers are now in positions of influence and arguably more willing to adopt new technologies. We have a new and more open administration in the White House that is mandating more transparency. And we have a bad economy that once again is attracting big business to Washington DC area.
..oh and one more… we also have… Twitter.
To some, it’s life changing. To others, it’s entertaining at best, and to a great majority of the rest of the world… it doesn’t register on their radar… at all.
So it can be rather amusing to me (rolling my eyes), when I hear of yet another social media “expert” that has suddenly have transformed into newest and greatest Government 2.0 expert. It’s as if overnight throngs of “twitterati” gurus have suddenly have become the new and improved “goverati”. I can see the late night infomercial… hey you too can join this bandwagon! For a nominal fee, all you have to do is sign up for a twitter account and visit the best website in the whole world, goverati.com (yes they have a website).
Aside from that silliness, all anyone should really care about is whether Twitter as a tool can it be used to improve how government does its day to day business. And that’s the secert behind it. It’s just a tool folks, there’s not fancy or special about it.
The magic behind Twitter is its simplicity. Its a personal, simple broadcasting tool and it allows individuals to send out non-intrusive messages. These messages can be tips, links to other resources, musings, events your attending or frankly anything you care enough to write in 140 characters. It would be great to see more heads of our federal agencies use it to broadcast what’s going on inside our government from their perspective.
Unlike Facebook and other walled social networks, whereby you have to be “friended” by someone to be allowed to look at each others profiles… anyone can follow anyone on Twitter. The potential for individuals and businesses is that by using this tool, everyone can get a glimpse as to what others are thinking about or doing, across institutional boundaries.
In other words, for government users, it can bring ideas from outside to these tremendous bureaucracies as well as allow the public to get a better glimpse of the people behind the scenes, invariably helping humanize that “big and scary” government that likes to spend our tax dollars.
Having grown up inside the beltway, I have witnessed, through my personal network of friends that work for USA, just how much work goes into managing this empire of a country from within these massive institutions. The REAL experts are the thousands of public servants that have staked their careers in keeping this country running.
So do twitterati gurus have all the answers for government? Heck no, of course not.
Should government agencies look to apply the right tools for the right solutions?
Of course! That’s what they’ve always been striving for, or didn’t you know that? фото порно писинг
Well… could government then benefit from a little more personable, self-promotion in the form a tool like Twitter? Yes. They certainly could.
Eventually the hype will die down and Twitter will just be what is… yet another tool to help us all stay connectect with each other.
March 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
great article! Can we republish w credit?
March 10th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Thanks. Sure, republish away.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Agree. A tool. Lots of early “excitement” and novelty. I remember the day when you could reach and interact with anyone, and I mean anyone –company presidents, noted columnists, celebs, etc.– using email. Consider now its status for effective, meaningful dialog.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Social Media, SEO, etc. has a low barrier to entry on the user side and there are plenty of people out there who feel empowered by it. Once the club fed crowd realizes how simple it is they’ll all be using it just like they started using blackberries in the late 90’s.