Post in Social media & local gov event 29th October

Sep 02 18:43 UTC

I tend to agree with both Graham and David in different ways and for
differing reasons!

The concern is that politicians and their professional counterparts are
being encouraged towards Web 2.0 for those sexy (hype) reasons and I
still have concerns about accessibility! As to SOA, its been around for
12 years and should have been the foundation of e-government i.e. making
the data more accessible for things like the mashups favoured by W2
enthusiasts.

Gartner have been reasonably accurate in their e-gov predictions, so
they may be right in this case.

As to getting the citizens writing - nice idea but I await people truly
getting involved online, apart from a very small minority, normally with
a grudge! We established forums on our council web site which haven't
been used either by staff or the public, we have tried online budgetary
involvement with statistically insignificant feedback. We recently
provided a form to 'question the Leader' - 15 responses of unknown
quality but he seems pleased! But again what about the excluded?

Personalisation may pull a few more in but technology doesn't come
cheap, nor the people to develop and support it. According to the FT the
whole Blair e-gov spend was around eight billion, surely some ground
work on process and needs beforehand could have ensured a better spend?

Mick http://greatemancipator.com