I think the value of new models of engagement, and they are new when you look at the age of government processes in the grand scheme of things, is the ability to further empower and engage real people into the actual government and political processes through online tools, and through open community methdologies, and we can certainly learn from and apply a lot of lessons from the FOSS community there. It isn’t just about takling and sharing opinions, which indeed, people have always done.

Obama’s success so far has been at winning an election, against an almost universally disliked government. Full points to him for doing that… but very early days in terms of changing government. Way too early to start learning lessons from anything Obama does in government, let’s see if he can bring unemployment under control first. That’s his real challenge, and the challenge after that will be when inflation kicks in.

These “radical new models of social organisation” are hardly new. People, you know, talk to one another and share opinions. People have always organised this way. It’s just that the TV generation got somehow locked in the concept of mass broadcasting, and one way communication. I’m kind of shocked how the “baby boomer” generation are so deeply entrenched in getting their opinions from the TV and how impossible it is for them to grasp that younger generations communicate with each other.

Obama tried the idea of asking younger generations for ideas about how to fix the problems of the USA and he got the predictable answers: don’t exhaust the nation getting bogged in pointless resource wars; give up on “the war on drugs” because the drugs are winning and the people are losing; don’t hand ownership of the nation to the bankers, because they don’t make good decisions; apply the laws even handedly rather than making chosen people above the law and immune to criticism.

Obama just said, “Well you can’t have any of those things, so choose something else.”

And the response of most younger Americans is, “New government? whatever… come back when you are genuine.”

So down goes productivity, down goes employment, and the wheels are starting to fall off while we tinker with this radical new and exciting concept that Democratically elected leaders should listen to the voters rather than small, powerful interest groups. All the electronics and 2.0 version numbers don’t change the fundamental principle that leaders listen to powerful interest groups… because they are powerful.

There was more to the success we can learn from Obama than just the election campaign. The way they were able to then engage the online community support for ongoing projects on http://organizingforchange.org/. I agree that what is happening in the US is mostly campaigning, but it also has evolved to include some clueful community engagement for empowering community projects, and in getting community input for government policy and directions (http://opengov.ideascale.com/).

I don’t think American campaigning would exactly work in Australia anyway, we have a different culture, and different election system

In Senator Lundy’s office we are not using online tools for campaigning, we are using them for community engagement on policy decisions and future directions of government. We are trying to choose topics that are real, topical and in need of input from the broader community.

I believe that structure and access to data should fit into Gov 2.0, especially because access to government data in particular will massively drive public and private innovation through the ability to collate, aggregate and mashup publicly available datasets. There are _many_ examples of this in the Government 2.0 Public Sphere briefing paper we have just finalised, so do please check that out http://wiki.katelundy.com.au/PublicSphere2

A Gov 2.0 strategy for Australia that doesn’t include strong and informed decisions around data structure and access to data will hold us all back.

Gov 2.0 does not and should not ever just be about social networking, otherwise, I would likely share some of your concerns. It should also not be just about politics. We are trying to look for tools and implement projects that are useful to political processes (in particular consultative policy development) because, well, Kate’s a politician and that is where she can have a good impact. However remember that the ability for the departments and agencies to move the agenda forward in actual services delivery will heavily depend on political comfort levels around these new technologies and methodologies. So it is all interlinked and getting politicians engaged with and comfortable in this space is necessary and will have an enormous flow-on effect.

Thanks for your comments. I look forward to further discussion

One thing that concerns me is that there is a lot of emphasis on Obama’s campaign. Although this was no doubt a success, it was mostly successful at getting him elected, not in actually getting results. I am presuming in your case you are not focussing on getting elected as you are doing this publicly with public money. Therefore many of the lessons do not apply.

The other problem with using his campaign as a model is that his was first and well publicised. do the same thing too often and it quickly becomes old. I am already disregarding tweets from politicians that are focused around getting them re-elected in much the same way as I now disregard the roadside waver mobs that appear at every election.

As I mentioned to Des, web2.0 (social interaction) is an inherent problem to government with their sensitivities and emphasis on political correctness as you can see by the comments above. Save web2.0 for getting yourselves re-elected and getting your electorates opinions, which you should be doing of your own accords rather than using tax payers money.

You would be much better focussing on web3.0 and the use of structured data on the web. In that way you could actually make some great progress by allowing access to data in a structured way so that it can be re-used by Google Squared, Bing, Wolfram Alpha and anyone else prepared to repurpose it. That way you get a win, it is easier for you to do, and you won’t get half the polticing and expensive consultation process, and you go one better with government 3.0!

“with whom you can communication.”

you probably meant

“with whom you can communicate.”