Thanks to Bob Gourley for calling my attention (via Twitter) to this series of posts on Government 2.0 by Mark Drapeau, an Associate Research Fellow at the U.S. National Defense University. He asks (and tries to answer: “How can the government acknowledge, assess, and embrace social software?”
A choice quote:
Internal governmental information sharing means different things to different people. The most commonly-stated objection to the incorporation of social software into national security operations is that malware could be implanted or the social tools could otherwise provide access into government systems, thereby reducing network integrity. However, a good deal of government information, while perhaps private, is not necessarily so much so that off-the-shelf Web 2.0 sites cannot be utilized – they do typically come with some security features.
Much as the web has transformed our notions of publication and information seeking, social media are transforming our notions of information sharing. I’m glad to see earnest efforts to exploit these technologies to make government agencies more effective.
The Noisy Channel 