I finally get Government 2.0.

The penny has dropped. I finally get Enterprise and Government 2.0.

Social media are great professional and political networking tools that enable people to maintain semi-formal discussions of topical issues across organisational boundaries. Transient communities of interest form around issues and their deliberations are subsequently folded back into official decision-making processes.

The theory is that these self-directed collaborations dissolve silos, improve access to relevant information/expertise and generate a better quality of decision making. Enterprises have been doing this for some time - we might see it as a human anaolog of the decentralising tendencies of SOA. A new and agile way of managing discussions, negotiating positions, gathering support - in other words, a new way of doing business.

There is an additional requirement for democratic government. If social networking is a new mode of discussing and formulating policy - then it should be public and open in the same way that a town hall meeting or a session of parliament is public and open.

Of course there should be constraints around disclosure of private information - managing appropriate disclosure has always been a fact of professional life - but the new media raise some interesting questions as to what is meant by 'identity' and what is meant by 'privacy'. I'd like to have a look at those in a separate post.