What is Government 2.0?

What does the term Government 2.0 mean? Do the public really know to it and need to understand it? How can Web 2.0 technology and social media help to improve efficiencies within government and citizen participation? In the 21Web 2.0 initiatives are being used within the public sector, giving more currency to the term Government 2.0 (New World Encyclopedia, 2009).

Government 2.0 with the use of technology, both inside and outside government. The term “Government 2.0″ leverages Web 2.0 and social networking technology. It is always associated with Web 2.0 and Social Media. In 2005, The term was first coined by is one of America’s best known authorities on government reform William D. Eggers and with co-author Stephen Goldsmith in Government 2.0: Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy. According to New World Encyclopedia (2009), it is an attempt to integrate the social networking and interactive advantages of Web 2.0 approaches into the practice of government. It can provide more effective processes for service delivery for individuals and businesses. Integration of tools like wikis, development of government specific social networking sites, use of blogs, multimedia sharing, podcasts, RSS feeds and data mashups are all helping governments provide information to citizens in a manner that is most useful to them.

A simpler definition is that “Government 2.0 either describes a vision of a new form of governance , engaging with constituents is understood as a critical element of political legitimacy”. (A. Schellong and P. Girrger, 2010) In other words, Government 2.0 can have two meanings. It is the use of Information Technology (IT) to socialize and commoditize government services, processes and data (A. Maio, 2009). It is also the use of social media and Web 2.0 technologies (especially the collaborative technologies) to interact with citizens more directly and provide better government services at a city, state, national and international level.

A more intriguing definition, the term “Government 2.0″ was introduced by respected developers’ handbook publisher Tim O’Reilly, is “Government As a Platform” at both Gov 2.0 Expo and Gov 2.0 Summit Conferences in 2009 and Washington DC.

A video explains “What Government 2.0 is” by Tim O’Reilly

Video 1.0 – What Government 2.0 is

Characteristics of Government 2.0

• It is citizen-driven.
• It is employee-centric.
• It keeps evolving.
• It is transformational.
• It requires a blend of planning and nurturing.
• It needs Pattern-Based Strategy capabilities.
• It calls for a new management style.

From Gartner - Government 2.0: A Gartner Definition by Andrea Di Maio.

Four Types of Interaction of Government 2.0

• Government to citizen - providing services and information to citizens.
• Citizen to government - citizens report on probelms that need government assistance.
• Citizen to citizen - not every problem needs to be solved by government.
• Government to government - we need better cooperation within government agencies.

From My Heart’s In Accra – Tim O’Reilly on Government 2.0 by Ethan Zuckerman.

Benefits of Government 2.0

• To reduce cost of engagement through more productive tools
• To provide a more efficient and effective communication way with cizitens
• To help government better take advantage of social networking technologies
• To use collaborative tool for easier knowledge sharing
• To enhance information discovery through transparency and data mashups
• To improve satisfaction between citizen and employee
• To simplify knowledge creation and retention though usable Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 applications

Risks of Government 2.0

• Privacy
• Security
• Bureaucracy
• Regulation
• Data Silos

From Government Blogs – Building On The Government 2.0 Platform by John Foley.

In conclusion, Government 2.0 with technology is enabled government to provide better government services and processes through social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. The Government 2.0 platform is serving as an online communication platform for government to communicate and engage more efficient and effectively with citizens.

References:

Web 2.0. 2009. New World Encyclopedia.

A. Schellong and P. Girrger. 2010. GOVERNMENT 2.0 IN BETA PHASE : An Analysis of eParticipation and Web 2.0 Applications of Germany’s 50 largest Cities and 16 Federal States.

A. Maio. 2009. Government 2.0: A Gartner Definition.

Enterprise Wiki Tools

The Internet is the most famous distribution system in the world. Wiki is becoming one of the most  popular social media tools for the organization of communication.

The following is a list of the popular open-source Wiki software for collaboration in the enterprise and community.

• MediaWiki – is the world’s most popular web-based open-sourced software. Wiki platform, a software package is written in PHP programming language and requires either a PostgreSQL or MySQL database. It was developed in 2003 and used on all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. It can be used both internally as intranet or externally as company public wiki on the Interent.
• TWiki – is an open-source enterprise agility and Web 2.0 platform which is the most popular wiki used behind the corporate firewall. It is written in Perl programming language. It was founded by Peter Thoeny in 1998. It can be used for both internal and external networks of an organization.
• xWiki – is a free open-source wiki and web application platform. It is an enterprise Wiki software package licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). It was originally developed by Ludovic Dubost and was first released in January 2003. All XWiki software is developed in Java programming language and uses a relational database management system such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and HSQLDB..
• MindTouch Core – is an enterprise-grade collaboration, wiki and mashup platform. It is built on C# using .NET/Mono/PHP.
• PmWiki – is a web-base software wiki platform and distributed under a General Public License. It is written by university professor and Perl 6 developer Patrick R. Michaud in the PHP programming language and uses  a relational database management system like MySQL or SQLite databases for data storage.

References:

MediaWiki. 2010. Wikipedia.

TWiki. 2010. Wikipedia.

PmWiki. 2010. Wikipedia.

MindTouch Core. 2010. Geeknet.

Google Trends

In May 2006, Google labs launched its state-of-the-art analysis tool called Google Trends. Since it launched, it has fast become a popular keyword search program for the interest of Internet users across the world. Google Trends is a free public web facility of Google Inc., about Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages (Wikipedia, 2010). It allows people to search, to track and to monitor keywords, brand names, products keyword phrases and services. It also provides a way to visualize the popularity of searches over a period of time (see Video 1.0). As well, it leverages the Google News service to highlight those trends over time, with news activities acting as punctuators on a graphical chart (Smallman, 2008).

A video explains “What Google Trends is”

Video 1.0 - Google Trends

The Google Trends home page has been enhanced to include these Hot Trends (Hot topics and  Hot Searches). It will show the top ten hot trends for the day, for the USA (United States of America).

Search the phrases “Web 2.0″ and “Social Media”

It is interesting to see the graph which shows the popularity between those two key phrases “Web 2.0″ and “Social Media”.

Figure 1.0 - Google Trends for Web 2.0 and Social Media

The above graph which clearly shows that “in 2009, Social media (red) is starting to overtake Web 2.0 (blue) worldwide”. Social Media will become more popular. It will combine with the Semantic Web to form Web 3.0 which is enabling a new generation of richer interface with more shareable and  mashable content.

References:

Google Trends. 2010. Wikipedia.

W. Smallman. 2008. Google Trends to monitor key topics in the news. Social Media Marketing.

 

Business and Corporate Social Networks

As technology has developed, so too has the web and it is expanding constantly. Currently, we are in the era of Web 2.0 and Social Media is harnessing collaboration. Social Media is the revolutionary transformation of media, going from a top-down broadcast model to one that allows the former audience to communicate with one another and take part in the content creation (Khan,2010).

Social media is fast becoming a new type of media for online social interaction. It is also a new communication medium platform which encourages individuals to become co-producers, co-creators and co-developers. In other words, social media allows people to shift flexibly between the role of audience and author. The term “Social Media” started with Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations in 2006. It is a collective term for online interactive “technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives” (Wikipedia, 2010). Currently, the social media platforms are combinations of online Web-based collaborative tools which allow individuals and organizations to instantly collaborate, to share information and to discuss ideas. As well, thwy allows people to form a highly accessible online collaborative community. In 2010, Kaplan and Haenlein defined six different social media types in their Business Horizons article called Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media and Social Netwroks is one of them.

In 1954, the term “Social Network” was first coined by J. A. Barnes in the book Human Relations - Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish. According to Wikipedia (2010), a social networks is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes,” which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. In other words, they allow people to build their online personal profile and connect with their friends to form their own social network. As well, they help to share content with others and to allow people to communicate more interactively. The typical examples of social networks are Facebook and MySpace (see Figure 1.0).

Figure 1.0 – Examples of Social Networks

Today, more and more companies are using social netowrks to communicate with their employees, consumers and business partners. Companies like Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, Pepsi, Intel, Dell and Ford are changing their corporate culture to support Social Media. For example, Intel is using Twitter to connect with their consumers – Michael Brito (a former social media manager at Intel) on Vimeo. This week i am going to look  into an organization that uses social networks. One of the best examples for an organization is Nike.

Figure 2.0 – Nike

Nike (see Figure 2.0) is an American company and was founded as Ble Ribbon Sports in January 1964 by Bill Bowerman and Philip Knight. With more than 30,000 Nike employees across six continents in the world, Nike is the world’s leading sportswear and equipment supplier (Nike, 2010). Nike is using social networks to reach out to consumers and young audiences, as well as, to allow them to share their own sports story with others. In July 2006, Nike and Apple partnered up together to launch a new innovative Nike+iPod product, Nike Plus (see Video 1.0). It is also known as Nike + iPod which is a technology providing motivation to runners in 180 countries around the world (Nike, 2010). It also allows them to track their personal workout data, upload their running/walking information and connects ruuners around the world at a website, Nike+ (see Figure 3.0) where it’s aggregated with all the other data uploaded by all the other runners and walkers (Hames, 2008). Most importantly, Nike+ website is a virtual gathering place for the runners. They have collectively logged 459 million kilomiles. In other words, Nike creates an online community with social network applications (Nike Plus | Facebook, Nike Plus | Twitter) for the consumers to communicate, so they can be engaged and can be part of a community whether it is a digital community or virtual community or even if it is a physical community.

Nike Plus Statistics

• Nike has more than 2 million Nike+ community members.
• Nike+ community members have logged more than 459 million kilomiles. (September, 2010)
• Since launch in July 2006 over 900,000 challenges (908,935 and counting) have been created, more than 1.7 million goals (1,732,653 and counting) have been created, and more than 140,000 training programs (141,819 and counting) have been launched on www.nikeplus.com (Nikebiz, 2010).

A video clip explains “what Nike+ is”

Video 1.0 – Nike+ Motivation

Figure 3.0 – Nike+ website

Benefits of Social Networking Site (Social Network)

Nike is one of the major organizations that truly enhance their bottom line through social networking (MarketingHackz.com, 2009). There are some key benefits for Nike to launch a strong corporate social networking site.

• User Focus - Make it useful, fun, and informative for your customers and potential customers.  People do not want to participate in networks that simply advertise new products or offer specials.
• Niche Building - Having a social network is nice, but creating one that is THE place to go for participants passionate in a particular niche is extremely important when it comes to making a network stand out.
• Product Tie-Ins - In the end, a social network should make a splash on the bottom line.  People have shown that they are willing to spend money on a product if the benefits work both ways: the product must enhance the use of the network and the network must enhance the use of the product.
• Event Tie-Ins - The Internet is loaded with ways to learn about and register for events.  By using the social network to improve the efficiency and communication of events, especially ones that are locally focused but involve multiple venues, the overall value of the network will be enhanced.
• Set Community Goals - Nike+ is getting close to logging 100 Million Miles amongst their users.

From MarketingHackz.com.

In conclusion, Nike has successfully launched Nike+product with social networks. Nike+ uses digital technology (embedded a chip in a shoe) to enhance consumers performance and make sure that there is both a community angle of it and all the social attraction (MarketingHackz.com, 2009). More companies will use social networks like Facebook and Twitter as tools to provide ways for the organization to build brand loyalty, gather information and even create competitive advantages.

References:

Nike+ Shows Why Corporate Social Networking Is Important. 2009. MarketingHackz.com.

 Nike Partners with Seminal Hip Hop Group De La Soul to Release ARE YOU IN?: Nike+ Original Run Available Exclusively at the Nike iTunes Store Beginning April 28th. 2010. 2010. NikeBiz.

Social Media. 2010. Wikipedia.

Social Network. 2010. Wikipedia.

Kaplan, Andreas M. and Haenlein Michael. 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons, Vol. 53, Issue 1, p. 59-68.

N. Khan. 2010. Internet Marketing.

Nike. 2010