New book details challenges of Web 2.0 usage across the globe

Many agencies are struggling with how to deal with these Web 2.0 collaboration tools, but it's not just a problem for American federal agencies.

Starting Wednesday in Sweden, the European Union is holding a conference of ministers of technology from across Europe that will be looking at lessons learned throughout the EU.

In conjunction with that, a new book is out: State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards. It's available online for free, and will eventually come to a store near you.

It pulls from some of the Web 2.0 thought leaders, many of whom you have heard here on Federal News Radio 1500 AM, including Tim O'Reilly, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, and Mark Drapeau from George Washington University.

The editor and the person who pulled it all together is John Gotze, who is a professor and technology evangelist.

Federal News Radio spoke to him from Sweden and asked him about why this issue is of such global importance.

"Governments around the world must embrace the new technologies that are available. They have worked with e-government for quite some time, of course, so it's not new to government to use technology by any means, but the whole 2.0 revolution . . . now comes into government. We see government officials going . . . on Twitter and blogs."

He said this type of behavior will eventually be part of how government works as a whole and that the United States was a big part of the start of such changes.

"I think the U.S. Set the agenda with the government 2.0 discussion in many ways, influenced by the Obama memorandum on government, but it's really a global thing."

Since the revolution has already happened, Gotze said he feels as though it is time to leave the 'e' off of 'e-government' and simply realize that government now operates online.

"E-government is government. Just as the enterprise world -- the private sector -- has embraced 'e-business' as just business, now it's just government. Of course, the maturity varies from country to country, but IT is everywhere and it's so pervasive, it makes no sense to call anything 'e' anymore."

Thus, government across the globe have changed the way operates, especially when it comes to dealing with constituencies, and the way the public accesses government information.

"It's everywhere and we see the changes now that people require more open government, more accessible government, more service-oriented government. So, really, the [changes] we've seen over the years in all kinds of sectors from the arts to science, is definitely coming to government now."

The way governments deal with their own employees is morphing, as well. Gotze said trust is more important now than it was before.

"The whole tradition of government that [says], either we need legislation for making issues open, or we do it by default -- that's definitely changing. The whole way new media is influencing how government deals with its internal environment is changing totally. . . . It's not just technology driven. Technology plays a part in all of this, but there's also management 2.0."

This, he said, is the most important aspect of government operations in the 21st century.

"There is a new way of managing our enterprises, be it in the private or public sector. Technology is part of the transformation, but the [whole] transformation is really social and political and economical and so on. It's really a paradigm shift that we're experiencing."

Follow John Gotze on Twitter: @gotze.