Democracy 2.0: Seven Guidelines for Government Leaders

I have a few books on my shelf now regarding web 2.0, social media and social government. I found Don Tapscott’s  Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World (released 1 October 2008) view on the direction of government online particularly interesting. I highly recommend reading this book. You could get it the book on Amazon for £13.59.  Here is a snippet of what to expect from the book.

Seven guidelines for government leaders (pg. 268)

1. Hire more young people
2. Embrace Democracy 2.0
3. Rethink your e-government and internet strategy
4. To create trust, act with integrity-honesty, consideration of the interest of youth, accountability, and transparency.
5. If you’re a politician, stop using attack ads.
6. if you’re a government manager or executive, get together with Net Geners and develop a strategy for the wiki workplace.
7. If you’re a senator or congressman, “Please heed the call / Don’t stand in the doorway / Don’t block up the hall / For he that gets hurt / Will be he who has stalled / There’s a battle outside / And it is ragin’ / It’ll shake your windows / And rattle your walls / For the times they are a-changin’.” (A little advice from Bob Dylan)
   

For details of each point, please refer here.

Though this may seem like a far-fetched dream right now to some or even most local authorities here in the UK, but with collaborative efforts such as Social Innovation Camps, BarCamp and UKGovWeb BarCamp specifically, this “dream” may not be all that impossible. We now have the advantage of speed, with several social media channels of distributing useful skills, knowledge and information. Blog It, Tag It, Link It, Email It, Comment on It, Go Live! We are now going back to traditional means of implementing change and motivating people. We are going back to what they call ‘grass roots efforts’. But the difference is you now have the ability to influence 1, 10, 100 or even thousands and millions of people within seconds. Just look at what Obama did with his recent presidential campaign.

EMPOWERMENT

The most biggest and important advantage is, you now have the ability to EMPOWER people directly right inside their homes with a push of a button. And that is one POWERFUL OPPORTUNITY that the local government must grab if they truly want to be ‘Grown Up Digital‘.