This document discusses the concept of "Government 2.0" and how adopting Web 2.0 technologies can help governments achieve more open and participatory models of e-government. It outlines three key principles for open government - transparency, participation, and collaboration - and how social media platforms allow information to flow between governments and citizens as well as among citizens. These platforms include blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and tools for sharing multimedia, mashups, widgets, and more. Adopting these technologies can help governments better meet the functions required for open government.
Government 2.0: Cutting-Edge Solutions For Communication, Collaboration, Serv...Booz Allen Hamilton
Government’s ability to deliver optimally transparent, productive, online communication and interaction at all levels is key to our nation’s future success.
Government 2.0: Cutting-Edge Solutions For Communication, Collaboration, Serv...Booz Allen Hamilton
Government’s ability to deliver optimally transparent, productive, online communication and interaction at all levels is key to our nation’s future success.
Gov 2.0 - eGovernment Social Media Platform Deployments and Future OpportunitiesNIC Inc | EGOV
A white paper that discusses best practices in deploying Web 2.0 social media tools to help state and local governments more effectively serve constituents.
Presentation by Patrick McCormick , Manager Digital Engagement, Strategic Communication Branch , Department of Justice - Victorian Government to Smart Government Australia 2010 conference, 14 September 2010
SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS: MOTIVATION, PURPOSE AND USAGEijcsit
This paper presents the results of an online survey which was conducted to analyse the use of social web in
the context of daily news. Users’ motivation and habit in the news consumption were focused. Moreover,
users’ news behaviour was distinguished in three purposes such news consumption, news production and
news dissemination to find out if the usage has a passive or active character. In a second step it was
questioned which social software is used for which purpose. In conclusion users appreciate social software
for features such as interactivity and information that traditional media does not provide. Among the social
web platforms users prefer social networking sites as well as videoshare platforms. Social networking sites
also rank first in the news production and dissemination.
The Center for Technology in Government at the State University of New York at Albany developed this extraordinarily helpful guide providing eight essential elements that should be considered in crafting an agency's social media policies.
Michele Restuccia, Fostering a Civic Network as a CommonLabGov
"We will share our experience in managing and promoting the use of a local web platform for civic purposes, Comunità, included within the Bologna city web site, named Iperbole, which has been conceived and announced as a digital commons."
The Influcence of Twitter on Academic EnvironmentMartin Ebner
Draft version of article of the book "Social Media and the New Academic Environment: Pedagogical Challenges" http://www.igi-global.com/book/social-media-new-academic-environment/69841#description
Gov 2.0 and Open Data are gaining momentum around the world and there's a need to plan for it coming to your organization. With many opportunities for efficiencies and client engagement comes a number of challenges - including the need to plan for sustainability. A review of current state with numerous examples is also provided.
Gov 2.0 - eGovernment Social Media Platform Deployments and Future OpportunitiesNIC Inc | EGOV
A white paper that discusses best practices in deploying Web 2.0 social media tools to help state and local governments more effectively serve constituents.
Presentation by Patrick McCormick , Manager Digital Engagement, Strategic Communication Branch , Department of Justice - Victorian Government to Smart Government Australia 2010 conference, 14 September 2010
SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS: MOTIVATION, PURPOSE AND USAGEijcsit
This paper presents the results of an online survey which was conducted to analyse the use of social web in
the context of daily news. Users’ motivation and habit in the news consumption were focused. Moreover,
users’ news behaviour was distinguished in three purposes such news consumption, news production and
news dissemination to find out if the usage has a passive or active character. In a second step it was
questioned which social software is used for which purpose. In conclusion users appreciate social software
for features such as interactivity and information that traditional media does not provide. Among the social
web platforms users prefer social networking sites as well as videoshare platforms. Social networking sites
also rank first in the news production and dissemination.
The Center for Technology in Government at the State University of New York at Albany developed this extraordinarily helpful guide providing eight essential elements that should be considered in crafting an agency's social media policies.
Michele Restuccia, Fostering a Civic Network as a CommonLabGov
"We will share our experience in managing and promoting the use of a local web platform for civic purposes, Comunità, included within the Bologna city web site, named Iperbole, which has been conceived and announced as a digital commons."
The Influcence of Twitter on Academic EnvironmentMartin Ebner
Draft version of article of the book "Social Media and the New Academic Environment: Pedagogical Challenges" http://www.igi-global.com/book/social-media-new-academic-environment/69841#description
Gov 2.0 and Open Data are gaining momentum around the world and there's a need to plan for it coming to your organization. With many opportunities for efficiencies and client engagement comes a number of challenges - including the need to plan for sustainability. A review of current state with numerous examples is also provided.
David Riecks, Stock Artist's Alliance, presentation from VRA 28 Atlanta.
Making a Case for Photo Metadata from "Embedded Metadata: Share, Deliver, Preserve" session.
Picture This: Tracking Thieves & Pedophiles with Image MetadataTripwire
Over the past few years I have developed and used technologies that help recover stolen devices ranging from laptops, cell phones, iPods, flash drives and even high end digital cameras. One tool was CameraTrace which is a massive database of camera serial numbers discovered via distributed bots that scan popular photo sharing and social media websites extracting serial numbers and other data from the metadata of images. The tool has led to the recovery of several stolen cameras and is being utilized by law enforcement agencies across the country including the Homeland Security Investigations Cyber Crimes Center (HSI C3) Child Exploitation Investigations Unit who is using it along with several other sophisticated tools to help track down child pornographers and pedophiles many times before they are able to hurt a child.
Multimedia Semantics:Metadata, Analysis and InteractionRaphael Troncy
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ImageSnippets - Using Linked Data Metadata to Organize, Share and Publish you...Margaret Warren
ImageSnippets is a general purpose product for managing your images that uses linked data metadata for image description. Keywords become more meaningful, searching for images is enriched. More accurate descriptions can be gathered by experts across your global teams. Images can be published with your publishing intentions remaining clearly associated with your images.
From 0 to 400 GB: Confronting the Challenges of Born-Digital PhotographsKristen Yarmey
Panel session at the Society of American Archivists 2016 annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, with Ed Busch (Michigan State University), Chris Prom (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Molly Tighe (Chatham University), and Greg Wiedeman (SUNY Albany).
It will happen to you, if it hasn't already: the campus photographer retires and leaves behind hundreds of photo CDs or a hard drive packed with JPEGs. What happens next? Digital photograph collections present serious challenges but offer opportunities to leverage automation (from deduplication to face recognition) and collaborative, cross-departmental workflows. Come hear this panel of experienced archivists discuss steps taken, lessons learned, and best practices developed for working (and teaching!) with born-digital photographs.
Structured data and metadata evaluation methodology for organizations looking...Emily Kolvitz
The current state of findability on the web for many organizations is incipient. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques change frequently and remain much a mystery to many companies. The one variable in the equation of web findability that remains a staple is good quality metadata under the hood of the website.
This research methodology will allow for :
An assessment of findability maturity on the web from an image-centric viewpoint
Help improve findability on the web by establishing a baseline for where your organization is at in terms of structured data content and visualize gaps or areas for improvement from a search engine neutral perspective
2Running Head THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR.docxrhetttrevannion
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Running Head: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
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THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
Name
Institution Affiliations
Abstract
Social media include blogs, microblogs and even electronic social networks. They are generally believed to have transformed the manner in which individuals relate with each other. This applied research assessment which therefore explore on the influence of social media in the public sector. Within the public sector, there are prevalent evidences which justify the impact of the social media in the public sector. There have been numerous cases in which individuals have a norm to communications within the noticeable one-way fashion for several decades. This applied research will explore various aspects on how social media has influenced the public sector. Besides, it will navigate how social media has entirely contributed to the growth of the public sector both in negative and positive effects. This will include the review of the literature of what other researchers have done on the topic. Comment by Tiffany H: This applied research assessment explores the influence of social media in the public sector. Comment by Tiffany H: And will navigate through how social media Comment by Tiffany H: Should this start with besides?
Table of Contents
· Problem or Issue Statement.
· Introduction.
· Review of Literature.
· Research Methodology.
· Findings.
· Analysis.
· Recommendations.
· References.
Problem or Issue Statement
Government agencies have gradually but progressively adopted social technologies to execute their tasks better. Such social technologies can accumulatively reengineer the old model of the public sector. This is due to the fact they facilitate substantial chances to accelerating the transparency as well as prevalence within the government agencies and its departments. It besides can increase the trustworthy in government from its respective citizens. Through social media, there can be creation of new forms of participation of citizens as well as the engagement in public issues. Besides, social media has enhanced both intra-organizational and inter-organizational collaboration. There is therefore an essential need to look into various ways that the social media have really enhanced an achievement of such empirical formalities within the government structure hence developing the citizen-government relationship. Comment by Tiffany H: Accelerate the transparency of what? Comment by Tiffany H: Remove Comment by Tiffany H: has
From a contextual perspective, it is evident to state that the relationship and collaboration between the government and the citizen have been greatly altered, advanced by the use of social media. In addition, this has heightened the participation of the citizens in most of the government projects which have been overseen and controlled by the government offices. The .
Learning to crowd-surf: Gov 2.0 and community engagementPatrick McCormick
what are the implications of social media, the Internet and new technologies for community engagement and how do traditional and new ways of engagement complement each other to create new opportunities through Gov 2.0 initiatives and co-production?
A century from now historians may look back on the beginning of the era of ubiquitous computing and note how human behavior fundamentally changed, when access to information and communication became instantaneous for nearly every person across the world.
Social media in Local Government a few examples - and ways aheadIngrid Koehler
This is an incomplete presentation - there are more examples that we know about, but just haven't put in yet. Feel free to drop some in the comments though.
Remixing Public Health: Tools for Public Health InnovationJody Ranck
This is an extensive outline of some tools, trends, concepts, platforms and ideas that we can harness to drive innovation in public health and the Healthy Cities movement.
Social Media is geen nieuw manier/methode van communicatie. Echter is de combinatie der delen wel nieuw. Ooit kon je alles offline lezen -- t/m Google Maps toe in de vorm van 100 kg wegen atlas van Shell :-x (no offence). Anonymous Netherlands Operations
Facebook van beeld miniatuur naar widgeti4box Anon
Beeld miniatuur is in Windows terug te vinden vanaf jaren '90. Dit technologie is op webpagina's toegepast. Wat je merkt is dat websites veel witruimte bevatten en de informatie is keurig gecategoriseerd in blokken. Overeenkomst met Facebook widget. Gaat lampje branden? - i4box
Buy Pinterest Followers, Reactions & Repins Go Viral on Pinterest with Socio...SocioCosmos
Get more Pinterest followers, reactions, and repins with Sociocosmos, the leading platform to buy all kinds of Pinterest presence. Boost your profile and reach a wider audience.
https://www.sociocosmos.com/product-category/pinterest/
Project Serenity is an innovative initiative aimed at transforming urban environments into sustainable, self-sufficient communities. By integrating green architecture, renewable energy, smart technology, sustainable transportation, and urban farming, Project Serenity seeks to minimize the ecological footprint of cities while enhancing residents' quality of life. Key components include energy-efficient buildings, IoT-enabled resource management, electric and autonomous transportation options, green spaces, and robust waste management systems. Emphasizing community engagement and social equity, Project Serenity aspires to serve as a global model for creating eco-friendly, livable urban spaces that harmonize modern conveniences with environmental stewardship.
This tutorial presentation provides a step-by-step guide on how to use Facebook, the popular social media platform. In simple and easy-to-understand language, this presentation explains how to create a Facebook account, connect with friends and family, post updates, share photos and videos, join groups, and manage privacy settings. Whether you're new to Facebook or just need a refresher, this presentation will help you navigate the features and make the most of your Facebook experience.
Your LinkedIn Success Starts Here.......SocioCosmos
In order to make a lasting impression on your sector, SocioCosmos provides customized solutions to improve your LinkedIn profile.
https://www.sociocosmos.com/product-category/linkedin/
This tutorial presentation offers a beginner-friendly guide to using THREADS, Instagram's messaging app. It covers the basics of account setup, privacy settings, and explores the core features such as close friends lists, photo and video sharing, creative tools, and status updates. With practical tips and instructions, this tutorial will empower you to use THREADS effectively and stay connected with your close friends on Instagram in a private and engaging way.
Telegram is a messaging platform that ushers in a new era of communication. Available for Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux, Telegram offers simplicity, privacy, synchronization across devices, speed, and powerful features. It allows users to create their own stickers with a user-friendly editor. With robust encryption, Telegram ensures message security and even offers self-destructing messages. The platform is open, with an API and source code accessible to everyone, making it a secure and social environment where groups can accommodate up to 200,000 members. Customize your messenger experience with Telegram's expressive features.
Your Path to YouTube Stardom Starts HereSocioCosmos
Skyrocket your YouTube presence with Sociocosmos' proven methods. Gain real engagement and build a loyal audience. Join us now.
https://www.sociocosmos.com/product-category/youtube/
The Evolution of SEO: Insights from a Leading Digital Marketing AgencyDigital Marketing Lab
Explore the latest trends in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and discover how modern practices are transforming business visibility. This document delves into the shift from keyword optimization to user intent, highlighting key trends such as voice search optimization, artificial intelligence, mobile-first indexing, and the importance of E-A-T principles. Enhance your online presence with expert insights from Digital Marketing Lab, your partner in maximizing SEO performance.
Surat Digital Marketing School is created to offer a complete course that is specifically designed as per the current industry trends. Years of experience has helped us identify and understand the graduate-employee skills gap in the industry. At our school, we keep up with the pace of the industry and impart a holistic education that encompasses all the latest concepts of the Digital world so that our graduates can effortlessly integrate into the assigned roles.
This is the place where you become a Digital Marketing Expert.
Unlock TikTok Success with Sociocosmos..SocioCosmos
Discover how Sociocosmos can boost your TikTok presence with real followers and engagement. Achieve your social media goals today!
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Improving Workplace Safety Performance in Malaysian SMEs: The Role of Safety ...AJHSSR Journal
ABSTRACT: In the Malaysian context, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) experience a significant
burden of workplace accidents. A consensus among scholars attributes a substantial portion of these incidents to
human factors, particularly unsafe behaviors. This study, conducted in Malaysia's northern region, specifically
targeted Safety and Health/Human Resource professionals within the manufacturing sector of SMEs. We
gathered a robust dataset comprising 107 responses through a meticulously designed self-administered
questionnaire. Employing advanced partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques
with SmartPLS 3.2.9, we rigorously analyzed the data to scrutinize the intricate relationship between safety
behavior and safety performance. The research findings unequivocally underscore the palpable and
consequential impact of safety behavior variables, namely safety compliance and safety participation, on
improving safety performance indicators such as accidents, injuries, and property damages. These results
strongly validate research hypotheses. Consequently, this study highlights the pivotal significance of cultivating
safety behavior among employees, particularly in resource-constrained SME settings, as an essential step toward
enhancing workplace safety performance.
KEYWORDS :Safety compliance, safety participation, safety performance, SME
Exploring The Dimensions and Dynamics of Felt Obligation: A Bibliometric Anal...AJHSSR Journal
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understanding of the existing knowledge in the field of "felt obligation" and to provide guidance for further
research. The analysis is centered around the authors, countries, institutions, and keywords of the articles. The
findings highlight prominent researchers in this field, leading universities, and influential journals. Particularly,
it is identified that China plays a leading role in "felt obligation" research. The analysis of keywords emphasizes
the thematic focuses of these studies and provides a roadmap for future research. Finally, various
recommendations are presented to deepen the knowledge in this area and promote applied research. This study
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KEYWORDS: Felt Obligation, Bibliometric Analysis, Research Trends
Grow Your Reddit Community Fast.........SocioCosmos
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EASY TUTORIAL OF HOW TO USE G-TEAMS BY: FEBLESS HERNANEFebless Hernane
Using Google Teams (G-Teams) is simple. Start by opening the Google Teams app on your phone or visiting the G-Teams website on your computer. Sign in with your Google account. To join a meeting, click on the link shared by the organizer or enter the meeting code in the "Join a Meeting" section. To start a meeting, click on "New Meeting" and share the link with others. You can use the chat feature to send messages and the video button to turn your camera on or off. G-Teams makes it easy to connect and collaborate with others!
1. Government 2.0: Making Connections between Citizens, Data and Government
Soon Ae Chun, City University of New York, College of Staten Island
Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Rodrigo Sandoval, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México
Eduard Hovy, University of Southern California - Information Science Institute
1. Introduction
The revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) has been changing not only the daily lives of people but also the interactions between governments and citizens. The digital government or electronic government (e-government) has started as a new form of public organization that supports and redefines the existing and new information, communication and transaction-related interactions with stakeholders (e.g., citizens and businesses) through ICT, especially through the Internet and Web technologies, with the purpose of improving government performance and processes [1].
The evolution of e-government has been studied as different stages [2] that describe the patterns of interactions of digital governments with the public: The first stage of e-government focuses on “digital presence” with simple information-providing Web sites of a passive nature, namely a digitization of government information. The second stage provides simple Web-based interactions of governments with citizens, businesses and other government agencies through email contact and interactive forms that can dynamically provide information needed. The third stage of this evolution provides online transaction services such as license renewal, permit applications and tax payments. The next stage is when the government promotes shared governance to transform how the government operates, in terms of seamless information flow and collaborative decision making.
In the first three stages, e-government can be seen as a process of modernization of the public sector from paper-based tasks and processes to digital ones. These stages are based on the “information delivery model” and the “public administrative process automation model,” resulting in fast and convenient 7/24 access to government information and services, and achieving more efficient government with streamlined and automated services within and across government agencies. The information in these stages has been flowing in one direction, from the government to the public, with limited feedback from citizens. We often call this type of e- government Web 1.0-based e-government or Government 1.0.
The last stage has not yet been fully achieved, since the transformation of government requires a meaningful dialog between this government and the citizens as well as among citizens themselves. Information should flow not only from the government to the citizens but also from citizens to the government and among citizens. The citizens’ voices should be heard and reflected back to transform the existing government policies. In order to achieve this kind of transformation, there needs to be extensive technological support for citizen participation. In addition, the government needs to make sure that government releases and information are available to the public for informed discussions and participation. This dialog, in turn, will promote the collaborative decision making process by including the public in the inception of new government policies.
We introduce the concept of “open government,” so-called Government 2.0, and its required principles, functions and technological enablers to lead to a transformative, participatory model
2. of e-government. We first briefly survey the current adoptions and uses of social media for Government 2.0 in the US, and then move on to introducing the research and application topics of this special issue.
2. Open Government – Principles and Requirements
The open government initiative of the US federal government [7] urges the implementation of three principles for a government: transparency, participation, and collaboration (shown in Figure 1). Transparency in government can be achieved by providing the citizenry with information about what the Government is doing, which promotes increased accountability. Government agencies should disclose information about their operations and decisions rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Participation encourages the public engagement by increasing opportunities for the public to participate in policymaking and to provide the government with the collective knowledge, ideas, and expertise of the population. This kind of participation enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. The principle of collaboration demands partnerships and cooperation among the federal government agencies, across all levels of government and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals to improve the effectiveness of government. The directives to implement these principles are specified in [6].
“Web 2.0 Technologies” refers to a collection of social media through which individuals are active participants in creating, organizing, editing, combining, sharing, commenting, and rating Web content as well as forming a social network through interacting and linking to each other. The Web created using these social media is called Web 2.0 or Social Web. The Web 2.0 technologies include blogs, wikis, social networking hubs, (e.g., facebook, myspace), Web- based communication modes (e.g., chatting, chat groups), photo-sharing (e.g., flickr), video casting and sharing (e.g., youtube), audio-sharing (e.g. Podcasts), mashups, widgets, virtual worlds, microblogs (e.g., twitter), social annotation and bookmarking of Web sites, and many more.
Table 1 shows brief definitions and functions of these social media. Through these social media, individuals act as active agents in creating, organizing, combining and sharing Web content. The emphasis is on the “outside-in wisdom of crowds approach” where the data and information are created by the people outside of an organizational boundary through a collaborative manner in the network. This is different from the “inside-out authoritative know-all” approach typical in the Web 1.0, where an organization is the key creator and organizer of the content and the people are considered consumers of the information.
Open Government
Transparent
Participate
Collaborate
Figure 1 Three Principles for an Open Government
3. Table 1 Social Media Types
Blog
A Web log (Blog) is a Web-based interactive application that allows one to log journal entries on events, or to express opinions and make commentaries on specific topics. It is a popular content generation tool. Blogs typically consist of text, images, videos music, and/or audios.
Microblogging
The process of creating a short blog that is primarily achieved through mobile devices to share information about current events or personal opinions. A well-known example is Twitter.
Wiki
A Web-based collaborative editing tool that allows different people to contribute their knowledge to the content. One author’s content can be modified and enhanced with another author’s contribution. A well known example of this application tool is Wikipedia.
Social Networking
A Web-based tool or model that allows individuals to meet and form a virtual community through socializing via different relationships, such as friendships and professional relationships, sharing and propagating multi-media information, exchange interests and communicating.
Multimedia Sharing
The rich multi-media contents such as photos, videos, audios are shared through multi- media sharing tools. Typical examples include Youtube, Flickr, Picasa, Vimeo, etc.
Mashup:
An application that uses contents from two or more external data sources, combines and integrates them and thus creates new value-added information. This is a reuse and repurposing of the source data by retrieving source contents with open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and integrating them according to the information needs, instead of navigating them sequentially.
RSS
A Web application that can pull the content from sources that are structured in standard metadata format called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds such that it is easy to syndicate the contents from RSS formatted documents. The RSS feeds or Web feeds can be published and updated by the authors such that the updates can be easily inserted and quickly updated in content aggregation sites. The RSS feeds (also called atoms) are annotated with metadata such as the author and date information. The RSS based content aggregators include news headlines, weather warnings, blogs, etc. Once the source content is updated, the content aggregator sites will be updated thus always sharing the updated content.
Widgets
Small applications either on the desktop, a mobile device or the Web. The widgets bring personalized dedicated content to the user from predefined data sources.
Virtual World
A virtual world is an interactive 3-D computer-simulated world where avatars, controlled and played by the users, interact with each other as inhabitants.
Social Bookmarking& Tagging
A tagging system that allows the users to describe the content of the Web sources with metadata such as free text, comments, evaluative ratings and votes. This human generated collective and collaborative set of tags forms a folksonomy and helps cluster Web resources.
The required functions of open government can be easily achieved by adopting the Web 2.0 technologies, which promote public participation. An adoption of Web 2.0 applications in a commercial organization creates a platform called Enterprise 2.0 that supports employees with social media tools to enhance the productivity, customer relationships and communication quality as well as efficiency of the organization.
According to McAfee [5], major functions of Enterprise 2.0 should include: Search, Link, Authoring, Tags, Extensions, and Signal (SLATES). The search capabilities support the employees to effectively search for resources and knowledge. The linking capabilities provide
4. employees with tools to create complex and valuable social networks. The authoring function allows the employees to publish and share their opinions, experiences, and knowledge. Tags help people to organize and connect knowledge for effective sharing, and collaborative filtering helps them to extend the overall knowledge in a specific domain. The new information can be rapidly disseminated using signal functions such as RSS or Twitter. Similarly, the adoption of social media technologies in the government results in the founding of Government 2.0. This should include the above functions not only for the civil servants within the diverse government agencies, but also for the public who are external to the government’s organizational boundary.
3. Government 2.0 – Social Media Uses in Government
Social media can be considered as a disruptive technology [2] for government, creating “disruptive innovation” in the digital government as well as augmenting digital government with better services and management. To create “innovative disruptions” [3], the government needs to develop strategies and models for how to use these enabling technologies to achieve a transformation of every aspect of government, such as service provision, decision and policy making, administration, governance and democracy.
The US government has been adopting social media to share information within government agencies and across government agencies, as shown in Table 2. Above all, the government disseminates information to the wider public, making a rich set of government information available to stakeholders and individual citizens and allowing massive participation of users, often called “crowd sourcing.” The use of this technology has greatly extended the notions of participatory democracy and of a digital market place of information.
Table 2 Government Applications of Social Media
Technology
Goals
Examples
Blogs
Attract new audience for government information and services;
Puts human face on government
Opens up a conversation
Federal agency public-facing blogs
Elected officials blogs
Interesting topics blogs
Pandemic leadership blogs
Wikis
Collaboration (e.g. Project management, Knowledge management);
Create a better work product;
Use mostly enterprise wikis, restricted to community of practice;
Enhance community participation in decision making
Community support (e.g. GSA collaborative work environment),
Intellipedia (wiki for intelligence agencies), diplopedia (State department wiki), peer-to-patent wiki,
NASA wiki for object oriented data terminology
Social Networking sites
Reach people where they are
CIA recruit facebook
Multimedia (Video/photo/podcasting)
Share rich set of governments’ multimedia data with people in coordinated manner
Library of Congress Flickr stream, Federal photo sharing site (http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml) (e.g. air force photo gallery, federal agency youtube),
State photo sites, White House podcasts, NASA audio/video casts, government services podcasts (us.gov), DOD’s TroopTube for troops to connect to their
5. families and supporters
Mashups
Provide combined content from different government data sources;
Share contents and expertise from different sources;
Create more rich contents for decision making
USA search mashup combines search engine results, forms database, FAQ database, images and categorization related to keyword search;
NASA’s Atrolicio.us, Google map with government data
RSS
Get regularly updated content out; Link back to authoritative source;
Ties feeds to email alerts
Usa.gov library of federal RSS feeds, EPA RSS feeds, disaster news feeds, NOAA watch feeds
Widgets, gadgets, pipes
Prebuilt applications to add more interactivity and functional capabilities on a web page will allow users to develop widgets using government data to expand the reach and functionality and share these widgets.
FBI most wanted widget, DHS hurricane info widget
Virtual Worlds
Train and educate with simulations
Departments of Defense and Homeland Security emergency management planning preparation
These social network systems allow large scale distributed collaboration, information sharing and creation of collective intelligence in government areas at all levels from local to federal. Governments are facing unprecedented transparency requirements and openness, further encouraged through electronic grassroots mobilizations using social technology. The transformative power of the social media on the government is often described as paradigm shift as shown in Table 3.
Table 3. Comparison between Traditional Government vs Government 2.0 Traditional Digital Government Social Media-based Digital Government (Gov 2.0)
Information provision (information sink) model
Information source (creation) model
Service provision model
Service demand model
Policy enforcement model
Policy making and negotiation model
Agency internal decision making/governance model
Shared governance
The government, modeled as an information and services provision entity, and as a policies enforcement and decision making body has been transformed into a participatory government, which involves citizens and other organizations (e.g., NGOs) as collaborators and partners in information creation, service enhancement and policy making. This shared governance model and the participation of the citizens in digital government is a step towards a more democratic process, for which the term e-democracy has been coined. This new paradigm makes government more transparent, more accountable, and more trustworthy, since the citizens,
6. government officials and other stakeholders participate in policymaking, content creation, data collection, knowledge sharing and structuring, and collaborative decision making.
4. Research Topics
Digital government 2.0 faces many research challenges, such as
How to analyze the immense data collected through crowd participation to be appropriately used for policy making;
How to search and share the abundant data and essentials for collaborative government tasks;
How to apply social media as an innovative solution for governments;
How to measure the behaviors and patterns of social media uses and what kind of values government can draw from them
How to facilitate citizen engagement in online debates for e-democracy
How to integrate data from different sources without endangering privacy, and how to manage identity where social Web data can be linked easily
What are the interoperability issues in Government 2.0 and how to design the interoperability capabilities in Government 2.0
Whether the Web 2.0 signature, i.e., wisdom of the crowds, can be simulated to facilitate the collaborative service delivery
How to alleviate the problem of “noisy” data and extract the high quality data from the mass participation and content production.
This special issue features articles that address some of these challenges. It is a collection of articles that are extended versions of selected papers from the 10th International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o2009) that address many of the abovementioned research and application challenges in the use of Social Networks and other Web 2.0 technologies in government. The papers provide theoretical, social scientific, empirical, and technical approaches in establishing and adopting the new digital government paradigm.
Scott Robertson and his colleagues investigate how a popular social network site (Facebook’s wall) has been used as a public sphere for political discourse among the 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates. The paper examines the linkage patterns of people who posted links on the Facebook walls over two years prior to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. The analysis of linkage patterns is conducted in terms of intensity of participation, breadth of participation and content of participation, each measured by analyzing posting behavior such as quantity and frequency of wall postings, as well as content. The analysis of the linkage patterns may shed light on the requirements for public sphere functionalities. It concludes that the public sphere should provide role taking functionalities such that the users have commitments to an ongoing dialog, and that users could show respect to understand other participants. It also should provide equal opportunities for all participants and a ground for exchanging ideas and critiques. However, it still remains to be shown whether the outcome of the dialogs and participations in such a public sphere will result in the informed political decision when casting their votes.
7. Clemens Heidinger and his colleagues address the research challenge of analyzing the public opinions and impact statements on proposed policy, norms and regulations by incorporating policy-making knowledge structures in a Web 2.0 application platform. This social web system allows the legislators and experts to analyze the policy impact statements through community- based editing and voting. It provides analysis capabilities to compare alternative policies and to measure the policy impacts to select the best alternative policy. The impact statements are entered with policy topic categories and relationships to other statements or objectives. The specification of a topic category and the relationships are used to identify and query whether a statement is linked to support a policy or measure or it is in conflict with the objectives. These relationships and topic categories entered by the participant citizens and subsequently filtered by the experts are the basis of the analysis and decision making needed to provide an analytical tool for the impact of statements made from multiple perspectives.
The main idea behind government 2.0 is participation by citizens. Nicolas Maisonneuve and his colleagues applied citizen participation as a novel solution for environmental noise pollution sensing, that can bypass and eliminate installation of expensive monitoring stations. The prototype system NoiseTube allows the citizens to measure their personal exposure to noise in their everyday environment by using GPS-equipped mobile phones as noise sensors. The citizens are directly involved in the assessment of urban and environmental sustainability. This draws upon the ideas of wireless sensor networks, participatory sensing, people-centric sensing, and citizen science. The geo-localized sound measurements and user-generated metadata can be shared with an online community. As a result, each user effectively contributes to a collective noise monitoring and mapping campaign.
Cristiano Maciel and his colleagues address the question of how to promote public participation and involvement in the deliberation processes for democratic decision making. They present a Government-Citizen Interactive model which is a virtual community model with a special debate structure and social opportunities for citizens to engage as individuals responsible for community decisions. The virtual community model structures citizen participation in different stages: i.e., initiating the process by registration and creating a user profile, creating a virtual community of citizens, registering and posting demands, conducting a consultative debate, clustering demands, voting and deliberating. The debate is organized in the Democratic Interaction Language —DemIL— which classifies opinions and their supporting arguments in the categories ‘for,’ ‘against’ and ‘neutral,’ which allows easy retrieval and resource classification. A prototype of this integrative virtual community model called the Democratic Citizenship Community (DCC) has been developed and used by citizens. The analysis of this environment sheds further light on the understanding of and improvement of areas for better e- participation for decision making processes in government.
Chun and Warner discuss the issue of finding government information using collaborative tagging. In government 2.0, using social media, citizens actively participate in producing content, but the abundance of content causes the difficulty of determining what truly useful and relevant information is to be shared for mission critical tasks and to produce better citizen services. They propose a data model of rich social tags and a Citizen-Government collaborative tagging environment. The collaborative annotations capture not only the semantics but also the pragmatic and social aspects related to the resources, such as who, when, where, how and for what related tasks the resources are shared. The rich tag data model creates the ability to filter, discover and search new and dynamic as well as hidden resources, to navigate between resources in a search by traversing semantic relationships, and to recommend the most relevant government information, even when distributed over different agencies.
8. Adegboyega Ojo and his colleagues examine the semantic interoperability issues associated with the emerging Governance 2.0 networks. Semantic Interoperability is the ability of interacting network entities —agency systems, citizens, social media, etc.— to have a consistent understanding of the shared information and the ability to resolve differences in the conceptualization of entities and the members’ abilities. These abilities include semantic description, mediation and discovery, where one can ascribe meaning to the information they wish to share, discover information they need based on descriptions provided by others, and process the shared information in a way consistent with the intended use. A case study has been employed to analyze scenarios for possible semantic conflicts in a Government 2.0 information sharing environment. Based on these semantic interoperability requirements, they propose a conceptual framework that can guide governments and their agencies in developing semantic interoperability capabilities. It specifically calls for analysis in three dimensions to achieve interoperability of government 2.0: (1) policy, governance, organizational and technical interoperability; (2) the level at which the semantic interoperability needs to be addressed, e.g. network (whole of government) or entity (individual government agency); and (3) the communication layers – context, protocol, message, contents and domain are associated with semantic conflicts.
The privacy preserving data integration problem from diverse data sources is more highlighted with the lightweight Web 2.0 applications, such as the mashups and dataspace systems. Government organizations collect and maintain different kinds of data concerning the same entity (citizen), according to their major functionalities and tasks involved. In order to share and have an integrated and unified view of an entity, data from different sources needs to be reconciled to be integrated. If the identifiable fields (e.g., name, social security number) are exchanged, the data integration is no problem, but the personally identifiable information cannot be shared among different government organizations due to various privacy-related rules and regulations. Choenni, van Dijk and Leeuw propose an approach for data linking and reconciliation for the same entity that is based on similarity of data content from different sources using common schemata of data sources. A similarity function takes a record from each data source as input and computes a similarity value as output expressing how similar the records are. The quality of reconciliation among data records is also measured. A prototype of reconciliation system to integrate Dutch criminal data sources (police data source and justice data sources) shows the approach is effective with 93% of accuracy.
Aichholzer and Strauss present an important emerging aspect of e-government 2.0, i.e., an electronic identity management system (e-IDMS) for citizens. They argue that emerging e- government services will be increasingly advanced transactional types that will process and share personal data for personalization and collaboration among governments. The rethinking and changes in services and citizens’ interactions encouraged in Web 2.0 requires an improved secure identity management for online identification and authentication of citizens prior to consuming government services. It describes how the Austrian federal government took the initiative of the EU-Commission and implemented an innovation process of e-IDMS. It employed a theoretical framework mainly based on the concepts of actor-centered institutionalism and the transformative capacity of new technologies. The e-IDMS system is designed as a complex techno-organizational infrastructure, and reflects on the adoption and use of the system in terms of perceived privacy threats.
Kievink and Janssen draw attention to the similarity of the Web 2.0 principles to simulated gaming, since both employ the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ to facilitate the collaboration. They employ the simulation gaming as an instrument to manage multichannel service delivery with
9. multiple actors and roles from different organizational boundaries, and use it as a transformation tool to explore possible innovative service process alternatives and alternative policies through the participants’ collaborative participation. The paper proposes the service delivery game model that involves the scenario introduction, a round of scenario play, a stage of developing alternative approaches for multi-channel service delivery using the participants’ tacit knowledge and role playing, and evaluation and reflection phases to compare alternative solutions. It provides two examples of simulated gaming for multi-channel services of the Dutch municipality governments, i.e., the address change request service and the car registration permit service. The simulated gaming stimulated the participatory and collaborative aspect of the Web 2.0 principles and resulted in innovative process and policy alternatives to improve the coordination of involved parties for the multi-channel services.
In addition to the papers, we feature two book reviews. Gil-Garcia reviews “Wiki Government” (2009) authored by Noveck. It presents a novel use of the Wiki social media called the ‘Peer to Patent’ to review the patent applications using the participation of citizens in the patent review process. It can serve as an exemplary report on citizen participation and the innovative application of social media in government.
Handbook of Research on ICT-Enabled Transformational Government: A Global Perspective (2009) edited by Weerakkody, Janssen, and Dwivedi, reviewed by Gong, can serve as a good reference book for researchers and practitioners to create and maintain transformational government. The topic ranges and the domain ranges are diverse to satisfy readers with different purposes and interests in electronic government.
This special issue presents papers that address research issues related to the open government requirements: transparency, participation and collaboration. Specifically, in order for government to be transparent, government information should be easily accessible, searchable, and integrated, without fear of personal information leaks and using a robust identity system. For collaborations among government agencies and between governments and citizens to come about, data integration and interoperability need to be achieved through semantic mediation such that the data is meaningfully integrated and shared. For participation to occur, the citizens should have a platform to express their opinions without losing discussion threads, and this platform should also provide the government with tools to analyze and evaluate the impact of making certain policy decisions. In addition, the social media and Web 2.0 concepts should be creatively utilized for the development of innovative programs and tools.
We hope that the papers of this special issue have opened up the issues and challenges residing in the use of social networks for government purposes and in Government 2.0, where citizens, data providers, and government agencies are making unprecedented connections. We hope that this special issue can serve as a platform to go beyond what social media currently have to offer, to make open government a reality.
References
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[4] Garson, D. Public Information Technology and E-governance: Managing the Virtual State, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA. 2006
[5] McAfee, A. Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration, MIT Sloan Management Review. 2006.
[6] Open Government Directive, Memorandum for for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, Dec 8 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-06.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive
[7] Transparency and Open Government, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. The White House, Jan 21, 2009 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20090121/2009_transparency_memo.pdf
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/