Which grade would you give to your local government (2.0)?

I’m taking a break from Education (2.0) to spend some time trying to understand how we might transform local government with information technology, especially via social media. Gartner defines “Government 2.0” as the use of information technology to socialize and commoditize government services, processes and data.

A few months ago, I blogged about “Getting all A’s in school” to motivate the use of social media in education. For this post, I’ll “play” with a similar theme to motivate the use of social media in local government to facilitate:

• Accountability and Advocacy
• Business (public)
• Communication
• Democracy
• Emergency preparedness and Engagement

We don’t want to give any F’s and in any case, this is just a gimmick to get some ideas flowing!

Accountability and Advocacy

As in my education post, government can do a much better job of advocacy by being more accountable as a result of transparency in its interaction with the citizens it serves. In a manner similar to what I described for education, social media between government and citizens could document government’s value to its citizens.

Business (public)

In conducting the people’s “business” government can deliver services more effectively and efficiently via information technology.

Communication

As a result, communication between government and its citizens would be vastly improved!

Democracy

Citizens would have greater opportunity to be heard!

Emergency preparedness/public safety and Engagement

It’s time to get practical…especially since I now live in Florida where severe hurricanes can disrupt the lives of millions of people! Due to our ability to forecast their potential severity, many lives can be saved by emergency preparedness. Especially since my county’s early social media efforts are being led by Seminole County Emergency Management, this is the best place to do more. Furthermore, my faith-based friends back in central Indiana where I lived previously are experimenting with Twitter to promote readiness. Even more is possible as efforts such as CrisisCommons suggest. I am especially intrigued by the application of the Ushahidi product Crowdmap to handle information coming out of a crisis. What is most encouraging is the pending FEMA certification of a course titled “Social Media for Natural Disaster Response and Recovery” offered by the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC).

Perhaps, public safety is another likely area to try with service providers such as Nixle which publishes alerts via text messaging as well as experiments with Twitter by neighboring Orlando Police.

No matter which grade you give your local government, it could get a better grade by using information technology and social media to engage its citizens!

Where do we go from here?

Perhaps, it’s time to convene a CityCamp, an international unconference series and online community focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations.

I’m going to share this with my County Manager…what will you do for your community?

I’m going to #NASATweetUp…better than Disney World!

Courtesy of http://twitter.com/lartist

For some time, I have been aware of my selection for the NASA TweetUp for the FINAL shuttle launch. For various reasons, I haven’t said much publicly about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of history! Here’s my public reaction for “The Space Crowd” film…hope I “make the cut” instead of the floor.

Especially, I’ve been working on a social media aggregation http://NASATweetUp.info after not having done any for over a year so I’m a little “rusty”, but I finally have a version which is ready for “soft” launch. On the “General” tab, read “How to participate” which explains how you may either merely access or contribute (via crowdsourcing) content.

Although I’ve been aware of NASA TweetUp as an avid Twitter user, STS-135 is the first launch for which I actually applied for NASA TweetUp. For STS-133, the first launch after my recent move to Florida, it completely slipped my mind! I resolved to apply for STS-134, but did not realize that the application window was only 24 hours so I missed that opportunity. Realizing that STS-135 was my last opportunity to apply for a shuttle launch, I applied shortly after NASA began accepting applications and subsequently learned, to my absolute delight, that I was one of the fortunate 150 successful applicants out of more than 5500 tweeps!

As I have learned more about my fellow participants, I have been impressed by the diversity and passion of the group. I am humbled by how much some of them know about the shuttle program as well as how far some of them are traveling to attend (someone is coming from Australia!) since I live so close. I knew much more about the Apollo program which occurred while I was a student at Purdue, “mother” of astronauts, and I did see an Apollo launch many years ago. That memory has caused me to wonder if I’m the oldest participant after I realized that some of my fellow participants weren’t even born yet when fellow Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon! I’ll let you know if I find out.

Likewise, I witnessed STS-133, my first shuttle launch, from the beach in Titusville so I was somewhat “disappointed” that I was unable to HEAR the shuttle because I was so far from the launchpad. I have been assured that I will not be disappointed this time because we will witnessing history from the press viewing site which is only 3 miles from the launchpad! I hope the crowd noise doesn’t drown out the shuttle!