TechWag

: Image via Wikipedia

Interesting news coming from NextGov that they have signed a deal with facebook, is the government really ready for this kind of thing? The other real question is, as a case study, can any government really be truly open like we see with web 2.0 and the person to person interaction with Globalization 3.0. The point is I can do more with my friends than I can with just about any other group, and I don’t need the assets of a nation state or a company to make something wonderful happen.

The General Services Administration announced yesterday that it has signed a terms of service agreement with the social networking web site Facebook. The agency also announced agreements with the web publishing site Blist, Powerpoint slide sharing site Slideshare and AddThis, a bookmarking and sharing platform. The agreements will allow federal agencies and their employees to use of the popular social media applications without violating federal regulations. Source: NextGov

While government does need to keep some secrets, the idea of pushing out data into the cloud, and into other companies might be one of the best moves that any government could take. With contracts in hand, all the companies that are being chosen will have a higher rate of survivability through the economic downturn, and people get access to information that they may or may not be interested in. I would love to see many of the GSA reports made public, as they are a great source of information about things that are happening or could happen if something happens along the way.

What also makes this more than interesting is the idea of recruitment of followers and potential new employees from the social systems. Social networking is increasingly becoming a way to network and find employment. Jobs are posted into social networking sites that will never make it to monster, CareerBuilder, or dice. (Maybe mega resume repositories are going the way of RIAA, MPAA, and news papers).

The problem with all this is, are the people ready for this as well. Given the amount of attention that has been given to the torture memos and the GSA report that can be found on Wikileaks, the idea of public scrutiny of government documents is going to cause problems for groups, departments, or organizations. Government has operated behind a wall for so long that transparency is going to not only be difficult, but might only last as long as President Obama is in office. No government has been truly transparent, and while this is a great idea and one that I can support, the question arises of how long, what happens when they pull all this stuff back, and can archive.org archive this stuff fast enough that it stays in the public’s sight for as long as possible. In all, good news, but one that requires a revolutionary change in how we do government, one that is going to be very hard to pull off.