Can Social Software Improve E-Government?
Today, e-government channels of government access and interaction consist of telephone, fax, Web sites, e-mail, RSS feeds, and cable airings of everything from C-SPAN’s coverage of Congress, to the local city council discussion of sewer repairs. But there are even newer forms of digital access, collaboration and participation that are gaining momentum and might have the potential to make e-government a bit more personal. In a Feb. 2005 story, writer Blake Harris chronicled the impact of Web logs — “blogs” for short — on politics, news reporting and government. Shortly after becoming Utah’s CIO in 2001, Phillip Windley began blogging personally, and encouraged IT staff throughout the state to blog. His personal blog continues. Blogs are a form of “social software” defined by Wikipedia — which is itself a form of social software — as software that: “… enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities.” The te
