How Open Data and the Gov 2.0 Movement are Changing Communications With Government

The late 1990's saw a dramatic shift in the way that people communicate with their governments and elected representatives.  As governments around theworld rushed to embrace eGovernment, a host of new services were put online and the importance of the web browser in citizen-to-government (C2G) communication was enhanced dramatically.  The desktop web browser became the defacto mechanism for delivering digital information and services to citizens.

In the last decade changes in the way that people communicate with each other, through increased cell phone penetration and take up of SMS and IM tothe proliferation of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, are changing the C2G (and the G2C) paradigm once again.  In the next 10 years, the cell phone will become the predominant device for delivering digital information and services to citizens, and the prominence of social networks and other ad hoc networks will also rise in importance for government service delivery.

In addition, the applications that drive these changes will increasingly be built by third party developers and outside companies, and not by governments themselves (either using in-house development resources or through direct RFP).  The advent of open government data and public APIs (which is already underway in some places) will push development of these new communication applications outside of government and create new opportunities (andchallenges) for citizen engagement and equitable, efficient service delivery.

The presentation will cover:

Attendees will examine actual working examples of multi-channel communication apps that utilize real government data and APIs, and discuss theplatforms and technologies that support them.  

They will leave with an understand of how open government data and APIs, and the increased take up of SMS, IM and social networking will fundamentally alter the way that citizens communicate with government.