2011 Gov 2.0 Year in Review

Alex Howard | O'Reilly Radar | December 30, 2011

...If you look back at a January interview with Clay Johnson on key trends for Gov 2.0 and open government in 2011, some of his predictions bore out. The House of Representatives did indeed compete with the White House on open government, though not in story lines that played out in the national media or Sunday morning talk shows. The Government Oversight and Reform Committee took a tough look at the executive's progress in a hearing on open government. Other predictions? Not so much. Rural broadband stalled. Transparency as infrastructure is still in the future. We're still waiting on that to be automated, though when the collective intelligence of people in Washington looks at new versions of bills tied to the social web, there's at least a kludge.

Many of the issues and themes in 2011 were extensions of those in the 2010 Gov 2.0 Year in Review: the idea of government as a platform spread around the world; gated governments faced disruption; open government initiatives were stuck in beta; open data went global; and laws and regulations were chasing technology, online privacy, cloud computing, open source and citizen engagement.

"It's tough to choose which issue dominated the year in transparency, but I'd say that the Open Government Partnership, the E-government funding fight, and the Super Committee all loomed large for Sunlight," said John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation. "On the state level, I'd include Utah's fight over FOI laws, Tennessee's Governor exempting himself from financial disclosure requirements, and the Wisconsin fight as very notable issues.  And the rise of Super PACs and undisclosed money in politics is probably an issue we're only just starting to see."...