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Friday, March 21, 2008

Transparent eGovernance

In 2007, I was fortunate to attend the W3C Workshop in e-governance in Washington DC. It was interesting to hear about the Governmental agencies in the US and UK trying to embrace the web as a means of transparent governance. I remember someone from the Library of Congress mentioning that 12 agencies in the US had presence in Second Life. That was interesting. I was there on a panel to preach eGovernment security and the usage of consolidated portals.

The reason for bringing up this old event is I came across this positive approach taken by the leadership of DHS in the US to embrace the blogosphere. The online web journal of the leadership of the US Department of Homeland Security, including entries from Secretary Michael Chertoff is here. I congratulate the leadership of DHS for embracing online journals as a means of transparency with day to day activities of governance.

I remember at the W3C workshop, I had broached the topic of blogs with a public policy official from the UK (the official had mentioned the use of wikis) and she had opined that blogs were a tough sell with the government mainly due to dangers associated with disclosure of sensitive information and legalities involved.

The W3C eGovernment page is located here.

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