Day 9 Reflection

Barry Lawrence

5-17-10

Day 9 Reflection

Today we heard from Robert Greenberg, CEO and Founder of G&H International Services, Inc. Contrary to how most of our speakers have presented until now, Greenberg had a prepared PowerPoint presentation on his involvement with a project he calls “Government 2.0” which can best be described as our government, in the future, integrated totally and seamlessly with social media to form a more efficient flow of data to and from the government.

While it took me a good amount of time to grasp these new and foreign concepts, I think I have a good handle on it now. We are at a crossroads where technology is used in our everyday lives, but it doesn’t fit together with other tech too easily, especially when dealing with the government bureaucracy and all of its agencies. This can be especially apparent and tragic when one looks great disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Katrina, where many agencies were involved in relief and aid, but the communication between the government and all of the aid organizations what virtually nonexistent, especially when it comes to raw, useable data that our advanced technology could use to assist us. By creating a useable platform for companies and agencies to use their current data systems and still be in control of what data is shared, while getting the various existing platforms to communicate seamlessly in real-time, we can have a dramatically more efficient government machine that can actually be helpful in times of need.

The most interesting part of this proposal (to me anyways) was its possible uses in policy making. Using an example of an out of date police doctrine in New Zealand, where a policy was essentially put up on the internet and encouraged input from the people, everyone was able to give there input into what would be regarded by many as an example of a streamlined direct democracy. I could immediately see prospects for America to better streamline it’s democratic system using such social media technology, and I can’t wait to see what Greenberg and his team do with it.