Q: How do we bridge the digital divide – that ignominious gap between people who enjoy ready access to web-based and mobile technology and those who lack such resources?

This question is a little explored, but critical element of President Obama’s Open Government initiative.

One possible answer was presented in my local newspaper last weekend in an article entitled, “Free Internet connects poor to world of opportunities.”

An excerpt:

“Downtown Raleigh’s Chavis Heights neighborhood boasts a perk that would be a plum in any community, but all the more so in public housing: universal broadband Internet access for all residents.

Unlimited e-mailing and Internet surfing are privileges few here could afford until last fall, when this low-income subsidized housing community was turned into a free WiFi hotspot.”

This effort to link low-income citizens to the Internet is not new. In fact, Chavis Heights is but the latest community in a decade-long project called One Economy, a global non-profit that “leverages the power of technology and connects underserved communities around the world to vital information that will improve their lives.”

But there’s just one problem.

Internet access alone is not enough. The article continues: “…even zero-cost Internet is not enough to turn all low-income residents into cyber-citizens. The uptake rate among residents isn’t measured, but it’s estimated to be less than half the households.”

Why?

These same folks can’t afford computers on a $12,000 a year income.

Sure, we can donate our used laptops and refurbished machines, but there are many reasons why you and I are upgrading our old PCs.

So free Internet might be one answer to the question. But it’s not enough and before we travel too much further down this #OpenGov or #Gov20 road, we ought to give ample time and energy to answering my initial question:

How do we bridge the digital divide – that ignominious gap between people who enjoy ready access to web-based and mobile technology and those who lack such resources?

Otherwise, we will perpetuate a country where wealthy, well-educated citizens make decisions on behalf of low-income folks who lack access to the process.

For me, that flies in the face of the basic intentions of a government that is more transparent, participatory and collaborative.

1. Public Information Officers across the country who are fighting with small-town mayors and big city managers over the medium of message delivery. These PIOs know that social media will reach people who haven’t been to the city’s website in years…if ever. They ask: Where is it more likely that we’ll see our neighbors? At public meetings or in the pews of our churches or the Rotary Club luncheon? On the web page where content is stale and stagnant or on a Facebook page where people are constantly updating their status and interacting with friends and family. If only, they argue, we can create a mobile site that is easily accessible and readable on a smart phone, citizens can have our community in the palm of their hands…and we’ll finally have an unbroken bridge of communication between the physical and virtual realms where we find one another. Thank you, PIOs, for engaging in these battles. You will win – and we’re all here to help you.

2. Public Affairs Specialists in Federal agencies that have not yet adopted the mindset or methods of Gov 2.0. Like those PIOs, these folks are boldly making the business case for building an infrastructure of communication that does more than push messages to the public. But that plea for progress is falling on deaf ears. Why? Due to fear and a failure to understand that the time in which government worked solely for the people is giving way to a government that it truly by the people. They see their peers in other agencies achieving some semblance of success and are learning lessons to avoid the pitfalls of their early adopting colleagues. They’d love to jump ship and join an agency where innovation is alive…but they also feel a stronger sense of loyalty and persistence in the place where they’re planted. PA Peeps: Your seeds are not falling on hard rocky soil! Change is inevitable and your present challenges will give way to new paradigms in due time.

3. Engaged and Active Citizens who are actually interacting with their government counterparts, who believe that government is not the enemy, but is, in fact, an ally. Without these committed people who are paying attention to the efforts of their public servants – not some faceless bureaucrats, but their friends and family and neighbors – the Gov 2.0 movement would really be pointless. But just as there are public sector personnel who are giving it their all to produce a platform for citizen engagement, we ought to thank those pioneering people who are taking government at its word and sharing fresh ideas, voting for open government solutions and valuing a shift in the way they receive services and information. Engaged Citizens: keep challenging us to do more and do better, to be more efficient and effective. We’re listening and learning, just like you!
So that’s who I am thinking about today. Who else would you add?

One year ago, I published a post entitled “Next Generation Government: Mobile, Measurable and Malleable.”

As the Next Generation of Government Summit fast approaches, I thought I’d dust off this blog post and play it again to spark discussion in advance of the event. I’m going to run it as a series – breaking it up in three sections. YGL and GovLoop Founder Steve Ressler took a shot at defining the next generation of government last week as well, so be sure to check out his post.

In my mind’s eye, the next generation of government will be MOBILE (I agree with Steve here):
Mobile connotes the idea that work is no longer a place, but a set of tasks that can be performed anywhere – whether that’s in a government-owned building in a major metropolitan center or a privately-owned family farm in the middle of Minnesota. In the private sector, this type of flexible work environment is already commonplace. Not so in the public sector where fewer than 10% of eligible employees are teleworking. I believe that three primary drivers will lead to a more mobile government:

1) Collaborative technologies – also known as Web 2.0 or social media – will enable people to exchange information in ways that mitigate time and distance. Public sector personnel will wake up one morning, and about 75 minutes into their 5-mile commute, will recognize that there is a much better way to work. They’ll turn around, turn on their laptop and turn in a respectable day’s work…in less than 8 hours!

2) Boomers will retire, leaving Generation X and Millennials to take the reins. And what does the next generation want but a better work-life balance? Unlike our parents, we don’t live to work. We work to live. We’re projectized people that desperately want to live the critical path – the quickest route from start to finish…so we can give more attention to our personal pursuits.

3) Boomers will retire, becoming bored and realizing that they want to keep contributing. For all that’s been said about it, the impending “retirement tsunami” may or may not happen by 2015. With their workaholic approach and life savings shaved in half, Boomers are most likely not leaving anytime soon. Think about it: the youngest among them are still in their mid-40s and many of them are on Facebook, GovLoop, and Twitter. And surveys by relatively respectable institutions like AARP, Harvard, Merrill Lynch and MetLife indicate that two out of three Boomers expect to NEVER retire. Rather, they plan to cycle between periods of working, volunteering and vacationing.

To summarize: we all want the same thing! But it’s up to you, brilliant and bold Boomers, to put this mobile culture in place now before you head off to work from your waterfront villa in the south of Florida or France.

What do you think? Do you buy it? Or will we stayed mired in the muck of mindless commutes?

Engage in dialogue here…and join your peers in person at the Next Generation of Government Summit.

Our nation’s capitol is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, especially in and around the monuments and memorials.

But then I walk a block off the Mall and see all those ugly, boxy buildings, and I wonder:

In my mind, they represent everything that makes government less efficient and effective:

1. They create physical silos that reinforce the lack of inter-agency coordination.

There’s a separate building for every agency. And that physical separation leads to divisions among agencies that inhibit communication and coordination. I don’t have any real numbers (if you got ‘em, share ‘em!), but my hunch is that most facilities aren’t filled to capacity any more…and over the next ten years, as Boomers retire or work part-time, they’ll start to feel like ghost towns. They’re already echo chambers. Wait until no one’s there to absorb the sound. Demolish a dozen of these mini-dominions of power and co-locate similar functions in inter-agency teams (that is, once or twice a week when they meet face-to-face. Otherwise, enable them to work from anywhere, connected by web-based networks).

2. People are forced to travel into these places every day.

If you’ve ever traveled in or out of Washington, DC between 7:30a – 9:30a and 3:30 – 6:30p on any given weekday, you feel my pain. DC’s roads are among the most congested in the nation, and it’s due in large part to the reality that we require people to drive to these workplaces, wasting time, adding stress and damaging the environment through all that exhaust. If we tear down the buildings and ask people to work from home or telework centers, we could cut the cars in half! And we’d eliminate the need to make a sophisticated argument for telework. Mandate the removal of buildings and we’ll force agencies to think more creatively about where people get work done.

3. They suck energy and replace green space.

How much energy does it take to run just one of these buildings? In a 2007 address to the Senate, GSA Commissioner Dave Winstead said:

We recognize that buildings in this country consume about 40 percent of the total energy used in the United States and as much as 70 percent of the electricity. GSA has an opportunity — and a responsibility — to lead by example and to demonstrate how we can reduce energy consumption by intelligently integrating energy and efficiency in building design and still create places where people can work effectively.

Forget “design.” Think “destroy.” In addition to energy efficiency and the resultant cost savings, imagine even more green expanses on the National Mall. Don’t build new museums…give us gardens and great places to sit outside while we work or more places to play softball and soccer and fetch with our dogs. Make the Mall a National Playground where we reinforce the First Lady’s “Let’s Move initiative to get Americans to exercise.

What do you think? What are other potential benefits of tearing down government buildings, not only in Washington, DC, but across the country?

1. Try to be away no more than one night at a time and 2 tops.

2. If I have a speaking engagement or meeting after 1 p.m., I fly up that morning so that I avoid an extra overnight.

3. Skip the happy hour on the last day of an event and get home instead.

4. If a trip is within 4 hours of our home, try to bring the family along…and help to find activities for mom and baby so that they’re not stuck in a hotel room all day.

5. Call every night that I am away while my son is awake…using Skype, if possible.

What are your “rules for the road” as a traveling parent?

Here’s my bold and terrifying prediction: 2010 will mark the point at which politicians ruined the Web.

As mid-term election fervor launches in earnest over the next few weeks, political candidates will pummel us with updates, texts and tweets. Up and down the ballot and across party lines, challengers and incumbents alike will inundate us with appeals to become their Facebook friends and Twitter followers as they mount their bids to gain or retain office.

They’ve all likely been reading Obama’s “Presidential Election Playbook” carefully, pulling pages to ignite their own successful bid for office.

But when their bloody battle is over, the public they pledge to serve will be the real losers.

Once the Web-based war for votes is won, their constituents will likely be sick of social media and the ways in which it was used to manipulate their voting behavior.

The most sinister loss, however, will be the solidification of social media’s place in the minds of candidates as a cog in the marketing machine for individual candidates versus its inherent value to facilitate citizen communication with the elected office they hold but temporarily.

This short-sighted exploitation of the Internet by the legislative branch flies in the face of open government efforts by the executive branch to be more transparent, collaborative and participatory.

Moreover, it undermines the earnest attempts by the career civil servants I see on GovLoop every day who strive to leverage technology for the express purpose of engaging citizens more effectively and offering easier access to services and information.

Officeholders will seek selfishly to “own” the websites that they created to win election and fail to see themselves as stewards of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and cell phone lists that should endure beyond the brief period that they occupy an office.

In my own state, Gov. Beverly Perdue (who is not up for re-election this year) has established a Facebook page that purports to represent the Governor’s Office of the State of North Carolina, but it’s really not much more than a personal fan page.

What happens should she lose her next bid for office or decide to retire after one term? What about the content, the conversations, the ideas and the information – both provided by her office and the citizens of our state? Will it be preserved in a public or private place on the Web after her last day or will it become archived on an “unpublished” remote server? Will her Facebook page receive a facelift or her Twitter account twansferred (I know, I know – I couldn’t resist) when her successor assumes residency in the governor’s mansion?

If left unchecked, 2010 will be the year when America watched its politicians pollute and dilute the power of the Web and widen the ever-increasing gap between the branches of government and their respective approaches to public service.

Let’s take a careful look at our potential leaders before flocking to become their friends, fans and followers.

We should just dismantle the government.

We don’t trust the people who work in government. We don’t believe that they are committed to being good stewards of our tax money. And we generally feel as if they are incompetent and incapable of performing at levels of excellence that would in any way allow us to indicate satisfaction with their services.

That’s the American citizen profile painted by a report released by the Pew Research Center yesterday entitled “Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor.” From the overview:

By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days. A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government — a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.

Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation’s top problems, the public now wants government reformed and growing numbers want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of major financial institutions, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation’s problems — including more government control over the economy — than there was when Barack Obama first took office.

But this really begs another question:

If we don’t want civil servants to address our top problems, then who do we want to provide these same services and information that we rely upon for the effective functioning of society?

Which sector do we trust more?

Private sector? We might be able to trust the ability to deliver on performance elements, but have profit-driven companies really captured the public’s imagination as the entities we’d want to be responsible for the common good?

Non-profit sector? These organizations have a similar mindset and mission to government, oriented toward public service, but how long would we wait and at what cost to transfer resources from one sector to another?

Academia? Tremendous research, development and innovation comes from our nation’s academic institutions, but isn’t it a stretch to think that they are equipped to manage the broader operations and infrastructure now handled by government?

To be fair, the Pew report does indicate that:

the public also expresses discontent with many of the country’s other major institutions. Just 25% say the federal government has a positive effect on the way things are going in the country and about as many (24%) say the same about Congress. Yet the ratings are just as low for the impact of large corporations (25% positive) and banks and other financial institutions (22%). And the marks are only slightly more positive for the national news media (31%), labor unions (32%) and the entertainment industry (33%).

The report goes on to say that people who are upset with government are typically angry at other societal institutions.

So maybe people just like to complain.

But I’d like to hear these same survey respondents answer this question:

If not government, then who?

One of the big headlines last week was the Library of Congress announcing that it would archive the entire history of tweets on Twitter. We had a robust discussion about it here on GovLoop sparked by a simple question from Harlan Wax “Really to What End?”.

I’d like to ask two more simple questions: “So What?” and “Now What?”

Having a bunch of data doesn’t do us much good if we can’t access and organize it. With that notion in mind, I have a potential answer.

The Library of Congress should run an apps contest, inviting developers to make it much easier to search, segment and publish tweets.

Some ideas to flesh out this vision:

1. Create a user-friendly interface that enables people to quickly search and find tweets based on any number of parameters – geography, hashtags, topics/subjects, time periods, etc.

2. Allow us to quickly flip the tweets in real chronological order.

3. Enable quick publishing of the search content into “digital books” – attractive HTML or PDF versions that retains formatting such as people’s Twitter photos – like TweetDoc, only with an unlimited number of tweets.

What would you add to the app requirements?

What do you think of the concept?

When I was a kid, I spent hours at the local library – especially during the summer when we were off from school.

I’d grab a bunch of books and bring them home, often staying up late reading them with a flashlight in bed under the covers. I’d knock ‘em all out, then go back the next day for more.

Those experiences at the library are some of my favorite childhood memories.

As I moved on to college, the library remained a special place for me. I’d often find a couch or cozy chair in a quiet corner, oscillating between study and sleep.

Sometimes I’d get lost in a section, searching for one book that led me down a rabbit hole to reams and reams of previously undiscovered knowledge. It never felt like wasted time (or procrastination!).

I also spent a couple college summers working in a homeless shelter. We didn’t allow the men to hang out at the house during the day, so where did they go?

You guessed it: the library.

Since I was an undergrad in the mid-90’s, the Internet had really just begun to become influential at our institution, so we weren’t spending massive amounts of time surfing the Web. Computers were limited and connections were awfully slow (and noisy).

As an adult, I haven’t been spending as much time at the library, but my newborn baby boy is making me think about it again. I’d like to instill in him a love for learning and for places like the library.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the “So what?” behind what we’re calling “Gov 2.0″ or “Open Government.” We can plaster the Web with public information, open datasets and crowd-sourcing tools. Blogs and wikis and webinars offer more access to more people.

But what if they don’t have a way of connecting to the Web? What if they don’t work in a job where they’re sitting in front of a monitor all day and they don’t have the money to buy a PC and high-speed Internet at home? What if some people feel a bit intimidated by the Internet due to limited access and/or lack of knowledge about it?

According to the National Broadband Plan, 14 million people in the US do not have access to high speed broadband infrastructure. Only 40% of adults making less than $20,000 have broadband at home and rates of adoption are under 10% for our Tribal lands. The Plan states explicitly: “Hardware and software are too expensive for some. Others lack the skills to use broadband.”

So let me suggest that the library is the linchpin – the indispensable hub of access and education.

I am not the first or only person advocating for this idea. In fact, Justin Grimes inspired me at last year’s Open Government and Innovations Conference during an incredible lunch conversation and ‘ve heard Sandra Fernandez of the Houston Public Library describe her institution as a primary point of access for citizens in her community.

What are your ideas or examples of libraries as the linchpins for connecting citizens to government information and engagement?

I’d love to get lost in a virtual library of ideas that we generate here.

Maybe we should give up on this quest for a “government 2.0″ or “open government.” Maybe the people in senior positions are, well, just that – too “senior.” Or maybe it’s that most public servants just aren’t that interested in being collaborative, transparent or participatory.

“…thinking of the UK demographic of public sector employees, I think that majority of the decision makers fall into the Baby Boomer category (born 1940’s to early ’60’s) than Generation X (born 1960s- 1970’s), and it’s these decision makers that are primarily responsible for blocking access to social media in their departments. They see no impact or consequence of blocking social media because they don’t use it, either for work or personal use. Regrettably, they are limiting the opportunities for their departments to engage with the increasing number of citizens of all ages who are using social media, and risk creating departmental ‘ghetos’, isolated from the conversations that may have some direct relevance to them.

In addition to this generational issue, I also had an exchange with someone yesterday in which they said, “it is ungodly hard to move a collaborative project forward in gov – as Nick Charney has said, some people are wired to share. Most, I’m beginning to think, are not “