Thinking About Gov 2.0

I was reading a recent blog by INQBATION, Government policy on the use of social media, and it got me thinking about the use of Web 2.0 tools in the daily execution of my professional responsibilities as a military officer.  The blog listed the below primary roles for Gov 2.0, which is the push to use Web 2.0 tools within the government.

1. Public outreach to communicate and deliver messages directly to citizens
2. Encourage citizen involvement, interaction and feedback on social issues
3. Provide leadership and public service announcements

 I agree whole heartedly with the above primary roles, and it’s great that the focus is on utilizing these powerful tools to communicate with the populace.  Web 2.0 tools like Twitter and Facebook are excellent channels for reaching large swaths of people. 

However, and I’m a relative newbie to Web 2.0, I think the government is sorely behind the curve in utilizing these tools internally.  In fact, I can’t even access the majority of these tools on the government network I use daily.  I wrote briefly about this in my 19 February post titled, Cyber Attacks on Government Networks and Web 2.0.

I can think of any number of ways to utilize these tools in the execution of my daily professional functions, and truth be told, I do use them.  However, because I can’t access them from my government network, I have to fashion workarounds, which wastes my time, and ultimately the governments’ time.

In many ways I find the Gov 2.0 movement encouraging, but also conflicted.  While we encourage the use of Web 2.0 tools to communicate externally, we discourage their use to communicate internally.  Why?