More Government 2.0 Musings

Government 2.0: "Military Blocks Its Own 'YouTube' Knockoff (Updated Again)," by Noah Shachtman, Wired , 17 March 2009; and "Government 2.0 Meets Catch 22," Saul Hansell, New York Times, 17 March 2009

These two articles sum up nicely what I have been lamenting for a while. In the Wired article Shachtman writes that some military units have blocked a website called TroopTube, which was created by the DoD. Incidently, TroopTube was created becasue the DoD banned YouTube!

An Air Force civilain told Wireds' Danger Room, "You know, it's bad enough they don't trust us with the 'real' internet and social media sites. Why don't they they trust us with the sites they invent?"

Shachctman also details the difficulty the military has had in controlling use and access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

"The military has struggled, since social media began, to figure out how exactly troops should be allowed to participate -- if at all. Network administrators at Air Force bases already put strict limitations on what sites their troops can and cannot visit. Many airmen can't access Danger Room, for example — or any site with the word "blog" in the URL. Army secrecy regulations, read literally, make it next-to-impossible for average soldiers to blog. Yet leading generals, deployed to war zones, are keeping online journals. The Pentagon employs an in-house video blogger. And the Department of Defense press office is making a concerted push to reach out to bloggers and non-traditional media."

The Hansell New York Times article discusses some of these same problems, but from the perspective of other non-DoD government agencies.

"Organizations of all sorts have been trying to figure out how they can adapt social networks, blogs, wiki’s and other Web tools to their traditional operating methods in order to connect to customers and partners."

"But it is tough. “We have a Facebook page,” said one official of the Department of Homeland Security. “But we don’t allow people to look at Facebook in the office. So we have to go home to use it. I find this bizarre.”"

Come on guys! There are a ton of smart people in the government, can't we figure out how to make this stuff accessible!?

For other postings from me on this subject see the below:
The DoD: Lumbering Through the IT Revolution
Cyber Attacks on Government Networks and Web 2.0