Gov 2.0 can fail

I referenced some of the issues that Gov 2.0 can come up against in some previous posts, and it is going to be interesting watching the successes and failures in this space over the next few years.  In the post Welcome to America 2.0 I highlighted the UK site www.togetherforlondon.org, a Social Networking site created by Transport for London which is after a few months starting to be classed as a failure, and in Gov 2.0 Examples - Number10.gov.uk talked about how the UK Governments own online petition was turned against them.

However, one that really caught my eye recently and is well worth a watch is this from The Daily Show ‘Congress on YouTube’, a rather mocking view of Congress in its Gov 2.0 efforts.  I think (hope) as time moves on and the hype dies down people will work out the right balance.

Another article ‘Agencies struggle to make connections online’ points to both failure due to low and also high numbers.

‘Take the Commerce Department, which spent months negotiating a special end-user license agreement with YouTube and became one of the first federal agencies on the site last year.

It was an achievement for the department to make it to YouTube, but its videos haven't taken off: Its channel has 14 videos and three subscribers. Its most popular? A seven-minute clip of then-Secretary Carlos Gutierrez speaking to the Manufacturing Council in July, with just over 100 hits’

A different story for the Transport Security Administration:

"The day we launched, we had Blogger set up to e-mail our BlackBerries every time someone posted a comment," said TSA spokesman Christopher White. "We had 800 comments in the first 24 hours. We had to turn it off."

There are a number of pitfalls that Government Agencies can fall into.  One of the major problems is people see the success of the Obama campaign and think ‘I want some of that’, without taking a proper look at how and why citizens will want to interact with them, and the potential issues they might have to deal with.