I think you are going to see a different set of entrepreneurs coming to the show and pitching solutions.

They will be looking to solve application specific problems, tailor-made for each government department and its stakeholders. My view is, the smart ones will realize building a panacea solution for all government is a thing of the past. It would take too long, VCs will get impatient and someone else would likely build something close to it with a boatload of open source software.

IMHO, GOV 2.0 is all about long tail applications built be people really interested in solving problems and dreaming less about LARGE scale market caps, IPO’s and a fast buck. Ellison said it best during a quarterly earnings call…”how can Ariba be worth more than Daimler-Benz?” He was spot on with the question.

I don’t think its necessarily the case. As you know there is a lot of good being done in and around the beltway to improve processes and transparency, as demanded by this administration. However, this was all in motion long before Jan 20, 2009. And I also feel that this week should be highlighting that more, rather than speak to us like we are children.

I am hoping that I will be proven wrong by the end of the week. The evangelists for change are very much aware of the outside world of industry use of social media to connect with their consumers, government has their constituents. The real game changer will be getting the Senior Level Government heads to be aware of the work and efforts of the workforce and not shy away from our suggestions. If these people can make it to the summit, then maybe there is hope.

1. One problem that I believe is dividing people is “technobuzz” – e.g. “Gov 2.0″. That term was created out of Web2.0 to indicate changing the way the government does business. And yet there are some good things (and good people) in the US government. And adding technology does not necessarily mean that radical change will occur. The IC started looking at wikis in 2005 which led to Intellipedia. While Intellipedia did encourage some cross-agency collaboration, it has not in any way affected the “engines of production” that continuously grind out intelligence reports in a somewhat stovepiped fashion. Technology facilitated collaboration but it didn’t change any of the management thinking about how the larger enterprise should be run.

2. When the focus for change is on technology, we are missing on how we change people and processes. Additionally, all three levels of people in an enterprise (grass roots bottom, middle managers and top level) must be involved at some point to make real change happen. Most of the people who currently attend Gov2.0 conferences are the early adopters of government. Where are the middle managers and the top level managers who need to work with the early adopters to make it all happen. Where are the contrarians asking the hard questions that need to be addressed.

3. It’s costs money to make change happen. There is no magic wand to put in even open source technologies even if all levels are in agreement. People addressing Gov2.0 are looking for sexy change – put in twitter, put in facebook, etc. But there are legacy databases that need to be maintained or transferred to new capabilities; there are issues of privacy and security; there are a lot of issues that everyone is ignoring. Why does everyone assume that technology solves everything easily? There are any number of good case studies from industry that talk to the problems of bringing in new technologies without relooking at the business processes. Most of those are about automating an existing process. They don’t even begin to look at what happens if the technology is disruptive and implemented on top of a broken process. There might be change but it might not be pretty.

The cultural divide is multi-dimensional and covers any number of people and agendas. We need to take off the rosy glasses and think seriously about who needs to be involved and how to do it. Until then, we’ll just have conferences that are the equivalent of self-licking ice cream cones where the same early adopters talk amongst themselves (saw that happen in Sep 2008 with an IC conference).

But here’s where I think we can watch for some important seeds being planted: despite that implicit notion that gov 2.0 “democratizes” things more, from both a larger and a deeper view, if some of this is successful in both creating new value for citizens and officials, we could be witnessing the emergence of a new constitutional discourse. Is it time to explicitly alter the character of American citizenship? Are the tools, enthusiasm, and enlightenment there to sustain a new set of governing relationships? Are these gov 2.0 apps merely add-ons to the underlying constitutional order, or do they really presage a new bridge from representative government to some new form (dare we even suggest real democracy?).

Mahalo again.

A quick idea that stems from your remarks above: what if we could create something akin to a flash mentoring program where SV entrepreneurs and DC leaders are matched for a weekly or monthly brainstorming/feedback session? Program participants could be rotated for the maximum amount of exposure. Granted, the program would have to ensure that none of the companies are competing for contracts now or in the near future, but it could be a formal way of bridging the gap and infusing a bit of the SV innovation culture in DC…and fostering a bit more respect in SV for the smart folks in DC who want to break out of the old mold.

Your thoughts?