Absolutely! Saying we need to market better is a naive approach to solve the lack of civic engagement.

I think we have a much greater opportunity to stoke engagement by training government communicators to be more engaging than by somehow conjuring demand for engagement from consumers.

Getting the public to care about Gov 2.0 or open gov is much too narrow-minded. We first need to get the government itself to understand the value in communicating and collaborating with the public. We need to show the public that the government cares what they have to say. We need to educate the public and make them understand that they are a key piece of government. We need more to add more resources to government communications departments and make marketing and proactive communications part of their mission. This isn’t a Gov 2.0 or Open Gov problem – this is government customer service, plain and simple. And our customers are all over the place – some use social media, some don’t.

I’ve been interested in this topic for a while both in college and just in my own mind, and was glad to find this community speaking about gov 2.0 ideas, open government, and how technology is affecting our democratic culture and foundation through knowledge and involvement.

I browsed the ideascale site – very cool. I have to agree, though, there is little adoption. I only found it because I’m really a nerd when it comes to this stuff and actively seek it out. Where are all the other voices? I know these are all questions this community of writers have pondered already, but this article seems to show that it’s at a stalemate.

From what I’m putting together from my own research and my disjointed journey through some of the twitter feeds, blogs, and other sites, is that there’s no adoption, so therefore it’s a failing system. The engine used to power the ideas seems solid and great for what we have right now. We just need some system users.

Is the problem then simply a matter of marketing/outreach/promotion? It’s a big chunk of it, yes, but I don’t think it’s the underlying dilemma. To get people to participate, wouldn’t the facilitators want to illustrate some incentive to get involved? A fundamental tenet of modern outreach is to provide value in everything you do for your audience, and I don’t yet feel that these tools/channels have yet to show that value.

Here’s my perspective from someone who just stumbled on all this today. I was asking these questions while reading the opengov stuff on the agency sites, while reading some blog entries, and this post:
1) why would I participate?;
2) would I be heard (probably)?;
3) would it make a difference; and
4) if not an opengov or gov 2.0 enthusiast, what value do I get from this by spending time from my day to share an idea and maybe argue with others? It’s not worth getting into anything with anyone, especially if you can just ignore it, or have more important things to do on the web. That’s if people even find it at all.

I know I’ve gone way too long for a comment already (sorry guys), but here are my surface observations:
1) Gov 2.0 efforts are disjointed, need to be more concerted? (communicating across many channels, even the agency 2.0 sites just recently got tied together);
2) Gov 2.0 efforts are not promoted as well as they could be, and definitely not in the mainstream (the recovery act site had a good amount of promotion);
3) There’s little value to participate, need to find purpose and incentive to get involved – participants may not even feel the “pat on the back” they would get from voting in an election by submitting ideas.

The opengov sites from these agencies are a great first step, and I am excited to see where this will go. Involvement and sharing of ideas is a great way for government to restore trust and transparency.

Thanks for the article and challenge and greetings to the author and all who contribute here. Glad to find this site and others – stumbling and participating is what the web’s all about, eh?

What’s more likely is that the tool simply favors ideas that manage to hop on the leaderboard early on in the process.

See my comment on Andrea’s blog: http://bit.ly/9PxtER

Ideas forthcoming, but too many for the comments.

Thank you, though for challenging Andrea’s post and stirring the conversation.

Andrea, thanks for responding in kind.