Web 2.0 Helps Utah Government Become Transparent
True to the spirit of Web 2.
0 form Utah's official state Web site was recently unveiled with a fresh design which focuses on engaging and encouraging community users to boost their participation in state and local government issues.
The ambitious intention is that with greater accessibility to practical data Utah citizens will collectively make government services more effective, accessible, and transparent.
This grand strategy provides a public arena for its citizens to tap into raw data.
Specifically, the Utah government is helping citizens to use facilities, data and knowledge bases in more inventive ways.
How this will evolve is yet to be seen but this style of crowd sourcing has been used successfully by other public institutions including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art which used an impressive model using Web 2.
0 features that benefits the Smithsonian and the community.
"Fill the Gap" challenged "citizen curators" to find alternate art work for gaps in Luce Foundation Center display cases when pieces are away from the Musuem for anything up to twelve months.
Museum staff came up with a strategy deep in the spirit of the community using Web 2.
0.
It successfully generates assistance from its public.
Staff opened up the process to die hard online communities.
Using Flickr, they share photos of all the cases that need artwork, provide information about surrounding art in the case, and look to their community to search through their collections for appropriate substitution suggestions.
It's proven a brilliant strategy to engage with their die hard audiences, find what they like while revealing some behind-the-scenes museum activities.
Most of all it's giving everyone a sense of connectedness and community and is genuinely helping museum staff to reduce costly time resources while delivering a superior outcome.
What's so smart about this model is that it's a repeating challenging contest that the public is dying to solve.
It offers prizes with a high perceived value to the winner, who not only feels part of the museum's process but also shares a great honor in the experience, and at no expense to the museum.
It crowd sources the process in a cooperative way transforms it into a special opportunity while helping workers find the best solution in the shortest time.
Utah government site uses another but equally challenging approach: o The site uses geographical recognition software to calculate the location of the user and then displays all relevant location-specific information, including any school and library information, parks, local meetings, government Web sites and other online services.
o It provides simpler, user friendly interfaces with detailed explanations for main menu items.
o It has search facilities for government agencies, online services, and more than 50,000 government forms.
The new site also gives users access to 27 state blogs and over 100 Twitter accounts.
Users can quickly find and subscribe to content that appeal to them and this includes; o the Utah government Facebook page, o the Utah government Flickr photo group to view and upload photos, o an updated Multimedia Portal with "channels" of video and audio files accessible by topic or agency and o all state RSS feeds.
"The new Utah.
gov incorporates cutting-edge technologies to enhance the user experience and the usability of the site," said Stephen J.
Fletcher, Chief Information Officer for the State.
"This site is ground-breaking in the effort to help citizens find information regardless of the level of government.
" The new site is the third site supporting and delivering Utah government strategy for more open government and sharing information.
It's already launched transparency portal (http://transparent.
utah.
gov) and the new data portal (http://data.
utah.
gov).
It will be interesting to see how deeply user participation within these three sites will or can evolve and whether crowd sourcing public opinion with government resources over such a wide range of topics will work.
Without doubt, access to raw data is a great step for users to finding information.
It will create more open communities and an environment for sharing dialogue.
The real achievement for the Utah Government is giving everyone a sense of connectedness and community while genuinely helping government staff to reduce resources while delivering its public better qualified solutions on a range of community issues.
This territory comes with monetary and political costs but the long term benefits of truly engaging the public could be outstanding and worth the difficulties for all involved.
0 form Utah's official state Web site was recently unveiled with a fresh design which focuses on engaging and encouraging community users to boost their participation in state and local government issues.
The ambitious intention is that with greater accessibility to practical data Utah citizens will collectively make government services more effective, accessible, and transparent.
This grand strategy provides a public arena for its citizens to tap into raw data.
Specifically, the Utah government is helping citizens to use facilities, data and knowledge bases in more inventive ways.
How this will evolve is yet to be seen but this style of crowd sourcing has been used successfully by other public institutions including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art which used an impressive model using Web 2.
0 features that benefits the Smithsonian and the community.
"Fill the Gap" challenged "citizen curators" to find alternate art work for gaps in Luce Foundation Center display cases when pieces are away from the Musuem for anything up to twelve months.
Museum staff came up with a strategy deep in the spirit of the community using Web 2.
0.
It successfully generates assistance from its public.
Staff opened up the process to die hard online communities.
Using Flickr, they share photos of all the cases that need artwork, provide information about surrounding art in the case, and look to their community to search through their collections for appropriate substitution suggestions.
It's proven a brilliant strategy to engage with their die hard audiences, find what they like while revealing some behind-the-scenes museum activities.
Most of all it's giving everyone a sense of connectedness and community and is genuinely helping museum staff to reduce costly time resources while delivering a superior outcome.
What's so smart about this model is that it's a repeating challenging contest that the public is dying to solve.
It offers prizes with a high perceived value to the winner, who not only feels part of the museum's process but also shares a great honor in the experience, and at no expense to the museum.
It crowd sources the process in a cooperative way transforms it into a special opportunity while helping workers find the best solution in the shortest time.
Utah government site uses another but equally challenging approach: o The site uses geographical recognition software to calculate the location of the user and then displays all relevant location-specific information, including any school and library information, parks, local meetings, government Web sites and other online services.
o It provides simpler, user friendly interfaces with detailed explanations for main menu items.
o It has search facilities for government agencies, online services, and more than 50,000 government forms.
The new site also gives users access to 27 state blogs and over 100 Twitter accounts.
Users can quickly find and subscribe to content that appeal to them and this includes; o the Utah government Facebook page, o the Utah government Flickr photo group to view and upload photos, o an updated Multimedia Portal with "channels" of video and audio files accessible by topic or agency and o all state RSS feeds.
"The new Utah.
gov incorporates cutting-edge technologies to enhance the user experience and the usability of the site," said Stephen J.
Fletcher, Chief Information Officer for the State.
"This site is ground-breaking in the effort to help citizens find information regardless of the level of government.
" The new site is the third site supporting and delivering Utah government strategy for more open government and sharing information.
It's already launched transparency portal (http://transparent.
utah.
gov) and the new data portal (http://data.
utah.
gov).
It will be interesting to see how deeply user participation within these three sites will or can evolve and whether crowd sourcing public opinion with government resources over such a wide range of topics will work.
Without doubt, access to raw data is a great step for users to finding information.
It will create more open communities and an environment for sharing dialogue.
The real achievement for the Utah Government is giving everyone a sense of connectedness and community while genuinely helping government staff to reduce resources while delivering its public better qualified solutions on a range of community issues.
This territory comes with monetary and political costs but the long term benefits of truly engaging the public could be outstanding and worth the difficulties for all involved.
Source...