Government 2.0 is an engaging idea that reflects two distinct periods of thought: the "classical" model of democratic practice which focuses on citizen participation and peer relationships[i], and; the modern era of public management where organizations and public servants are expected to be more flexible and responsive to citizen's demands, and can employ technology skillfully to create "public value"[ii].

While Government 2.0 remains an elusive concept in definition and practice - hence the establishment by the Commonwealth Government of a Taskforce to examine methods to "accelerate" its inevitable development[iii] - it tends to be characterized as having three main objectives in State-centric nations like Australia[iv]:

• Establishing conditions that encourage citizen participation within the sphere of government (formally and informally);
• Enabling action at the level of communities (be they physical, professional, of interest, or purely virtual) to identify and respond to social problems, and;
• Reconfiguring the administrative functions of the State to more fundamentally reflect principles of flexibility and responsiveness.

Overall, the meta-narrative of Government 2.0 is all about boundaries: how can we reduce those common barriers to action that inhibit our natural inclination to solve collective problems. It fits neatly with the common (but academically contested[v]) theory of "democratic decline"[vi]: that these barriers to action have disengaged communities, disconnected citizens from the State, and in doing so undermined State legitimacy and therefore capacity.

The Government 2.0 program is ambitious, aiming to solve, in its essence, the twin dilemmas of collective action and organizational agility. So it is unsurprising that the program's proponents have had problems determining the most effective method of realising the concept.[vii] In the early iterations of the idea (back when it was encapsulated within the concepts of e-government or e-democracy) the program tended to focus on 90s-era change strategies: large projects aimed at "re-engineering" organizations through detailed analysis of business rules and the development of new computer systems that reflect these renewed organizational priorities and activities.

This model dominated the approach of the Commonwealth under the Howard Government. It achieved a number of initial wins (particularly in delivering administrative efficiencies and the redevelopment of information systems supporting welfare and employment services)[viii] but struggled when the discussion shifted from consumers of government services to citizens. The project-oriented, top-down approach fits neatly with the automation of interactions that are highly constrained by legislative entitlements and sanctions, but is unresponsive when asked to interface with individuals who are acting in the more amorphous world of democratic practices: where the rules of the game are themselves subject to contest and debate.

Lessons are learnt, however, and the current iteration of Government 2.0 has taken on a considerably different character. Rather than seeing this form of democratically enabling governance as something to be "delivered" by the State (programmatic e-democracy), current discussions have taken on a more pragmatic character. Individuals and organizations (State and civil society) should undertake a wide array of activities[ix] to determine "what works", with high levels of public engagement. Thus, rather than stick dogmatically to an ideological position about what emerging forms of governance should look like, the future, like the web itself, should take an organic character. Given the "third way"-like approach to this round of reexamination and implementation, it is unsurprising that the idea attracts support from across the political divide.

The fact that it is supported across the political divide, however, does not mean that this concept is free of ideology.

Just as the initial e-government agenda was strongly influenced by the dot.com bubble of the mid to late 1990s, the concept of Government 2.0 is shaped by its parent concept: Web 2.0. As we will see, in taking inspiration from Web 2.0 to overcome the limitations of the first generation of online government initiatives, Government 2.0 also implicitly accepts some of its inherent ideological components.

The concept of Web 2.0 - less a theory than an attempt to define a transitional phase in the fast moving evolution of the internet - emerges from two recent technological developments. The first comes from the "pull" side of the communications equation: the public's shift from dial-up to "always on" fast broadband as the most common method of accessing the internet.[x] The second is "push": the revitalization of web browsers and web programming that altered the internet from a comparatively static publishing medium to an interactive "platform" for dynamic content.

The important aspect of Web 2.0 is not the breakthrough popularity of any of its "exemplar" applications (YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia). It is that - as Axel Bruns argues - Web 2.0 changes what's on the other side of the screens: us. In a "read-write" world of amateur bloggers and citizen journalists, the new technology changes us from simple consumers of content (users skilled in navigating around the web) to "produsers": producer-users adept at navigation and creation, neither audiences nor directors.[xi] Produsers don't just "break the fourth wall". That barrier is meaningless for people who'll download a popular cartoon, ironically re-edit it with dialogue from a classic 1950s red scare film, and post it back to Facebook for the enjoyment of their social network. We are the Media.

For me, the notion of produsers is reminiscent of Henrik Bang's political concept of the "everyday maker"[xii]: politically interested, but practically-minded individuals who want to have an effect at the local level and are not interested in a role in the broad scale of public life. The everyday maker is interested in affecting their local narratives and conditions, they will opt in and out of participation when they have something to add, or something to fix. Just as the produser asks of the web "what can I create?" the everyday maker asks "what can I resolve?"

It is this notion of the inventive produser or everyday maker that Government 2.0 wants to bring to the realm of democratic citizenship. Rather than seeing the State as a pre-determined (and increasingly unappetizing) menu of services and limited avenues for political participation (voting, party membership, pressure group activity), a Government 2.0 is one where citizens freely cross the boundary of participation in response to our concerns, interests, and abilities. Government 2.0, therefore, pushes at an open door: citizens benefit because they can act in their own interests, while the State gains access to valuable human capital. This brings legitimacy through public participation in "collaborative governance" rather than the top-down administration of the democratically impoverished post-parliamentary democracy[xiii]. Government 2.0, therefore, sits at a cusp: the exponential growth seen in, say, Wikipedia articles from 2003 to 2006, could be reproduced in participative governance and co-production - if only we can reprogram or "reboot" government in the right way.

The notion of a permeable membrane between the political and the apolitical world is not new to thinking about government structures. In the 1960s Robert Dahl introduced his notion of homo politicus (the politically active citizen) and homo civicus (the non-active citizen) in his work on pluralist politics[xiv]. According to Dahl's narrative, while civicus was largely disengaged from the political process because of an interest in their personal, professional, and domestic lives, there was no significant barrier to a member of this group entering the public sphere. This could be done by forming or joining the pressure groups and voluntary associations that are at the heart of the pluralist's view of political life. Indeed, where civicus's interests were substantially threatened, that form of mobilization would occur. This periodic activation (and the threat thereof) thus served as an automatic regulator of the actions of politicus, and the establishment of barriers to participation (money politics, policy oligopolies) was regarded as anti-democratic.

This neat "thermostatic" model of political life became increasingly unrealistic because pressure groups did not act in the way prescribed by Dahl: shifting away from being mobilizing organizations capturing large numbers of active citizens to focusing on joining "insider" policy cliques. Like political parties, these voluntary organizations now increasingly focus on capturing large numbers of political donations for the use of professional policy staff.

Complexity and expediency are at the root of this change. For Bang, the complexity of modern government both discourages the everyday maker from engaging with state or federal politics and renders their capabilities less valuable for interest groups. Our fragmented and specialized society instead promotes the growth of the "expert citizen": full-time political professionals located in voluntary organizations, who specialize in matching problems with resources through their mastery of the complex governance networks that exist in post-industrial "hollow states".[xv]

The question for Government 2.0, therefore, is not about next steps. The question is how it defines the minimum skill set and workload required to be an effective citizen.

Through its parent concept of Web 2.0, Government 2.0 comes with a number of implicit statements about what the next generation of citizen will look like: The web is "personal" and focused on individual action and entrepreneurialism. It's a "maker" world that prizes technical skills to rip, mix and post ideas, software and data. And importantly, it's all about "conversation", the key currency of the blogosphere.

These may well be the characteristics of citizenship our society values. But we should adopt Government 2.0 having clearly reflected on the rights and responsibilities these characteristics entail, and the implications for those who may fall outside of the standards set for homo politicus 2.0.

The radical individualism of some web cultures serves as a warning: meritocracy based on technical skill promotes and values only one type of expertise, technical "information literacies". While these skills can be empowering, we must also recognize how high standards don't always lift all boats. The almost fetishistic shift to an "evidence base" in some professional policy making circles may have served to rationalize policy debate away from ideology and back to the reality-based community,[xvi] but sometimes at the cost of other types of knowledge[xvii] (occasionally deliberately). Barriers to participation are not eliminated, they're simply reconfigured.[xviii] For Bang, the alienation of "lay" knowledge is an important cause of the pathology of non-participation.

If we must be produsers how many of us make the cut? It's hard to tell. If evidence from the United States is anything to go on, however, then we can generously say it's less than 22% of the population (if posting a comment online at least once in a two year period makes you a rip-mix-burn expert). Realistically, the figure might be more likely in the 7% range (adults who daily blog, just smaller than the number of people who read blogs on a daily basis).[xix] While that certainly is a conversation of produsers, many of us are clearly still sitting on the sidelines. Maybe generational replacement will fundamentally alter this, but after 18 years experience of the World Wide Web, perhaps we should start to question whether this ever youthful "new media" will ever be capable of delivering our projected hopes for participative democracy.

The notion that Government / Web 2.0 is "all about conversation"[xx] also needs to be teased out. The conversational nature of blogs, social networking services, and e-consultation chat systems is appealing to our imaginary "classic" democracy (be that the Athenian marketplace, European coffee houses,[xxi] or even the walk-and-talk Whitehouse of the West Wing[xxii]). But this - intensely American - notion of political exchange needs to be questioned in the cultural context of Australia.

Australians are not, by and large, a politically declarative bunch. Unlike the button-wearing politics of the United States, surveys show that explicitly political personal conversations have been a constantly declining form of political activity in Australia[xxiii], with Australians more likely to see overtly political speech through the lens of the hectoring bores of Don's Party (1971) than James Stewart's impassioned filibuster in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939). The concern, therefore, is that Government 2.0 might just demand that we become technically far more engaged than we currently are, to undertake a specific form of political interaction in which we are decreasingly interested.

What social contract lies at the heart of Government 2.0? Must we be expert citizens or is there space for the everyday maker? Gerry Stoker has argued that, rather than raising the bar, we need to accept the value and appropriateness of a "politics for amateurs".[xxiv] We need, therefore, first to define what that means, then the reprogramming can begin.

[i] As opposed to hierarchical relationships that characterize conventional understandings of power politics: the top-down orientation of State action and corresponding inverse narrative of bottom-up resistance.

[ii] Moore, M (1995) Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[iii] Government 2.0 Taskforce (2009) Towards Government 2.0: An Issues Paper, 23 July, p.3.

[iv] As opposed, for example, to the United States, where there is less of an emphasis on the role of the Government on "community building", reflecting an avoidance of government intervention in the private sphere.

[v] Norris, P (2003) Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[vi] Putnam, R (2000) Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster.

[vii] The array of Government-sponsored electronic consultation trials is a good example of this problem. While some jurisdictions claim success (e.g. Queensland), most initiatives at the local, state and federal level have not lived up to early expectations of rejuvenating participation. Chen, Gibson and Geiselhart (2006) Electronic Democracy? The Impact of New Communications Technologies on Australian Democracy, Focused Audit, Democratic Audit of Australia, Canberra: Australian National University.

[viii] Examples would include the development of the ATO's E-Tax package, and the creation of Centrelink and the Job Network system.

[ix] Including, but by no means limited to, the default release of datasets to enhance the capacity of citizen oversight and policy debate, the development of electronic and online consultation and collaboration "agora" for citizen participation, and greater emphasis on social capital projects to address local issues through collaboration building.

[x] Australia still retains about 1.3 million dial-up internet accounts. These tend to be predominantly located in rural and remote areas. This number has been tapering off over recent years as customers switch to broadband services (normally ADSL) and new customers enter the market choosing broadband where available. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2009) 8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, Dec 2008, Canberra: ABS.

[xi] Bruns, A (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, New York: Peter Lang.

[xii] Bang, H (2004) Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens: Building Political not Social Capital, Canberra:

ANU.

[xiii] Richardson and Jordan (1979) Governing Under Pressure: The Policy Process in a Post-Parliamentary Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[xiv] Dahl, R (1961) Who Governs? Democracy and Power in the American City, New Haven: Yale University Press.

[xv] The hollow state is "a metaphor for the increasing use of third parties, often nonprofits, to deliver social services and generally act in the name of the state." Some authors also note the "hollowing out" effect of devolution and global/regionalization. Milward and Provan (2000) "Governing the Hollow State", Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(2) pp. 359-380.

[xvi] Suskind, R (2004) "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush". The New York Times Magazine. 17 October.

[xvii] For example, indigenous knowledge, local histories, and information from outside of a narrow band of technical specialties.

[xviii] Batterbury, S (2007) "Evaluation and Exclusion from the Public Arena: the Case of the British Deaf Community", Open to the Public: Evaluation of the Public Arena, Boye, Breul and Dahler-Larsen (eds), New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.

[xix] Pew Internet and the American Life Project (2009) Trend Data, http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Trend-Data.aspx

[xx] Stewart-Weeks, M (2009) "The Great Promise of Web 2.0", Government 2.0 Taskforce, http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/08/10/the-great-promise-of-web-2-0/

[xxi] Goode, L (2005) Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere, London: Pluto Press.

[xxii] That happy fantasy world liberals could retreat to during the Bush administration. Jennifer (2008) "West Wing -- My Fantasy Alternate Reality", Mixed Race America, September 24, http://mixedraceamerica.blogspot.com/2008/09/west-wing-my-fantasy-alternate-reality.html

[xxiii] McAllister and Clark (2007) Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study, 1987-2004. Canberra: Australian Social Science Data Archive.

[xxiv] Stoker, G (2006) Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.