Does the Public Currently Need to Know What ‘Government 2.0′ Is?

Christina Gagnier wrote a post about the Gov 2.0 Camp held in LA this past weekend, focusing on one speaker, Bill Grundfest, the creator of Mad About You. The essence of the post is that Government 2.0 innovators are not using the right language to discuss the topic with their “intended audience, citizens.” He criticizes the amount of jargon used as well.I have two major critiques of this criticism by Citizen Grundfest.

One, the current audience for Government 2.0 conversations is currently not the American people; it is the tech and government elite. For better or worse, that’s mainly who’s interested in contributing blogs, attending events, and so forth, and so that is what the conversation reflects. This might change in the future, but currently these are the people who care most about data.gov, who the next CTO will be, and so forth. Citizens are the intended recipients of Government 2.0, but not usually participants in how it should come about, what the policies governing it should be, which technologies should be utilized, and so forth.

One might ask, how many “average citizens” attended Gov 2.0 Camp LA? I suspect that most attendees by far were the self-selected ones who know and use the jargon. That’s the point. Events like that are created for the people who know the jargon to discuss things with each other, not the public, even if the public is the ultimate beneficiary of the discussion.

Two, if there is one niche in society that is well known for its piles of incomprehensible jargon, it is government. There is so much jargon in government that one cannot possibly criticize government for having it; That would be like criticising people for having skin. The notion that somehow people working on Government 2.0 use too much jargon, yet the rest of government is immune from this criticism is ridiculous. Jargon isn’t great, but it is a fact of life in government. What is one to do except bang one’s head up against the proverbial wall?

Further, every specialized field – especially emerging fields involving science and technology – has its own jargon. Surely, Grundfest wouldn’t deny this is true of Hollywood itself, where jargon rules the land, with no attempt whatsoever to make it comprehensible to the average Mad About You viewer. And why should they? Back to point one – the viewer is related to the topic but not the intended audience for the discussion.

Does the public currently need to understand what Government 2.0 is? Do they need to understand the jargon, or must the specialized language of this burgeoning field go away to satiate the many common citizens who want to know more? I say, no. Few citizens are interested in attending barcamps, few download data from data.gov, and few read what the CTO is up to in Washington, DC. Rather, citizens want goods and services and information from their government. I suspect they don’t care much how that comes about.

So, I think that the Government 2.0 enthusiasts – the goverati – are doing just what they should be doing: trying to wrap their heads around a rapidly changing, very complicated field of study. If a little jargon gets in the way, so what? No one ever said they wouldn’t see a movie on a date because they didn’t understand what a Key Grip does.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous