Comments on: The limits of sovereignty

By: Jason Ryan

Jason Ryan — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:43:16 +0000

This means government has to follow the people to the new places...

Only where we can legitimately claim that it would be in their interest, not ours. And that legitimacy would need to be measured in terms of a wider channel and communications strategy, cost/benefit analysis and public value.

The last thing we need is government rushing in to Second Life, for example.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:39:54 +0000

My view is that government does not want sticky eyeballs (unlike the private sector) - it wants the right information at the right time in the right place. Think of it as “government where the people are” rather than forcing people to come to government. Think “distributed not centralised”. Therefore anyone who measures performance based on govt website pageviews going up, is failing. Information reuse should be the measure, no matter where it occurs.

If people socially congregate in places like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, then government should meet them there. This means government has to follow the people to the new places, and choose to move away from the old places … a more agile government.

Governments are interested in preservation, for maintaining “national identity”; we have yet to think of the implications of using offshore services for our day-to-day interactions … will we end up with a gap in our cultural history, as we use systems outside of our sovereignty?

By: Iris Lamprecht

Iris Lamprecht — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:27:15 +0000

Good points, which I enforce all the time. The basic principle is to use existing networks to leverage them. By publishing content on existing networks (always remember to tag content properly) you can reach a wider audience than just from your own website. And of course you should link to / from your own site.
Keep spreading this message!