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Is Web 2.0 the end of government-to-citizen email communication?  Not likely, but effective public email communication is the foundation of taking better advantage of Web 2.0.

I have been really pleased over the past year at how much government has embraced Web 2.0 as a way of improving service to the citizen, but I sometimes wonder if my enthusiasm for Web 2.0 is cluttering up our message as a company that effective email communication remains a fundamental / foundational step for any government city/county/agency that values communication with stakeholders.

Prior to our more vocal embrace of Web 2.0, we had the opposite problem.  Our clients were asking us whether GovDelivery is going to "get into Web 2.0."  The sense was that government-to-citizen email communication, where we are the world leaders, is very Web 1.0. 

So, we're trying to strike middle ground.  I'm completely bias, but what we are trying to communicate and support is that while the potential for Web 2.0 to help government improve service and lower cost is exciting, we are 99% certain that email will continue to play an important role in government-to-citizen communication well into the future. 

Consider this evidence:

• By most measures, email is one of the most effective communication channels in history:
  -Over 85% of citizen online time in the U.S. is spent using email (Jupiter).
  -Virtually all adults that are online use email; email is the number 1 use of the Internet.
  -Even people under 25 say that they would rather get official communication via email; you don't want to get your financial aid application in your Facebook inbox.
  
  
• Email is asynchronous which is why even my gmail chat, facebook updates, and twitter feeds rely on my email account to keep me connected.  Email never sleeps.
  
  
• Email use has actually increased since RSS has become more readily available. 
  -Why?  Because we all have hundreds of different types of communication we want from government/marketers/media/friends/etc.   I don't want notices of changes to my local park hours via RSS feed, I want them by email when they occur (which is not very often)
  -RSS feeds are useful for a very limited number of news sources.  I use RSS to follow a handful of blogs and other updates, and I am a heavy RSS user by most measures.  One study recently suggested that 8% of Internet users use RSS regularly vs. 98% that use email.  RSS feeds make Web browsing more efficient and are great for creating content mashups, widgets, etc.  They are poor for proactive communication.
  

What does GovDelivery mean when we say that we embrace Web 2.0?

1. We believe in open systems.  For example, a government agency using our service can trigger an email alert by updating an RSS feed on the agency's website or on the agency's YouTube account or blog.  In this way, our clients can offer highly-specific updates from across their hosted and external Web enterprise.  RSS feeds are machine readable so we rely on the openness of others to make interfacing with our system easy (side note: any feed that validates at www.feedvalidator.org works to trigger messages in GovDelivery).
   
   
2. We have created a revolutionary level of collaboration between our clients which helps breakdown silos between government agencies.  You can read more about this in our recent announcement.
   
   
3. We have launched a new Discuss this Email blogging capability which leverages an off-the-shelf blogging capability to give our government clients a blog that is easier to manage and actually gets readers.
   
   
4. We are using the vast amounts of content flowing through our systems (80 million messages in September; on track for over 1 billion in 2009) to create new types of tag clouds that pull the most popular and interesting content forward.
   

There's more in progress and more to come, but these are a few good examples.

So, given email's prominence, I believe that it is not an interim solution for communication as much as it is one of the key building blocks to creating an audience for your content that you can further engage through a broad range of approaches made easier by Web 2.0.

Our press release today got me thinking... what we are doing for our clients is valuable, but it raises this question:  Are we continuing to make the important case for email communication while also embracing these new areas?  I welcome your feedback.

My company, GovDelivery, just completed a Webinar on Web. 2.0 in government where we had 150 attendees.  The quality of the questions was very exciting because it shows how much government Web managers are thinking about how best to use Web 2.0 to meet the needs of the public.

For anyone who attended the webinar or is interested in this topic, I want to point out some useful links:

1. Previous post on Web 2.0  which includes a useful glossary
   
2. Follow-up on Cloud Computing
3. Post on TSA Blog

Also, we have some upcoming webinars on on-demand emailing (cloud computing) and other topics as well as a recorded version of the Government Web 2.0 webinar you can request from us by going to the registration page.

My previous entry was on Web 2.0 in government.  I want to add some fresh links and expand the conversation to cloud computing which some people, in an effort to give the entire world a headache, refer to as "Web 3.0".

Before we talk about Web 2.0+, let me share this glossary of Web 2.0 terms.  I used to go mad trying to understand all of the Web 2.0 / Web 3.0 terms.  Blogs, Wikis, Folksonomies, Mashups, Tags, Tag Clouds, Widgets, Cloud Computing, SaaS, etc.  Like Web 2.0 itself, there is no one in charge of Web 2.0 and the terminology has taken on a life of its own.

While I initially thought Web 2.0 was just for kids (hence all of the annoying terms), I'm a convert now.  Facebook really makes my life better both personally and professionally.  Mashups allow our company to deliver more value than ever to the government, and SaaS companies serve our most critical CRM and Web conferencing needs.

Most importantly, I'm convinced that cloud computing is going to make technology more powerful and cost-effective for government in so many ways that we will look back on 2008 10 years from now and see it as the infancy of e-government.

To that end, I want to add another important link which is this story on cloud computing.

We have over 250 government agencies using our Software as a Service platform here at GovDelivery.  I don't consider use of our hosted, SaaS, platform by itself as cloud computing, but now that the service is becoming more open and allowing other applications to tap into it for limited functions, it really is "service in the cloud."  For us, this means allowing agencies to connect to our "On-Demand Mailer" whenever an agency needs additional mail sending scale for certain applications or needs to send a message to a stakeholder with assured delivery to the inbox, tracking, reporting, etc.

The article referenced above lists these benefits of cloud computing:

• Reduced Cost
• Increased Storage
• Highly Automated
• Flexibility
• Allows IT to Shift Focus  "No longer having to worry about constant server updates and other computing issues"

This list of benefits is literally the Holy Grail of government IT!

The article concludes with the typical security concerns that are always raised when government talks about doing something new.  Here is the good news, it's not all or nothing. 

For example, the On-Demand Mailer service we offer is currently built to handle emails you are already sending out over the public Internet. 

We are not offering the service to the CIA for sending highly-classified emails... that is not something that belongs in the Cloud. 

Still, there are many services that fit well into the Cloud now.  Web 2.0 and cloud computing raise all kinds of security concerns.  Luckily, from the looks of all the blogs, Wikis, mashups, etc. that we see on government sites despite the security concerns raised about Web 2.0 in government, government Web and e-government managers will find the appropriate areas where they can leverage cloud computing without taking unnecessary security risks.

Everyone is talking about and writing about government 2.0 recently.

There was a great write up in FCW with a panel interview that included Bev Godwin from USA.gov and others.

There was another post on Mashable.com that provided an "Insider's Perspective" on government 2.0.

My company, GovDelivery, has made a big push into Web 2.0 in the past year.   We've found a lot of enthusiasm from our clients in a few key areas.

1. Collaboration: Using the Web 2.0 concept of "mashups" to present the citizen with "one stop shopping" for government information.  Another Web 2.0 concept, Software as a Service, SaaS, makes mashups a lot easier.
   
   Example: Use the Get Email Updates link on this DHS page and watch how you are walked through a subscription process that brings together many agencies including some outside DHS. [This is my only example that is "powered by" GovDelivery)
   
   
2. Distribution: Enabling websites, RSS feeds, and email alerts with forwarding and posting capabilities that allow citizens to repost publications and announcements to social networks, tagging sites, blogs, etc.
   
   Examples: Visit www.state.gov and look in the upper right for a simple widget that allows you to repost content or tag it using social networking sites.  Another great example is the FBI Widget Tool.
   
   
3. Aggregation: Bringing together content by using tag clouds and other tagging approaches
   
   Examples:  See right side of NASA homepage; CDC has also experimented with tag clouds.
   
   
4. Blogging: Posting content updates or more colorful blog-style entries and allowing citizens to comment. 
   
   Examples: Local government excels here with more blogs than I could possibly list for Mayor's and elected officials (take a look here).  These officials are embracing Web 2.0 in campaigns and they bring the same concepts into office.  One interesting blog is the DC Summer Intern Blog.
   
   In federal government, for all the discussion and fear around blogging, there are some truly terrific examples (and no disasters that I know of).  DoD sets the standard, but TSA, GovGab, and the Secretary of Transportation are also running exceptional blogs.

In short, for all the discussion about risks, government 2.0 (aka, government's embrace of Web 2.0) is already here.  In many cases, government is further along than private industry in embracing Web 2.0

Sure, some agencies are further along than others, but the progress and momentum is amazing.  Remember, these concepts are all relatively new. 

Additional resources:

• If you're interested in blogging, you must read "Naked Conversations"
  
• The Federal Consulting Group recently hosted a Webinar on Government 2.0 where I participated along with FEMA.  Register for a recorded version of this here
  
• Janice Nall from the CDC discusses their strategy here

If you're interested in this topic, we have another upcoming Webinar on Government 2.0.   

Our webinars are focused on how governments can use our platform to take advantage of some of these concepts, but we've received good feedback that we don't lay the sales pitch on too hard, and anyone is welcome to attend.

Back in June, I posted to this blog in response to a paper out of Princeton that proposed that content structure ought to be the number one priority for governments going online.  The premise is that if content is structured well, then private sector players can re-purpose the content.  The paper states that private parties will do a better job of organizing and distributing content than government.  I feel that the paper undervalues the role played by government Web managers.

FCW has just posted a slightly updated version of my commentary.

There are some other interesting posts related to this topic including one from a terrific anonymous blogger at ".GovWatch."

I met with Darren Ash, the CIO of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, today as well as Jeffrey Main who is driving much of the effort to improve the NRC's website over the coming months and years. 

We were talking about all of the great things made possible by Web 2.0: Information sharing, collaboration, improved integration of systems, etc., but CIO Ash made the point that whatever NRC puts in place needs to anticipate "whatever comes next." 

In one of the best displays I've seen of a CIO vision aligning with his team, Jeffrey chimed in and said that their plan is to modularize the key services they offer.  They want best-in-class content management, Web metrics, customer surveys, and-- if we have made the case effectively for GovDelivery-- Email & Digital Subscription Management.  Jeffrey was very clear that modularization for them means two things:

1) NRC wants systems to talk with each other particularly on the reporting front so they can track results easily across their entire suite of Web tools / systems
2) NRC will use different systems (including hosted, Software as a Service platforms) provided they are best-in-class and work nicely together.  If a particular module underperforms or is no longer necessary in the future, they will swap it out for something new because they own the data and content and can move to a new platform at anytime.

I find this approach very compelling for the following reasons:
-Encourages NRC to think about scalable strategies for ensuring systems work together
-Leaves the door open for using more modern, innovative, and cost-effective SaaS solutions that government sometimes avoids to its detriment
-Keeps the service providers honest and focused on continuous improvement and results
-Avoids NRC getting too embedded with a single service provider

I believe we will be hearing more about this type of approach and that modularization will become the goal of many Web teams.