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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

Fortune Brainstorm Tech

Empowering people through Web 3.0 + Gen Y + m-governance

As the Fortune Brainstorm Tech near Silicon Valley was getting going last week, I contributed a blog entry on ‘Governance-on-the-Go’, or ‘GonGo’, emphasizing the need to move away from static  'e-government' towards the highly mobile citizen becoming center stage in the next phase of IT interface with governance.  The blog entry and the contributions I made during the BrainstormTech drew some discussion during the event and in the blogosphere, yet of particular relevance for me was what the rich gamut of contributions by others.  See for instance here, here, here, here, and here.

‘Governance-on-the-Go’, or GonGo: the citizen at the center of an IT-enabled governance breakthrough?

I am now at the Fortune BrainstormTech, which aims to relate innovations in technology to larger world problems it can solve. The event just started, featuring fascinating evening panels with tech leaders (here). One of the sessions I will co-lead tomorrow, with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, is on governance. In this forthcoming interactive lab we will try to advance the discussion on the interface between ICT, governance and government. One contribution I will try to make is to distinguish between e-government and m-governance, and to ask for ideas on how m-governance can be taken to the next stage. 

For many years already, the IT revolution has brought about innovation supporting the modernization of the public sector, in industrialized and developing countries. The major advances took place into what’s called e-government, namely electronic government, or the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by government agencies in the provision of public services and in interacting with their constituencies.