Federal CIOs and Governments That Listen

Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio has put together a list of his personal top 10 Gov 2.0 advances for 2011.

This is Di Maio's third annual list and, for people who spend most of their time focused on U.S. government information technology and social media, it's a great primer on what's happening elsewhere in the world and where U.S. advances fit in a global context.

Two insights struck us especially.

1. The enormous difference in challenges facing the current U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel and his predecessor Vivek Kundra -- despite the fact that the two men tout roughly the same goal sheet.

Everything about Kundra was big and new: a new post in the federal government [before Kundra, the post was known as e-government administrator and received significantly less attention]; a new, tech-savvy president and a list of 25 big, bold and new ideas. VanRoekel's job is to put Kundra's sometimes outsized ambitions into practice and to show some tangible progress at making government more efficient through IT as his boss gears up for a tough re-election battle.

2. New Zealand's government social media policy includes a crucial stage omitted by most other governments: listening.

Lurking gets a bad name, but a few weeks or even months learning what others are saying about you on Facebook and Twitter and checking out how your private sector counterparts are using the media can pay dividends. That's not to say you can't learn and Tweet at the same time. But government agencies are big and the micro-communities on social media can be very small: An agency's participation is likely to change the content, if not the form, of the discussion.