Where is the collaboration?

So, after all the readings we've done for PPA730 and general interaction with government practices in social media, I believe something is still missing. For me, it is collaboration.

Whether it is horizontal collaboration -that the government actually does something to promote citizents to collaborate among themselves- or vertical collaboration -that citizens work with the government to do something.

Citizens collaborate amongs themselves using social media all the time and for several reasons, that is for sure. But the collaboration was, in most cases, not kindled by the government, but by the citizens themselves. Collaboration, I believe, should be better achieved between the local government and the citizens and it seems that counties like Roanoke are the exception, not yet the rule. Not all the agencies are as creative as the Census2010, that reached out for traditionally hard to count groups via social media.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for government 2.0 as long as it provides additional points of contact between government and citizens -which indeed does. I think web2.0 uses for transparency and general information management have been impressive, especially during disaster management or in highly dynamic agencies.

If government2.0 is to actually change the way governments function beyond the added transparency and media exposure, we, as citizens or public managers, need to use it not more, but better so that it is more than a virtual complaint and suggestion box that sometines gets looked into, and sometimes does not.