Andrew Kurjata wrote an article titled "I've Seen A Lot About "Government 2.0", Now I Want to Know About "Citizen 2.0". This is my response, and an offer to start an Affrero GPL project that could be the first step to implementing it. The basics could work for most representative democracies, and of course AGPLing the code would ensure it remains open to 'Citizen 2.0' inspection.

Remember when, back in late February, the Cabinet Office released their “Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan”? Myself and many other FOSS commentators were obviously heartily encouraged and have talked about it and examined the policy in some detail.

When it comes to government IT in 2013, GitHub may have surpassed Twitter and Facebook as the most interesting social network. “We’re reaching a tipping point where we’re seeing more collaboration not only within government agencies, but also between different agencies, and between the government and the public.”

Before he's even sworn in, Barack Obama enters office with the tag, "open source president," thanks to a CNN commentator. Can he bring more citizen involvement to government? His transition team already is laying the groundwork, and other projects are trying to do the same

Recently Glyn Moody and Richard Steel, who is both the president of SocITM (the Society of local government IT Managers) and CIO of the London Borough of Newham, had a minor spat across their respective blogs at ComputerWorld, provoked by Steel's response to to the UK government's newly announced policy for the adoption and promotion of open source - Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Gover

Open source is answering the call at government agencies on all levels as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Why?

The UK Open Government Licence is a key element of the Government's commitment to greater transparency. It provides a single set of terms and conditions for anyone wishing to use or license government information and removes some of the existing barriers to re-use.

17 September 2007 - All government agencies must change to open source software, the national government says in an action plan presented today. Amsterdam is already testing such software and will decide on whether to renew its Microsoft contract in December.

This is the full text of the essay I wrote for the O'Reilly Open Government book, in which I discuss what open file formats and other digital standards really mean for us, why they are often even more important than Free Software and why Government must lead the way when it comes to their adoption.