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“The administration gets blogging”7. July 2008 – 10:09 by Renate Mitterhuber |
That was the title of a workshop at a major Germany-wide conference in Leipzig with almost 1000 participants from public administrations. Topics during the two-day conference centred on the theme of eGovernment. Among the subjects discussed were trends and strategies of eGovernment in the future, acceptance (or otherwise) by users, and ways of improving the current situation in Germany.
I have been involved in the Hamburg administration for the past seven years with the issues of eGovernment and eParticipation and since October 2005 have been in charge of the department responsible for the strategic long-term establishment of these topics in the Hamburg administration as a whole. So it was with happy anticipation that I made my way – slightly late – to the upstairs room in the spanking new futuristic building on the outskirts of Leipzig to improve my blogging skills.
The first surprise was that there were only five members of public administrations sitting in front of their PCs and busily practising constructing blogs and using administrative tools to put them into practical use. Two participants were from the same organisation, and one had to leave early because his boss called him away. That left just four administrations at this conference that had expressed any interest in using this no longer terribly new method of interaction. Read the rest of this entry »
