The Government 2.0 utilization model and implementation scenarios

Abstract

Although it seems that Government 2.0 will finally deliver the promise of a truly transparent government, many practitioners around the globe (particularly those in the developing world) are reluctant or unable to develop strategies and allocate resources to Government 2.0. As a result, governments around the world ignore or mishandle the opportunities and threats presented by Government 2.0. The primary reason underlying this behavior is the lack of understanding regarding Government 2.0. The purpose of the study is to address this gap in knowledge and understanding by presenting and illustrating fundamental concepts of Government 2.0. A web survey of 200 government websites from 40 countries (20 each from advanced and developing countries) and 45 Web 2.0 initiatives across the globe was used to present and illustrate fundamental concepts of Government 2.0. We suggested a three stage Government 2.0 Utilization Model (GUM) starting from information socialization (stage 1), and then moving on to mass collaboration (stage 2), and social transaction (stage 3). Based on the web survey, we also suggested three Government 2.0 implementation scenarios (i.e., standalone, nested, and hybrid implementation). The study will help researchers and practitioners in understanding the Government 2.0 phenomenon and the opportunities presented by it.

Keywords

e-government government 2.0 Web 2.0 social media

Government 2.0 can be implemented in several ways depending on resource availability.

Introduction

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have fundamentally changed the way governments function. ICTs are the key driver of government modernization and serve as mediating technologies/systems/ to support interaction between governments and citizens and other governmental agencies and businesses. The primarily purpose of using mediating technologies in the public sector governance is to bring greater transparency (e.g., letting citizens know what their government is doing with their taxes), increase citizen participation in public policy making, increase collaboration within the public sector and with businesses, and with the ordinary citizens (Patrice, 2010), and to make the public sector more efficient and transparent (Bertot et al., 2010; Hackney et al., 2007).

One such mediating technology/phenomenon recently receiving much attention is social media (Eggers, 2005; Bertot et al., 2010; Brainard and McNutt, 2010; Chun et al., 2010; Mergel, 2010; Luna-Reyes and Chun, 2012), and government driven by social media is called Government 2.0 (Eggers, 2005). In contrast to its predecessor (e-government or government 1.0), which focuses on information delivery, Government 2.0 is an idea that calls on harnessing the power of Web 2.0 concepts and social media tools/technologies to implement a true open, transparent, and participative government (Bertot et al., 2010; Bertot et al., 2012; Luna-Reyes and Chun, 2012). It is believed that social media and Web 2.0 tools can promote open governance at various levels, including government-to-government (G2G), government-to-citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), and government-to-employee (G2E) relationships (Khan et al., 2012b; Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012).

Although it is believed that Government 2.0 will finally fulfill the promise of truly transparent government (Chun et al., 2010), many practitioners (particularly in the developing countries) are reluctant or unable to develop strategies and allocate resources to Government 2.0. As a result, governments around the world ignore or mishandle the opportunities and threats presented by Government 2.0 (Luna-Reyes and Chun, 2012). While today many governments have widely embraced e-government initiatives (United Nations, 2010; 2012), and a desire for a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government is apparent (Executive Office of the President, 2009; Government 2.0 Taskforce, 2010), there seems to be a lack of understanding regarding Government 2.0. One reason for this is that the current literature does not provide a coherent framework to explain Government 2.0. One exception is the recent study by Lee and Kwak (2012), who suggested an open government maturity model (Lee and Kwak, 2012). The model they proposed is promising, but is developed on a single case study (the USA) and mostly focuses on open data capabilities from the government agency perspective.

Thus, a study is needed that provide a more holistic view of social media-based government from the citizen’s perspective, taking into account several Government 2.0 initiatives and cases. To help address this gap in knowledge and understanding, this article will present and illustrate fundamental concepts of Government 2.0. To do this, this article utilizes a web survey of 200 government websites from 40 countries (20 each for advanced and developing countries) (Chua et al., 2012) and 45 Web 2.0 initiatives from around the world. We suggest a three stage Government 2.0 Utilization Model (GUM) starting from information socialization (stage 1), and then moving on to mass collaboration (stage 2), and social transaction (stage 3). Based on the web survey, we also suggest three Government 2.0 implementation scenarios (i.e. standalone, nested, and hybrid implementation) and the relationship that Government 2.0 may hold with the citizens. This study will help researchers and practitioners in understanding the Government 2.0 phenomenon and the opportunities presented by it.

The rest of the article is organized as follows. In the next section is an overview of the social media (the phenomena, technologies, and systems at the core of ICT-based government); followed by some discussion on e-government and Government 2.0. Next, the methodology employed in this research is discussed, followed by the main findings. Finally, the article concludes with Government 2.0 as global agenda and some closing remarks.

What is social media?

According to Kaplan and Michael (2010: 61) social media is “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Social media consists of a variety of tools and technologies that includes collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia and wiki-spaces), blogs (e.g., WordPress) and microblogs (e.g., Twitter), content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook and Cyworld), folksonomies or tagging (e.g., delicious), virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual social worlds (e.g., Second Life), and all other Internet-based platforms that facilitate the creation and exchange of UGC. All these social media tools are built on Web 2.0 philosophy, but they differ according to the extent to which they focus on the relationships among social actors, users’ identities, conversations among social actors, content sharing, social presence (the ability to know if other users are accessible), reputation management, and the extent to which people can form groups (see Figure 1) (Kietzmann et al., 2011).¹ For example, a social network site is a type of social media that focuses mainly on social relationships among social actors, while YouTube is a type of social media that mainly focus on the sharing of contents (e.g., videos).

Figure 1.

Conceptual model of social media use in public sector.

To sum up, social media can be defined as follows:

Social media: an Internet-based technologies/tools/concept that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content while letting users establish (at least one of these) identity, conversations, connectivity (i.e., presence), relationships, reputation, groups, and share contents.

From e-government to Government 2.0

Electronic government or e-government–the use of ICTs in the governance process – is one of the most widely studied mediating technologies/systems/phenomena of the late 1900s (Jean and Juri, 2000; Layne and Lee, 2001; Silcock, 2001; Heeks and Bailur, 2007; Khan et al., 2011; Yildiz, 2007; Irani et al., 2007; Zheng et al., 2012; Isfandyari-Moghaddam, 2011; Khan et al., 2012a). Investment in e-government, also known as Government 1.0, seems to have enabled government to be more transparent, effective, and efficient, while accelerating socio-political and economic development. However, the e-government initiative was mostly (at least at its initial stages of development) based on static ICTs and Web 1.0 phenomena (see Figure 4), thus having limited opportunities for citizens to openly interact with their governments (Chun et al., 2010; Pina et al., 2009). For example, e-government can be instrumental in keeping citizens connected with the government, but not engaged.

For a promise of truly open, transparent, and participative government, researchers and practitioners are searching for a more participative inter-mediatory technology/system that provides more opportunities for the citizens/business to openly interact with government. Due to its inherited characteristics (openness, participation, and sharing) one such intermediary seems to be social media: an emerging medium for interaction between governments, government and citizens, and other governmental agencies and businesses (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012). Government that is driven by social media is called Government 2.0 (Eggers, 2005), collaborative government (McGuire, 2006; Chun et al., 2012), do-it-yourself government (Dunleavy and Margetts, 2010), government as a platform (O'Reilly, 2010), open government (Patrice, 2010), social government (Khan et al., 2012b), or we-government (Linders, 2012). Regardless of the competing labels, the basic idea of Government 2.0 calls on harnessing social media technologies/tools in the governing process (Dadashzadeh, 2010; Mergel, 2010). The Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce (2010) defines Government 2.0 as “Government 2.0 or the use of the new collaborative tools and approaches of Web 2.0 offers an unprecedented opportunity to achieve more open, accountable, responsive and efficient government.” (The definition is available here: http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/govresponse20report/index.html). Maio (2009: 2) defined Government 2.0 as “the use of information technology to socialize and commoditize government services, processes and data.” Maio (2009) further suggested that socialization of information can be achieved in three ways: 1) from government to citizen, through opening government data to the public for creating public value through aggregation; 2) from citizen to government, by incorporating user generated data/information that is relevant to the government processes; and 3) inside government, through using internal or consumer collaboration platforms for internal socialization of knowledge (Maio, 2009). Commoditization of government services is achieved through the use of consumer media (i.e. social media) to support internal and external government collaboration efforts (Maio, 2009). In this article, we define Government 2.0 as a governance culture of transparency, openness, and collaboration facilitated by social media. That is, leveraging social media in public sector requires a culture of transparency, openness, and collaboration, not just social tools.

How are e-government and Government 2.0 different?

The end goal of both e-government and Government 2.0 is to improve government service delivery and make governments more transparent and efficient; however, e-government and Government 2.0 can be slightly differentiated in three ways (see Table 1). First, from a technological point of view, e-government is fundamentally based on the static enterprise and domain specific technologies and Web 1.0 phenomenon, while Government 2.0 is based on the Web 2.0 concept and driven by consumer and commoditized technologies (Maio, 2009). Secondly, from a strategy point of view, e-government focuses on an inside-out approach: transforming and employing internal government resources (such as computerization of government systems and processes) to service citizens, business, and other government agencies; while Government 2.0 is based on an outside-in approach: harnessing external resourcing (e.g., social media, collaborative technologies and crowd sourcing) to service citizens, business, and other government agencies. The social media strategy (i.e., outside-in strategy) in the public sector can be further classified into push, pull, and networking strategies (Mergel, 2010). The push strategy is used to push contents (e.g., news and updates) to the citizens through social media platforms (e.g., through Facebook updates and Twitter Tweets), and pull strategies are used to funnel the social media users back to the government websites. The networking strategy is focused on two way communication and collaborative content sharing and knowledge creation through social media. Thirdly, in Government 2.0 settings, the end user is not merely a user of the e-government services, but also an active participant (Linders, 2012) by using a variety of Web 2.0 tools (this concept is discussed later in the Government 2.0 relationship section).

Table 1.

e-government and Government 2.0.

	e-government	Government 2.0
Technology	Static enterprise and domain specific technologies; Web 1.0 phenomenon;	Consumer and commoditized technologies; Web 2.0 and Social Media;
Strategy	Inside-Out	Outside-In
Service Focus	Citizens as Receivers	Citizens as Active Participants

Methodology

Web survey

A Web survey of 200 government website² from 40 countries (20 each from advanced and developing countries) was used to look for the extent of Web 2.0 utilization in their governmental institutes (see Table 2). A total of five government agency websites for each country were analyzed. The websites were from the common government agencies in each country, i.e., education, environment, finance, health, and justice. The list was originally compiled using a three step comprehensive methodology by Chua, Goh, and Ang (2012) for their study on Web 2.0 applications in the government sector: 1) identifying countries through the first World Economic Outlook Database 2009 (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/01/weodata/index.aspx) which lists a total of 180 developed and developing countries; 2) searching for the web sites of five common government agencies in each country through the Google, Yahoo! and MSN search engines; and 3) random selection of 40 countries (20 advanced and 20 developing) from the list of 45 eligible countries, with 5 government agency English-only websites for each country, yielding a total of 200 websites for the final analysis.

Table 2.

List of the countries selected for the analysis.

Developed Countries	E-government Development Index	Developing Countries	E-government Development Index
Australia	0.8390	Brunei	0.6250
Canada	0.8430	Estonia	0.7987
Denmark	0.8889	Fiji	0.4672
Finland	0.8505	India	0.3829
Singapore	0.8474	Jamaica	0.4552
Iceland	0.7835	Kazakhstan	0.6844
Ireland	0.7149	Latvia	0.6604
Japan	0.8019	Lithuania	0.7333
South Korea	0.9283	Mauritius	0.5066
Malta	0.7131	Montenegro	0.6218
New Zealand	0.8381	Pakistan	0.2823
Norway	0.8593	Papua New Guinea	0.2147
Singapore	0.8474	Philippines	0.5130
Slovakia	0.6292	Poland	0.6441
Slovenia	0.7492	Rwanda	0.3291
Sweden	0.8599	South Africa	0.4869
Switzerland	0.8134	Sri Lanka	0.4357
The UK	0.8960	Swaziland	0.3179
The USA	0.8687	Thailand	0.5093
The Netherlands	0.9125	Zimbabwe	0.3583

The 200 hundred websites were manually searched for the presence of the various Web 2.0 applications during September and October 2012. The prevalence of Web 2.0 applications can be categorized in a variety of ways: for example, with respect to their use (de Kool and van Wamelen, 2008; Kietzmann et al., 2011), domains of usage (Osimo), or based on information-related work: information acquisition, dissemination, organization and sharing (Chua, et al., 2012). We used the categorization suggested by Chua et al. (2012). Based on this categorization, Web 2.0 use in the public sector can be categorized into seven categories: 1) social networking services (e.g., Twitter and Facebook), 2) multimedia sharing services (e.g., YouTube), 3) discussion forums, 4) blogging, 5) wikis, 6) rich site summary, and 7) social tagging services. In order to establish the presence or absence of the Web 2.0 application in the selected websites the seven variables were coded either as “yes” or “no”.

Web 2.0 initiatives

In addition, a web survey of existing innovative social media initiatives in the public sector from around the world was used. Particularly, we used a list of exclusive Web 2.0 initiatives in the public sector compiled by Osimo (2008). However, the original list was updated by adding more recent initiatives and by eliminating the initiatives that were no longer active, accessible, or had moved to another Internet domain. The updated list, used in this study, consisting of 45 Web 2.0 initiatives from around the world is shown in Table 3. These initiatives could be classified mainly into six domains of government activity, namely, regulation, cross-agency collaboration, knowledge management, political participation and transparency, service provision, and law enforcement (Osimo, 2008). Each initiative was assessed based on a coding scheme covering four dimensions/variables: 1) citizens’ engagement; 2) mass collaboration; 3) social transaction; and 4) Web 2.0 complexity. The variables reflect the previous research on social media use in the public sector that was categorized as informational, collaborative, and limited transactional (Brainard and McNutt, 2010; Bonsón et al., 2012; Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012; Khan et al., 2012b).

Table 3.

Summary of the Government 2.0 Utilization Model.

Government 2.0 Stages	Main Focus	Citizens Engagement/ Web 2.0 Utilization	e-government Infrastructure/ Social Media Complexity
Information Socialization	- Political participation and transparency; - Public sector information; -Public relations and public service announcements; -Keeping citizens informed; -Keeping citizens engaged;	Low	Low
Mass Collaboration	-Establishing mass collaboration channels through social media; - Instrumental in crowd sourcing, regulation, law enforcement, and cross-agency collaboration; - Knowledge and human resource management;	Medium to High	Medium to High
Social Transaction	-Service provisioning through Web 2.0 and social media;	High	High

Citizens’ engagement refers to the extent to which citizens are engaged with governments through Web 2.0 initiatives. Mass collaboration measures the ability to establish or foster mass collaboration with the citizens. Social transactions assesses the extent to which the Web 2.0 applications were used to carry out online transactions with the citizens and Web 2.0 complexity assesses the technological complications of the social media or Web 2.0 initiatives. The variables were coded as: 1) low; 2) medium; and 3) high to access the four dimensions of the Web 2.0 initiatives in the public sector.

Finally, to establish a link between Web 2.0 utilization and existing e-government infrastructure, the Web 2.0 initiatives were framed against the 2012 United Nations e-government readiness index (United Nations, 2012) for the respective countries (see Table 2). The aim was to establish a link between the existing e-government accomplishment (e.g., in terms of e-government development index) and the Web 2.0 initiatives.

We used an inductive approach: the target websites and cases were observed and evaluated as explained above; and usage patterns and regularities were detected leading to the Government 2.0 conceptualization (Figure 1), the Government 2.0 utilization model (Figure 2), Government 2.0 implementation scenarios (Figure 3, 4, and 5), and the relationship Government 2.0 can hold with the citizens, as discussed in the next section.

Figure 2.

Government 2.0 Utilization Model.

Figure 3.

Standalone Government 2.0.

Figure 4.

Nested Government 2.0.

Figure 5.

Hybrid Government.

Results

General statistics

Of the 45 Web 2.0 initiatives, 20 (44 percent) were informational-collaborative—provided useful information while fostering mass collaboration, 11 (24 percent) were pure informational—only provided useful information, 8 (17.5 percent) were informational-collaborative-transactional—provided useful information and fostered mass collaboration while providing online transaction opportunities, 3 (6.6 percent) were informational-transactional—provided useful information and transaction opportunities, 1 (2.2 percent) was neither informational nor collaborative, nor transactional (e.g., the use of social media by secret service agencies), and 2 (4.4 percent) could not be classified. When measured from the information dimension (to what extent the Web 2.0 initiatives provided useful information), 39 (86.6 percent) were highly informational, 4 (8.8 percent) were medium informational, and 2 (4.4 percent) were of low informational nature (Mean = 2.7; Standard Deviation = 0.57). Similarly, from the collaboration dimension (to what extent the Web 2.0 initiatives foster mass collaboration), 26 (57.7 percent) were highly collaborative, 2 (4.4 percent) were medium collaborative, and 17 (37.7 percent) were low collaborative (Mean = 2.2; Standard Deviation = 0.97). From the transactional point of view (to what extent the Web 2.0 initiatives foster social transactions), 5 (11 percent) were highly transactional, 6 (13 percent) were medium transactional, 34 (75.5 percent) were not transactional (Mean = 1.4; Standard deviation = 0.69).

Furthermore, 17 (35.5 percent) of the 45 Web 2.0 initiatives were of high complexity, 14 (29.2 percent) were of medium complexity, and 12 (25 percent) were of low complexity. Most of the informational Web 2.0 initiatives were of low technological complexity and required limited existing backend e-government infrastructure, technical and managerial capabilities; collaborative Web 2.0 initiatives were of medium-to-high technological complexity, and transactional Web 2.0 initiatives were of high technological complexity andrequired well established existing backend e-government infrastructure, technical, and managerial capabilities.

All seven categories of Web 2.0 applications could be found in the public sector. However, some were more prevalent than others. The most popular Web 2.0 applications were RSS services, followed by multimedia sharing services, blogs, discussion forums, social tagging services, social networking services, and wikis.

Conceptualizing Government 2.0

Based on the inductive approach, social media use in public sector can be conceptualized as shown in Figure 1. In the middle of Figure 1 is the social media pipe or social media tools connecting producer and consumer (or prosumers, i.e., government agencies, citizens, and businesses) where the government services are co-produced and flow in both directions making government and citizen partners in the delivery of public services (Linders, 2012). Leveraging social media co-production of services occurs mainly in three ways: information socialization, mass collaboration, and social transaction, depending on the existence of e-government infrastructure, Web 2.0 complexity, and prosumers engagement, as shown on the left side of Figure 1. The figure also shows the extent to which Government 2.0 is implemented (in form of standalone, nested, and hybrid) and the type of relations it holds with the citizens. The implementation scenarios and relationships are explained later in detail.

Government 2.0 utilization model (GUM)

In order to fully understand the usage of social media tools/technologies in the governmental process, we need to understand the Government 2.0 Utilization Model (GUM) model shown in Figure 2. The model shows different stages/levels of Web 2.0/social media use in the public sector, depending on the existence of e-government infrastructure and Web 2.0 complexity, plotted on the X-axis and citizens’ engagement and Web 2.0 utilization intensity plotted on the Y-axis. E-government infrastructure is used here in a broad sense; for example, it may include physical infrastructure (such as computers, networks, and software), technical and managerial capabilities (e.g., technological skills and capabilities), and laws and policies concerning e-governance. Web 2.0 complexity (plotted on the X-axis) refers to the technological complications of social media use at different stages; for example, using social media tools at the initial stage is not as complex as it is in the transaction stage (stage 3). Web 2.0 utilization (on the Y-axis) refers to the extent to which Web 2.0 and social media tools (discussed earlier) are incorporated in governance. Similarly, citizens’ engagement refers to the extent to which citizens are engaged with the government; for example, citizens’ engagement at the initial stage is low, and high at the mass collaboration and transaction stages.

Overall, social media use in the public sector can be categorized in three stages:

information socialization

mass collaboration

social transaction

The GUM stages are explained (with examples) below in detail.

Stage 1: information socialization (“We talk”)

At the information socialization stage, the public sector employs Web 2.0 and social media tools mostly for informational and participatory purposes. Social media is used by the public sector as an informational and participatory channel to increase citizens’ awareness and enable them to monitor and participate in government activities (Osimo, 2008). In other words, government information is socialization (Maio, 2009). In essence, this stage is similar to the e-government initial stage of development (Layne and Lee, 2001). However, unlike the e-government initial stage and open government initial stage proposed by Lee and Kwak (2012), in the Government 2.0 initial stage, the communication is two-way and provides opportunities for citizens to openly interact with government and readily respond to the information provided.

The informational and participatory uses of social media were found to be as simple as merely incorporating social media tools in the existing government website (e.g., providing discussion opportunities, incorporating Facebook-like buttons and RSS feeds in the websites) and establishing dedicated social media pages (e.g., Facebook fan page or Twitter account) to delivery day-to-day information or news to the citizens. Or they were as complex as establishing advanced social media-based informational government portals for informational and participatory purposes (such as www.chicagocrime.org, http://openlylocal.com/ and http://www.farmsubsidy.org/).

The simple informational and participatory use of social media was prevalent in most of the countries under study and requires limited existing e-government infrastructure and financial resources (e.g., the government only relies on existing social media technologies/tools). This brings a huge advantage to the developing or least developed countries that lack resources, such as financial and technical, to establish an online presence and connect to citizens using social media tools.

However, developing advanced social media-based informational and participatory government portals (such as http://maplight.org/ and http://www.data.gov/about) requires expertise, financial resources, and existing e-government infrastructure (as it is only observed in advanced economies). The School Information Service (SIS) initiative by the Ministry of Education of Singapore (http://app.sis.moe.gov.sg/schinfo/index.asp) is a good example of an advanced social media-based government portal to keep citizens informed. It allows parents and students to keep track of the school situation nationwide by getting instant access to information such as basic school information, school location, contact details, and school achievements. Other examples include the US Department of Justice’s ‘justice blog’ (http://blogs.justice.gov/main/) related to judicial matters; the Danish Ministry of Education’s blogs where policy makers and students interact on a range of educational topics; and the UK government’s blog (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/) where citizens can keep tabs on the UK Parliament members related to their activities, debates, and written answers.

Socialization of information is used, for example, to put a human face on government; to provide easy channels to citizens for political participation and deliberation (Kim and Park, 2012; Aharony, 2012); for disseminating tutorial and training materials to citizens and government employees (Khan et al., 2010); or for use in natural disasters or disease crises. Particularly, the socialization of information is useful in situations where the immediate delivery of information or news is crucial, such as news and information about public safety and in crisis management situations (e.g., weather, traffic, diseases, and nature or man-made disasters) (Huang et al., 2010; Hughes and Palen, 2009). There are several examples of the public sector use of social media to disseminate news and information in crisis situations, for example, in the California wildfires in 2007, the New England ice storm in 2008, the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, and Twitter use by San Francisco’s 311 call center (Khan at al., 2012).

Stage 2: mass collaboration (We talk and collaborate)

Stage 2 of Government 2.0 is mostly focused on enabling mass social collaboration and crowd sourcing. At this stage, government and the citizens not only talk, but collaborate also. Social media and Web 2.0 are used to foster collaborations between the government and government and citizens and other governmental agencies and businesses at different levels. Particularly, mass social collaboration was found to be instrumental in crowd sourcing, regulation, law enforcement, and cross-agency collaborations (see Table 3). The mass collaboration stage goes beyond merely incorporating social media tools into government websites and requires harnessing dedicated tools, expertise, and existing e-government infrastructure (see Figure 1).

The collaborative use of social media is visible at different levels, such as, collaboration between government and citizens and cross agency collaboration. For example, the Peer-To-Patent (www.peertopatent.com) initiative by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a good example of mass government and citizen social collaboration in reinforcing regulations. Under this initiative, the patent examination process is opened to the public and citizens are invited to help in assessing the claims of pending patent applications; thus it improves the process for reviewing patents. Similarly, Korean government agencies have developed a number of smartphone apps to foster mass collaboration between the government and citizens in areas such as tourism (http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/HD/event/enu_20120925/enu.html) and law enforcement. For example, the Korean government’s smartphone app enables mass collaboration in reporting illegal car parking, waste disposal, energy misuse, and other inappropriate behaviour. Using these apps, the government provides services to citizens (G2C) (e.g., travel information) and at the same time citizens provide services to the government (C2G) (reporting illegal car parking) from any place, any time, and anywhere, making both parties co-producers (Linders, 2012). Another example of mass collaboration enabled by social media is the ‘WikiProject United States’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States), a collaborative project for sharing information and resources to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the United States.

Intellipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia) – a secret wiki-based platform of the United States intelligence community – is a good example of cross-agency collaboration to harmonize an intelligence community in its efforts in fighting terrorism or crime with limited effects from hierarchical filtering, information silos, and information bottlenecks (McConnell 2007; Osimo, 2008). Yet another example of social collaboration is the e-petition (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk) launched by the office of the Prime Minister in the United Kingdom, an online collaborative tool for launching a petition, viewing or signing petitions submitted by other people. Another good example of mass collaboration is ‘apps for democracy’ (http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/application-directory/), US government initiative to engage the public in developing new applications for democracy. The aim of these mass collaborative efforts is to foster citizen participation in policy making by crowd sourcing and expertise mining. For more examples, refer to Table 3.

Stage 3: social transaction (We talk, collaborate, and serve)

The social transaction stage takes Government 2.0 beyond information sharing and collaboration by enabling transactions to be carried out through social media channels. At this stage, using Web 2.0 platforms, governments and citizens talk, collaboration, and transect. Social media is used to provide online service to the citizens. The social transaction stage is mostly observed in advanced economies where e-government readiness is high, such as South Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the United States (United Nations, 2012). In the real sense, a true social transaction stage has yet to be realized. Social media integrated public services are still limited (e.g., using Facebook to provide tangible services to citizens such as renewing drivers, licences and paying parking tickets). However, governments around the world seem to be committed to slowly harnessing social media to deliver some services. For example, the UK government uses a Web 2.0-based website (www.gov.uk) to provide simple, one-stop access to government services online (e.g., services related to housing, tax, driving test, passport, births, deaths, marriages and care).

The Delaware state government, through its ‘social media hub’ (http://www.visitdelaware.com/socialmediahub/) provide a variety of tourism-related services (e.g., hotel information, weather updates, travel guides, event calendars, maps, attractions, videos, pictures, etc.) to citizens by integrating several Web 2.0 and social media tools, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Flicker, and Google maps into a single platform. ‘Fixmystreet’ is yet another example of using social media for service delivery (http://www.fixmystreet.com/), where citizens use an interactive portal to report a problems related to their locality (e.g., fly tipping, broken paving slabs, or street lighting) which are then forwarded to the council to fix the problem. A more ambitious use of social media and Web 2.0 for public service provisioning is the SMARTiP initiative (http://www.smart-ip.eu/), a joint initiative by five EU member states and including five cities, which aims to establish platforms for the co-production of citizen-centric services through user-generated content, social media and Web 2.0 applications. For example, the initiative will provide an effective tool to inform citizens of traffic conditions and reduce traffic jams, and engage citizens to monitor environmental services, including air quality, open spaces, and waste management. A summary of the three stages is presented in Table 3.

Government 2.0 implementation scenarios

There are several ways in which Government 2.0 can be realized. Based on the web survey, three main ways in which Government 2.0 is implemented were observed: Standalone Government 2.0, Nested Government 2.0, and Hybrid Government. Below is an explanation of each of the scenarios in detail.

Scenario 1: standalone government 2.0

In the standalone implementation scenarios, informational Government 2.0 (stage 1) can be implemented directly under traditional government settings (or paper based government) (see Figure 3). In other words, implementing it does not require a backend e-government infrastructure. This unlikely scenario reflects the countries around the world (such as Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Fiji) where e-government is not yet fully implemented (United Nations, 2012) and which can have the full benefits of social media in establishing online presence and initiating two-way communications with citizens. Governments with limited resources and access to the Internet can use social media channels (e.g., Facebook fan pages and Tweets) to disseminate/provide/link information, news, and events to the public. Implementing it may require limited resources, such as a couple of computers with Internet access and some skilled employees to manage the social media related communication. However, in this scenario, Government 2.0 cannot move beyond the simple informational stage, to manage public relations and public service announcements. To move beyond the informational stage, governments need e-government infrastructure and social media expertise to support mass collaboration (stage 2) and transactions (stage 3) carried out through social media. Still, governments in developing countries with limited e-government infrastructure may leverage social media to establish some sort of online presence and two way communications.

Scenario 2: nested government 2.0

Scenario 2 is the most likely scenario, where Government 2.0 is realized under the umbrella of e-government (Figure 4). Under this scenario, governments funnel existing e-government infrastructure and capabilities to leverage social media tools in day-to-day governance. This scenario was mostly observed in the developing and transitional economies such as, Estonia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, South Africa, and Thailand. In the case of developing countries, it is implemented partially—establishing the information socialization or mass collaboration stages—and in the case of transitional economies it is fully implemented by establishing the information socialization, mass collaboration, and transactional stages. Government 2.0 is partially implemented in the developing countries by merely incorporating social media technologies (such as RSS feeds and discussion features) into their existing e-government websites, or by establishing a visible social media presence through using dedicated Facebook and Twitter pages or accounts. Social media tools are used to disseminate government information and news, increase awareness, or increase political participation and deliberation through comments, feedbacks, and political blogs. In the full implementation scenario, governments go beyond mere social media presence and use social media tools for internal and external collaborations and service provisioning.

Scenario 3: hybrid government 2.0

Hybrid Government 2.0 is the ideal scenario to which all governments will eventually evolve and which some have already reached (Figure 5). Hybrid Government 2.0 incorporates social media technologies in the governance process by fully leveraging the backend e-government infrastructure and mobile technologies. This type of government is observed in advanced economies, such as South Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the United States who have already made significant achievements in e-government (United Nations, 2012) and mobile or m-Government. Hybrid Government 2.0, from a conceptual point of view, can be defined as a flavor (or subset) of ICT-based government that harnesses social media tools and technologies to establish open, transparent, and participative government (see Figure 5). Hybrid Government 2.0 uses a variety of advanced social media tools for informational and participatory purposes, collaboration purposes, and transactional purposes.

Relationships in Government 2.0

The main mandate of government is to provide services to citizens, business, and governments. In the e-government literature, this role of government is manifested in the form of G2C, G2B, and G2G (Silcock, 2001; Layne and Lee, 2001). However, in the age social media and Web 2.0, government relations with its citizens should be realized differently. Alongside G2C, G2B, and G2B relationships, Government 2.0 also holds citizens-to-government (C2G) relationships (Linders, 2012), with a different set of relationships with the citizens where the roles of government and citizens are interchangeable. Unlike e-government, in social media based governments, citizens are becoming active service providers to government and are not merely passive receivers of government services, thus making government and citizen partners in the delivery of public services (Linders, 2012). This kind of mutual production of services by governments and citizens is called citizen co-production (Linders, 2012), a co-production of public services on an unprecedented scale. However, the concept of co-production per se is not new; it has been historically present, for example, in the form of teacher's aides, school crossing guards, and auxiliary policemen, where the general public has helped in public service delivery {Levine, 1984 #43}. Mainly, two types of C2G relationships were observed during the web survey: informational and service relationships.

C2G informational relationship

In this relationship, the citizen serves as an information source for government. For example, in the stage 1 of Government 2.0, in G2C relations, governments provide informational services, relaying on the social media to reach out to the citizens in the form of tweets, Facebook fan pages, wikis, and blog postings. Using these social channels, citizens also provide information services to the governments whenever and wherever needed (e.g., feedback and expert opinion, reporting crimes and natural disasters using Web 2.0 tools).

C2G service relationship

Due to the power of Web 2.0, citizens may take the role of service provider and the government as a receiver (Linders, 2012). A classic example of the C2G relationship is the ‘MyBikeLane’ initiative (http://www.mybikelane.com/) – a Web 2.0 based site launched by a New York citizen – to report illegal car parking. A similar citizen-initiated system for reporting illegal car parking in disability parking spaces is ‘Caughtya’ (http://www.caughtya.org/). These kinds of citizen initiatives (or free services provided by citizens) help government in law enforcement through mass collaboration. Another example of a C2G service relationship is ‘Apps for America 2’ (http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/appsforamerica2/): a US government initiative where citizens are invited to developed apps for the government to support the Data.gov initiative (an Open Government Initiative for President Obama's administration). This makes citizens and government co-producers of public services provided through social media and gives birth to a new form of relationship, i.e., C2G.

Concluding remarks

This article attempted to foster an understanding of Government 2.0 by presenting a Government 2.0 utilization model, implementation scenarios, and the relationships that Government 2.0 holds with citizens (i.e., C2G). We categorized social media use in the public sector into three stages: information socialization, mass collaboration, and social transaction. We also discussed three main ways in which Government 2.0 can be implemented: standalone Government, nested Government, and hybrid government. However, it must be noted that the Government 2.0 is not an isolated phenomenon, rather a flavour (or subset) of ICT based-government (e.g., e-government and m-Government) that harness social media tool and technologies to establish open, transparent, and participative government. The three implementation scenarios presented reflect the flexible nature of Government 2.0 when it comes to its implementation: Government 2.0 can be implemented in several ways depending on resource availability (such as ICT infrastructure, and technical and managerial capabilities).

Overall, based on our observation and the results of previous studies (Brainard and McNutt, 2010; Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012), currently the Government 2.0 initiative is similar to the e-government development process (Andersen and Henriksen, 2006; Layne and Lee, 2001; Khan et al., 2011). It is in its initial stages of development, i.e., it is mostly informational (Brainard and McNutt, 2010; Bonsón et al., 2012) and collaborative (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012; Khan et al., 2012b), and only limitedly transactional in nature. It was observed that governments from around the world use social media tools and channels to disseminate information, foster mass collaboration, enforce laws, and execute regulations. Government 2.0 was found to be useful in increasing participation, transparency, and collaboration (Chun et al., 2010; Mergel, 2010). Particularly, the developing and least developed countries can leverage social media tools by establishing online presence and initiating two-way communications (stage 1) with the citizens with little or no cost.

Unlike the e-Ggovernment maturity model (Layne and Lee, 2001) and the open government maturity model suggested by Lee and Kwok (2012) that follow a stage-based progression, the stages of GUM are not mutually exclusive, nor do they follow a stage-based progression: all the stages can occur (or can be found) at the same time in any order. For example, in some advanced countries (such as South Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the United States) all three utilization stages can be observed at the same time, while in other countries (particularly in the developing ones) the informational or collaboration stages were dominant. Given that e-government infrastructure (e.g., physical infrastructure, technical and managerial capabilities) and social media tools are available, practitioners can choose to implement any stage of Government 2.0 regardless of the current or previous stages. However, as a natural process, Government 2.0 implementation may follow a stage-based progression starting from stage 1 and move on to a higher stage, due to the incremental maturity or development of e-government and social media diffusion and know-how (and skills) in the public sector. Also, the higher Government 2.0 stages are dependent on e-government, technical, and managerial capabilities. For example, the social transaction stage cannot be implemented without a sound back-end e-government infrastructure to support the transactions carried out with citizens through social media. Similarly, we observed that, unlike the e-government initial stage (Layne and Lee, 2001) and open government initial stage (Lee and Kwak, 2012), the Government 2.0 initial stage is two-way in nature and provides opportunities for the citizens to openly interact with government and readily respond to the information provided.

Considering the lack of Government 2.0 initiatives in the developing countries, nations around the world may, as in the case of e-government (Jaeger, 2003), need a global agenda to promote Government 2.0 at international levels. For example, the initial development of e-government (though the term “e-government” was not known at that time) was promoted by the G-7 Ministerial Conference on the Information Society held in Brussels on February 25-26, 1995, where commitments were made to develop specific projects to promote e-society that included online government-related projects. The e-government initiative or agenda was raised more formally in the follow-up G8 meetings in Japan (Okinawa, July 2000), Italy (Genoa, July 2001), and in the World Summits on the Information Society in Geneva (Switzerland) in 2003 and in Tunis (Tunisia) in 2005 (Utsumi, 2007). Another example of promoting the e-government agenda was during the “E-leaders Conference: The Future of e-Government-Agenda 2020” held in the Netherlands on March 2-7, 2008. These initiatives led to e-government development in many countries. A similar level of commitment is needed to promote a global Government 2.0 agenda. In fact, there are certain initiatives at national and international levels to promote Government 2.0, for example, the Government 2.0 Taskforce of Australian government and US President Barack Obama’s efforts to open government through the Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative (Harrison et al., 2011). These initiatives are either at national level or limited only to eligible nations. A global agenda and partnership is needed to promote Government 2.0 initiatives at a global level, both in developed and developing countries. In particular, developing countries lacking resources may largely benefit from implementing Government 2.0 initiatives, which are almost free of cost at the initial stages of implementations (e.g., social media tools are easy to use and are available free of charge, and can be employed to connect with citizens).

The study has some implications for policy and research. From the policy maker’s point of view, the finding of the study will be instrumental in understanding the Government 2.0 phenomenon and the opportunities it holds for the public sector. The Government 2.0 utilization model and the implementation scenarios presented in the study are an easy yet comprehensive way to understand social media–based government. We also discussed the C2G relationships that citizens can hold with Government 2.0. Building on this knowledge, policy makers may put together policies and procedures for using social media in the governance process in accordance with their existing capabilities and needs.

In this study, we focused on the use of, and opportunities related to Government 2.0; however, this does not mean that Government 2.0 does not hold risks and challenges (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). The risks and challenges associated with social media use in the public sector should be handled carefully (Chun et al., 2010). Future empirical studies are needed to access the risks and rewards of Government 2.0 systematically. For example, using the results of this study, researchers may assess the stage-based risks and rewards of Government 2.0, because the risks and rewards at the initial stage of Government 2.0 might be different from the risks and rewards in the transactional stage (i.e. stage 3). Similarly, the risks and rewards may vary in different implementation scenarios presented in this study. The study may also help researchers to identify the stage-based skills and capabilities needed to implement Government 2.0, particularly the Internet skill issues in the developing world (James, 2011; Mbatha et al., 2011). The skills and capabilities needed to implement informational Government 2.0 may be different from the skills needed to implement a collaborative and transactional Government 2.0. While the GUM model presented in this study is helpful in understanding Government 2.0 from the citizen’s perspective, and the open government model presented by Lee and Kwok (2012) dealt with the social media from the public sector’s perspective, future research is needed to investigate Government 2.0 from the private sector’s perspective.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

This research was partially supported by the research grant provided by Korea University of Technology and Education (KoreaTECH) for the year 2013. An early version of this paper was presented at the pre-ECIS (21st European Conference on Information Systems) workshop: E-Government 2.0: Case studies and experience reports June 4, Utrecht, Netherlands.

Notes

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