You might recall that a little while ago, the expression "web 2.0" was all the rage. Many experts, however, were critical of the phrase from its beginnings because, they claimed, it merely referred to "newness" and lacked any real substance.
Such fashionable words and phrases are called "buzzwords" -- terms that masquerade as technical jargon but have no clear accepted definitions, gaining widespread use and heard here and there not unlike the annoying buzz of bees.
There's something to be said for buzzwords, however, since they are uttered repeatedly and widely for a reason. So why is it that some phrases with "2.0" in them gain widespread use?
Let us take a look at "Government 2.0" or "Gov 2.0," which has been the focus of much attention in the U.S. recently. First of all, this phrase escapes technological definition. This is because Gov. 2.0 refers not to changing technology but to the changing system of governance, that is, changing institutional issues.
Gov 2.0 is such a big movement now in the U.S., enough that related exhibits and events have been held across the nation, but in Japan -- a country that is easily affected by whatever happens in the U.S. -- there has been little talk of it. This is precisely because while the innovation that's being referred to here may, at first glance, seem a new technology, it actually refers to a form of institutional reform. And for that matter, Gov. 2.0 is the type of institutional reform that Japan is not very good at.
Traditionally, governments have taken on the role of being a self-contained provider of administrative services. This is what we'd call Gov. 1.0. In contrast, under Gov. 2.0, the governments for the most part are providers of information, leaving various organizations and individuals in the private sector to form networks and give and receive complementary services.
Let's take, for example, the website USAspending.gov. The site offers data on federal government spending. Using the available data, it is relatively easy to create software programs that translate the national budget into graphs, or automatically alert users via e-mail when there is a surge in certain types of spending.
Such programs are then made public, and can be used by anyone. To prevent any misunderstanding, let me mention here that the main purpose of releasing such information is not to create more transparency in government. Let me give you another example. "Apps for Democracy," a website run by the district government of Washington D.C., held a competition, in which they called on the public to create and submit useful software programs that use the 454 types of raw data published by the city. In 2008, the contest's inaugural year, 47 applications were submitted in a period of 30 days. While the competition cost the city $50,000 in prize money and other overhead costs, the result was software worth $2.3 million, including a smartphone application that indicates the safety level (crime rate) of one's location.
In a nutshell, a multitude of software services that would have taken large sums of taxpayer money had the government tried to provide them were made a reality for a lot less money and in a much shorter period of time.
"Governance" has emerged recently as a buzzword in the business community, but many in Japan seem to misunderstand it to mean the sovereignty of shareholders or leadership. But those are just several aspects of "governance." Governance is the process or rules of making decisions about who possesses and maintains information, and to whom it will permit the use of information. Changing the governance of administrative information and not being the sole provider of public services is the essence of Gov. 2.0.
Faced with the increasing complexity and expansion of information in society today, even the U.S. government lacks the power to provide all public services single-handedly. Meanwhile, by depending on its citizens, a wide range of services can be realized in a short amount of time through online collaboration. Needless to say, such collaboration is now made possible by the major transformations that have recently taken place in our information and communications landscape. Still, deciding whether or not to release raw data to the public is a prime example of governance.
In its early years, the Internet was a one-way tool through which corporations and other parties possessing websites distributed information. Since then, the Internet has evolved into a forum where users are also sources of information, through the postings of criticism and comments on websites and blogs. It has truly become a two-way media now. Governance innovation regarding contents is precisely what web 2.0 was all about.
We are entering the era of ubiquitous computing, a paradigm based on the infrastructure of installing many computer nodes throughout our environment in order to gain highly accurate information about the real world, and using that information to provide even more effective customized services.
I suppose one can explain the essence of the buzzword "ubiquitous computing" as governance innovation of information on the status of the real world environment.
It is relatively straightforward to develop a closed application such as a system that automatically informs us where and how many items are located in someone's warehouse used by a limited number of organizations. But when it comes to an open environment where different parties with different business interest intertwine, things start to get complicated. For example, public property administration laws and traffic laws come into play, and issues of regulation and tort cases must be ironed out.
To many readers, it may seem very easy to electronically tag all roads, traffic lights and privately-owned buildings in an open urban environment, and delegate the tasks of public property management, supporting those with disabilities, and providing tour guides for visitors among national government, local municipalities, and the private sector. Wrong. It's actually much more easily said than done.
Why is it that buzzwords always seem to originate in the U.S.? Is Japan capable of bringing about governance innovation on its own? If Japan cannot use its claim to having the world's leading technology to serve its much needed social changes, isn't that like sitting on a gold mine? These questions, I believe, are what "2.0" is trying to ask us all. (By Ken Sakamura, professor of Applied Computer Science at the University of Tokyo)
(Mainichi Japan) January 22, 2011
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