OpenSocialGov: A Web 2.0 Environment for Governmental E-Service Delivery

To achieve transformational government (T-Gov), the interaction between citizens and government should be explored under a new perspective enhancing citizens’ active participation. Web 2.0 paradigm could support many of the key features of such T-Gov interaction model. In this paper we explore the potential to utilize OpenSocial API to build OpenSocialGov, a set of libraries to construct Web 2.0 environments for the delivery of governmental eservices. In practice, OpenSocialGov enables citizens, businesses and public agencies to participate in a “governmental network”, similar to a social network, which facilitates them to establish different kinds of relationships between them, as in the real world, and collaborate to perform specific tasks, composed by simple e-services developed by public agencies or even third party entities. Basic OpenSocialGov features and implementation issues, as the extension of OpenSocial API to meet the requirements of the proposed T-Gov interaction model are also discussed.