Dr. Mark Drapeau writes a wonderful series of posts on Government 2.0 ("from an insider's perspective") at Mashable.com. Dr. Drapeau is the 2006-2008 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security policy of the National Defense University in Washington. He also has his own fun blog and tweets at Twitter under the name "Cheeky_Geeky". How cute is that? Here is an excerpt from his Mashable Government 2.0 blog post about his attendance at "Government 2.0 and Beyond...Harnessing Collective Intelligence," a conference hosted by the Department of Defense’s Information Resources Management College:

It had all the makings of a public relations boon: High-profile speakers like David Weinberger...corporate sponsorship, media coverage, and a new auditorium to show off. Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock, was even there. But what I didn’t see among the people in the room was urgency. Much lip service was given to welcoming new technologies, openness, information sharing, transparency, and collaboration. But there was no talk of a strategy, a plan, or a roadmap. Frankly, there was no talk of anything concrete in the way of actual progress towards Government 2.0, as the title of the event would lead one to believe. And while I am certain that DOD Deputy CIO David Wennergren was genuine when he spoke about the future of command and control being a more agile system of “focus and converge,” I am also certain that people in my workplace have Dell laptops so old they have time for a power nap during boot up. ...As the event was winding down, I heard a line not unfamiliar to me at this point, about everyone in the room being an “agent of change” that had to help. I became a bit frustrated with this and Tweeted the following: "I am growing very tired of rooms full of 'agents of change' - Let's CHANGE. I want DOD [Dept. of Defense] MySpace access TODAY. Let's GO. Stop talking. DO IT".

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