Moving Toward Citizen Engagement in a Virtual Age

The May 2008 issue of State Legislatures magazine (published by NCSL) has an article on blogging by legislators (our own Kristen Amundson is a featured contributor). The article is available online at http://www.ncsl.org/magazine/articles/2008/08slMay08_Blogging.htm. It discusses why legislators should consider blogging along with advice on getting started and dealing with challenges. There is also a useful sidebar with tips for blogging. Much of the content will be familiar to those who attended the Algiers workshop.

A key source for the article is a report from IBM's Center for the Business of Government titled The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0, authored by David Wyld. It also is available online, at http://www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/WyldReportBlog.pdf. I have not read it in its entirety yet, but it is a more in-depth look at the use of blogging in the public sector as well as blogging as a social phenomenon. It also contains a glossary of terminology from blogging and Web 2.0 along with an extensive list of references.

This quote from the first paragraph of the introduction, under the heading "Moving Toward Citizen Engagement in a Virtual Age", sets the stage:

Today, unlike at any time in the advance of history, people simply no longer need to leave their houses to participate in a revolution.