Phillip Windley, the CIO of the State of Utah, has An Open Offer to Utah State IT Employees. He writes:
“I believe that the 900 or so IT employees of the State of Utah would benefit from speaking and listening to each other more. I think we need groups of specialists inside various departments to communicate with others in their specialty and without. Consequently, I’d like to see more people writing blogs and communicating their ideas through an open forum like the one blogs engender. To that end, I’m willing to pay the licensing fee to Userland for the first 100 employees who start a blog.”
I love this 🙂
So did Dave Winer, who commented: Bravo! I actually think Dave would have endorsed the initiative almost just as much had it not been his own product being offered.
So, it is about government officials creating blogs, that is, what I call GovBlogs, as a way to get them to communicate more. This makes perfect sense to me, but I am not sure it does make sense to everyone else, especially more senior officials and old-fashioned red tape lovers, of which there are plenty in all governments I have ever encountered.
GovBlogs will eventually change government communications, just as “ordinary” (all) blogs has started to change (communications in) society at large. In fact, it is not “just” communications that changes, hence the brackets. Learning, knowledge, practices, everything changes …
My strategy has hitherto been to combine blogging initatives with other initiatives, such as holding a workshop about communities of practice.
I wonder if Windley’s idea would work in Denmark? I am not sure how many IT employees we have in the state, but I guess it’s about the same as in Utah. Sadly, I don’t have the funds to cough up with fees for 100 Radio licences, but I will hereby offer all Danish state employees a free, hosted blog. No strings attached. Just email me and ask nicely.
