Wikipedia - Government

Recently one of my tasks at work, was to write a proposal about Wiki enabled systems in an enterprise. This was actually quite interesting, as a system based on the principles of open-source not often gets along with enterprise requirements.

Referring to WikiPedia - the online encyclopedia - a huuuge success. People are getting more and more familiar with this new technology and the fact of not having any trade limitations of proprietary software - Intellectual property or any other kind of rubbish - and the removal of social limitations of a hierarchy is in a bundled form - building one large internet community.

People are treated the same way - doctors / science professors, teachers, taxi drivers and/or kids can contribute to a fast growing system and instead of having only a definition of one instance, you get a more widely spread (accepted may be the better word) explanation of things.

Real life:
I do like elections - It is always the time when politicans run around in the city and offering everything to the people. This enthusiasm - this positive thinking - 'we can reach whatever we want - because we have the best politicans sitting in our government'.
Come on ... what a rubbish ... The government is driven by certain key people, making decisions based on their own understanding - and in the hope to improve something (or at least to get a good publicity for the votes!!) - in the end, it is only an act of self-enriching.

Don't get me wrong - I am aware that government / laws & politics have a reason and are therefore necessary, but there is almost no influence from the public.
Instead of having the 'I know - you do' approach, I think it is important to know what the people are thinking. Such wiki systems (blogs / rss feeds ...) are a start of a new era (for all geeks out there: you might refer to it as WEB2.0 - which is in my eyes another useless abbreviation) - people offering their knowledge to the outside world. The common thought becomes more visible and I think especially the government could profit from that methodology.

On the contrary, I spoke to my girlfriend about all that and she also agreed that it is a good approach. Nevertheless she made a critical comment about that whole new education: "You have the freedom of speech - just not freedom after speech!" ... She was cross-referencing to asian countries, limiting their people in the usage of new media, like internet and further on also the blog-sphere. Limiting google's search power to block certain pages ... people getting locked up in jail for using their freedom of speech ...

"Rules & processes have been there for ages and they have to be correct & true - otherwise my parents / grandparents wouldn't have established them. Follow these rules and never enter the evil path of trying something new!"

I asked some of my team members to tell me how they think about wiki / government & freedom of speech ... Believe me ... there are huge cultural gaps!

Nevertheless I was pretty surprised about an article I recently stumbled across, explaining the scholarship scheme of my new home country/town Singapore. I was fascinated, that the Singapore government is actually sponsoring local students to go to abroad universities like Harvard / Yale etc. To do so, they agree that once they've finished studying, they will work for the government for a certain amount of time. Having the best people working for the government! That is pretty smart. (*evil_eyes* ... compared to the snoring, air-wasting and f***ing time consuming bureaucrats I am used to from back home!!!!)

Anyway ... I held a presentation of one wiki enabled tools last week, called Confluence (the software is pretty neat and tailored for geeks to play around!!) and from my feeling it went pretty well. Wiki - Here we go ;) ...