The urban revolution that succeeded the Neolithic agricultural revolution has allowed us to build new city-based civilisations that are conducive to innovation and information-gathering in all aspects of life and beyond. While amazing civilisations have come and gone over the last 10,000 years it is only since the 20th century that we have seen a real explosion in the urbanisation process, leading to a doubling of the global population. And all of that growth has gone into cities, accompanied by relentless rural migration.
Read more: We Need Smarter Governments to Manage a Changing Global Environment
Gartner describes smart government as that which puts emphasis on interoperability and shared services and increases the public value of services provided. However, when merging services and data many different elements must be knitted together, which can be very complicated, and it is not always clear who is leading the project.
Read more: 'Smart government' raises accountability concerns, says Gartner
Craig Shank, associate general counsel of Microsoft Corporation, explained that many of today's e-government portals and backend systems are a digital implementation of their paper-based predecessors. While this leap into the digital age has resulted in a slightly more efficient mode of communicating with citizens, it is still not a "transformative" system, he added.
There some good examples of what Web 3.0 could look like in general and for government in particular. Like all things with technology we only see the future darkly. Remember the Internet was first used to order pizza at a college.
But if those citizens could have all of their needs met by one department it would streamline service delivery.
Gartner’s group vice president of CIO research, John Kost told Government News the issue of integrating the repository of many agencies into a single information store was an “issue of case management”.