Dr. Mark Drapeau [1] writes a wonderful series of posts [2] on Government 2.0 ("from an insider's perspective [3]") at Mashable.com [4].

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 [5] and tweets at Twitter under the name "Cheeky_Geeky [6]". 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".

Amen to that!