Civil Servant 2.0 Day - An Impression

'Ambtenaar 2.0', Civil Servant 2.0, is a thriving Dutch community of over 3.000 people who are interested in bringing Web 2.0 and its principles in to the way our government and administration works. It started early 2008 and has grown into a multi-faceted community inhabiting different spaces (a main site, an interaction platform, a collaborative workspace, two-weekly open coffee meet-ups, to name some), where many different '2.0' aspects are discussed and experimented with.
It was all started as the voluntary effort of several civil servants, but meanwhile a foundation has been created to serve as a vehicle for different activities, and to make sure those activities can take place without raising issues (integrity e.g.) for the civil servants involved.

Hands on support, and audience during the election for most '2.0' organization

Last week the 'Civil Servant 2.0 Day' was organized. In the space of two months this was event was created without any budget. In 7 streams, 35 workshops were given. Next to that there was a demo-space, and a support-space where you could go with your practical questions regarding web2.0 and get some hands-on help. Also there was an election of the most '2.0' government organization (won by a project from the city of Amsterdam)
All in all 250 people met-up for a day of face to face interaction.
Everything was created by the community itself, all as a volunteer effort. A long list with workshops that didn't make the program was held in reserve as well as a long list of people who were on the reserve list to attend.

It was an excellent day, and a testament to what a community effort can bring. It is good to see that there are many change agents active within our government agencies.
In the first round of workshops I held a session on open government data. The slides are available, but are in Dutch. A recent similar slideset in English can be found below.

(Disclosure: I joined the board of the Ambtenaar 2.0 Foundation last month, also to help push the themes of open government and open government data)

Tags: a20dag, ambtenaar20, community, gov20, netherlands, opengov