A group of experts took the stage last week to discuss “Transforming Government Through Technology” at the State of the Net conference.  Moderated by the White House’s Andrew McLaughlin, voices representing government agencies, the public interest, and technology innovation not only joined the Gov 2.0 chorus, but added the importance of a cultural shift to the usual conversation.

Dr. Robert E. Neilson, representing the U.S. Army, is excited that he can now access his network anywhere. He says the Army now uses a wiki for their training doctrine, which means that any time a field manual is going to change they post to the wiki.  He mentioned his latest initiative, “Apps for the Army” as the first time he won’t have to go through an acquisition process for technology – a great example of the cultural shift.  Now his greatest challenge?  Bringing these changes and technologies to the DoD, Navy, Marines, etc.

Clay Johnson of Sunlight Foundation was the strongest advocate for the cultural shift.  He hopes to not only see cultural change in the technologies, but more importantly in those who create and implement policies.  Johnson believes we need more rewards for being open and taking risks inside of government and believes we need to change the incentive model to do this.  “One of the greatest inventions in baseball was the RBI.  We need an RBI for government effectiveness.”

Jim Geringer of ESRI said that technology should be much more than an accounting project  – that we need to fundamentally change the way we govern.  He believes we need to go beyond open government and go to the external, to the democratization of information and participation. He believes that we are already moving towards Internet-based delivery of government services, but thinks we can do more to make information usable, especially with visualization.

Director of Government Operations for the FCC, Eugene Huang urged strongly to allow government to take advantage of technology and innovation to truly reach its full potential.  He noted that although crisis brings together shared communities, that we now have the ability to create shared communities of interest before or without a crisis.

Huang also gave some tips on what we can look forward to in the National Broadband Plan, naming innovation, investment, inclusion, and improvements in government as key points.

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