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Paul Canning writes about the changing and shifting priorities of central government in relation to ‘eDemocracy’, and specifically the possible demise of the International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE), which is – or was – a government funded ‘National Project‘. I believe Paul’s point is that this is not so much a case of government being particularly capricious in this instance as being devoid of any real understanding of what is happening in the egov world. I’d agree with all this, and the execellent summary of why IT projects fail that Paul writes about in a separate blog.But while government blunders about in ever-decreasing circles, with huge monolithic ‘e-projects’ that will take years to deliver any benefits, (and more likely be canned when costs get out of hand), there are surely some opportunities for the small/entrepenurial consultancies and individuals in the Web 2.0 space to fill the gaps with what may start out as tactical solutions but could ultimatley be part of core strategy. I admire MySociety for taking this approach, and maybe this is an example for other practitioners in this space.I just wish that Government would realise they don’t need to create enormously complex governance structures for what should be agile e-gov projects. But perhaps ‘agility’ and ‘government’ is after all an oxymoron!See also comments on this debate from Dave Briggs .
