Singapore is embracing government 2.0

Alan Silberberg wrote a short piece for Huffington Post where he noted that Microsoft was sponsoring GovCamp Singapore, which started yesterday.  In the article, Matt Miszewski (who was formerly running Government 2.0 efforts for Microsoft, now at Salesforce.com), noted:

“We believe that local communities have the passion, skills and insight to drive Gov 2.0 and OpenGov efforts on their own and we simply want to be able to provide a platform upon which they can dig deep into these issues. This is a space for creating connections to happen between citizens, organizations, groups and governments that may otherwise not exist. We have done them in Berlin, Mexico City, Colombia, Toronto, Sydney, Wellington, Boston, Lisbon and will sponsor the Singapore event in the coming week. We specifically have local organizing committees run each event. We conduct them all in local language and invite social media, competitors and partners to revel in the discourse to help drive the progress of the Gov 2.0 movement.”

I have written about Singapore before, noting their efforts to monitor sentiment on social networks about key issues. They are now taking the next steps, moving past listening into engagement. As the Minister for Communications, Information and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew, states in this video, the growing popularity of social media cannot be ignored, it must be embraced by government.