The Knowledge Worker Desktop.

The Obama administration has embarked on several bold initiatives in how it interacts with the public.

Less than a week ago it launched data.gov described this way: “The purpose of www.data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable data sets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

What seems unique to the approach is to ask the public to participate in the development of the site and engage in the evolution of the site – in other words launching a governmental site that will be very dynamic in nature and acknowledging that not all information is available from day one – see the tutorial here.

Terms such as “Government 2.0” and “Context-driven Governmental Services” has been introduced by the administration using layman’s term and with refreshingly straight forward guidelines and tutorials.

Another initiative is http://usaspending.gov (a re-launch of www.fedspending.org) which is described as allowing citizen to verify “when, with whom, and on what the US Government is spending taxpayer funds”. Data will be made available in such a way that users will be able to “combine them into different data sets, conduct analysis and research, or power new information-based products and businesses”.

The third one is www.recovery.gov, which applies the same principles as usaspending.gov to the tracking of funds coming from the Stimulus Package.

The White House document issued together with FY 2010 budget request says that “the Federal IT agenda is focused on helping agencies use developing technologies to inform the work of Government” and “Agencies will be called upon to take creative action in developing new approaches to citizen involvement, including the utilization of social and visual technologies, such as Web 2.0 tools”.

Very little information has been revealed about the tools available to the governmental white collar workers. They will need superior tools to help them live up to the public service expectations created.

We believe that our proven “Knowledge Worker Desktop” concept could be a big help in delivering that public service. We believe our concept can empower the governmental employees to be at the center of this government transformation and make them an active part of the innovation process needed.

Stay tuned for more information about this in future postings on this blog.