More and more people are thinking that Government 2.0 is a hype which won’t last so much. It’s not any more about hackers developing tools to get some data from official sites, as more an more governments put open data and e-participation initiatives in their agenda.

Even if it is overhyped (which it partly is), I think this movement will stay here for ever. For these reasons:

– Obama’s administration changes have been a driver for other governments to take action. So the hype is related to the sucess of Obama in Washington, but the reforms will be there once he leaves the White House.

– Democratic Government should be about crowdsourcing people’s thoughts. So Web 2.0 tools are just great for this goal. Collaborative tools are also becoming important inside companies, so they will also become more and more used inside public institutions. And not only for open innovation.

– Transparency is a need in democracy. Historically it was only posible with the help of the press, but this is not the way it works any more. Any citizen can become a media nowadays, so he/she can also make the Government more transparent and so, accountable.

– Open data will probably create some doubts at the beginning, as in Europe there are not so many developers wishing to create mashups. But at the end companies will start using this data, specially the one that has commercial use and which has a cost nowadays. Local data will be the most relevant.

– As David Osimo explains, Government 2.0 is not so much “about representativeness” as about “relevance”.