It’s not only about transparency. Any truly effective technologies for citizen engagement with government also need to recognize the realities facing resource- and cash-strapped government teams. Interacting with local government to request repair of a broken traffic light, question a planned housing development, or complain about neighborhood blight is of little value if the government isn’t equipped to process and respond to the flood of requests that social media can engender. Many social media solutions merely mimic the “old-school” telephone and e-mail methods of getting government’s attention: dumping a request or demand into a large hole. The easier and faster the ability for citizens to make requests, the harder it will be for government to manage and prioritize them all.

The new crop of solutions needs to help governments effectively route requests to the right people and prioritize which issues are creating the biggest stir among the public. For example, a pothole that spurs a thousand requests for repair would clearly be causing more public pain than one that elicits only a handful – and repair crews can be deployed accordingly.

Gov 2.0 social media and other mobility solutions need to be about more than citizens saying “meet my needs! pay attention to me!”. They also need to help government employees do more with less and prioritize in an era when trade-offs, band-aids and tough choices may be the only options many governments have.