Can greater collaboration improve the state of e-government?

This is certainly the goal of movers and shakers in this space, as explored in FastForward’s recent blog-hosted Webcast with Andrew Rasiej of the Personal Democracy Forum and Beth Simone Noveck, US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government.  Greater collaborative and social networking services present new opportunities to not only open up government and make it more accessible, but also facilitate greater information sharing for addressing complex issues.

But we still have a way to go, as McKinsey and Company recently spelled out in a report that looked at the state of progress of e-government initiatives. McKinsey found that despite spending enormous amounts on Web-based initiatives, government agencies often fail to meet users’ needs online.

The report’s authors, Jason Baumgarten and Michael Chui, say that to succeed, e-government needs new governance models, smarter Web investment, and greater user participation.

There have been some impressive benefits seen from the early days of e-governm