Closing Keynote at Gov 2.0 Summit

Andrew McLaughlin and Tim O'Reilly gave the closing keynote at the Gov 2.0 Summit. Andrew McLaughlin is a Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer. From 2004-2009, he was Director of Global Public Policy for Google, based in San Francisco. From November 2008-January 2009, Andrew served as a member of the Obama/Biden presidential transition team in Washington.
Andrew said that one thing on his 'things to get to' list is to create an official, searchable intranet where federal government employees each have a individual home page that would list areas of expertise, core competencies, and, contact information so they can connect up with one another.
They cover a broad range of topics and refer back to many of the previous discussions and presentations during the Summit. This was an excellent capstone to an amazing beginning of building government into a new platform for innovation and excellence. Jennifer Pahlka also unveiled an exciting new project Code for America.

Tim and Andrew closed with a series of challenges for us to reflect and act upon.

This was a very meaningful conference. I understand the criticisms and actually agree that there is always room for improvement. But this is not the end, this is only the beginning of a whole new way of thinking about government. We can barely imagine what technological marvels the next century will experience. But we already face an incredible array of challenges; environmental, financial, health related... We will need to all work together very hard to leave this planet in good shape for future generations. After the Gov 2.0 Summit, I feel that humanity may just be up to the challenge. :-D