Government technology and the flexibility of Web 2.0

Rhode Island is jumping into Web 2.0 with both feet. They've got a full set of REST-based XML web services around an application called GovTracker. The quote below is from the blog of an employee at the Government Open Code Collaborative (GOCC) website -- which is itself built on top of Plone, an open source content management system:

Web 2.0 applications lean towards making small pieces of data available to users in such a way that the data can easily be married to other small pieces of data from disparate sources. If government is to succeed in serving its citizenry and engaging civic participation, government technology decision makers must find a way to resolve the dissonance between the flexibility of Web 2.0 in the private sector and the legacy of restrictive monolithic applications in government.
It is simply unacceptable at this point in history that a citizen can use web services to track the movies he is renting, the weather around his house, and the books he’s recently purchased but cannot as easily monitor data regarding the quality of his drinking water, legislation or regulations that will directly impact his work or personal life, what contracts are currently available to bid on for his state, or what crimes have recently occurred on his street.
Government Open Code Collaborative: S. James Willis - Rhode Island Govtracker Services

If only all governments were this progressive!

(Via Jeff Barr's Blog)