I’ve had the great fortune over the past two weeks to speak with some of the top government agencies throughout North America at the Social Media for Government Conference (with the top federal U.S. government agencies in attendance) and then in front of some top local municipal governments in Canada via a webinar last Thursday.

I find it a bit ironic that for the first time – ever – our governments are now trying to be transparent and sharing the vast amount of information they possess. In fact, Computerworld wrote a nice piece from the SM for Government conference talking about this subject.

For those of you that aren’t aware, President Obama signed a bill on January 21, 2009 that called for “openness, transparency and engagement” among the U.S. government.

Here we are nine months later and what has changed? Surprisingly, I have found many great examples of social media being used in the government sector – some of which I’ve shared in my presentation from SM for Government. Overall however I found that many of these large federal government agencies face the same issues of the private sector. One head of communications for a large federal agency was telling me how they have to roll out engagement on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. – yet most of these sites are blocked:).

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out within the public sector. I’d be curious to hear what your thoughts are on this subject…do you think our government should be sharing everything with the public? When does this approach a security breech? For those agencies that are utilizing SM…are they empowering the people within these platforms?

Is it possible that social media is bringing our great nation back to its roots?

I’ll leave you with the concluding paragraph from President Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address in 1863, “…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”