Mark Drapeau wrote a great post yesterday that questions whether the Open Government Directive is leading to real, authentic citizen engagement. The post reflects questions and concerns that people from across the public engagement field have had for quite a while now.

Mark writes:

When you hear Gary Vaynerchuk speaking about openness and engagement … , you don’t hear about putting more options on a website, nor about this or that technology very often. You hear an awful lot about people – talking to people, listening to people, providing content that people want, and generally caring about people. And a lot of it is very one-on-one, not email blasts and blog posts. It’s human and authentic.

In a talk long ago, I heard Gary use an acronym that I still use to this day, one that should be at play in all the discussion about the OGD. The acronym is RAT. RAT means Real, Authentic, and Transparent. RATs win. RATs use technology, but aren’t focused on it. They’re focused on people.

How the new open government websites and tools are used to interact with individual people, to engage citizens around topics (not agencies, topics), and act as platforms to build communities around those topics remains to be seen. But there’s one thing anyone involved in communities already knows – these things take time and are not subject to artificial deadlines.