{"id":5765,"date":"2010-01-31T14:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=5765"},"modified":"2010-01-31T14:28:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T20:28:00","slug":"green-government-2-0-state-blogs-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/green-government-2-0-state-blogs-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Government 2.0: State Blogs on Environmental Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Masthead for Missouri's "Fresh Afield" blog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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How do elected officials attempt to ensure transparency these days (or, at least, the appearance of transparency)? By posting information online… we saw yet another example of this just in the last week with President Obama’s call to post all earmarks online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Transparency is a laudable goal, no doubt, but, as I noted in an earlier post on federal blogs<\/a> focused on environmental issues, social media tools allow government to go beyond transparency into engagement: constituents need to know not only what their representatives are doing, but also should be able to discuss and debate those actions. “Government 2.0” doesn’t just allow for broader dissemination of information; it embodies the concept of a “marketplace of ideas” to which all citizens can add their voices.<\/p>\n

Just as the federal government has moved slowly, but steadily, in the world of Web 2.0, state governments are also experimenting with social media as a means to increase citizen engagement. As you might imagine, there’s a real mix of efforts: some states are doing nothing or next to it, some stick to third-party services like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, and a handful have jumped into the blogosphere. I’m encouraged by any efforts on this front, but I think there’s something to be said for blogging: it provides a centralized platform that citizens can find easily, and allows for incorporation of other media and services.<\/p>\n

State Government 2.0: Five environmentally-focused state blogs<\/h2>\n

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of state-level blogs on environmental issues, and the quality varies pretty widely.\u00a0 I was able to find enough to justify that subheader. Given the prominence of environmental issues in our political dialogue, and the fact that “the environment” is as much a local and regional concern as a national one, I hope we’re seeing the beginning of a trend. A few of the states with blogs on green issues have created models that others could emulate with relative ease (and low costs… a critical concern for state governments these days).<\/p>\n

Here are the blogs I found:<\/p>\n