During his conversation at our Campaign School last month, Toronto city councillor Paul Ainslie outlined his communication strategy with his Scarborough East constituents — along with how he tries to reach out to city as a whole. Becoming chair of the Government Management Committee supplied Ainslie with further motivation to use social media to stay in contact with a wider-range of #TOpoli-watchers. As a result, he arguably emerged as the most accessible ally of Mayor Rob Ford, at least when it comes to leveraging some of the tools at his fingertips.

By contrast, Willowdale councillor David Shiner — a 15-year fixture of the downtown Clamshell whose tenure predates amalgamation — is among those local politicians who have never sought an online presence beyond their their for re-election, if at all. Shiner’s own website is now only helpful in the sense that it indicates that you are better off calling or emailing than looking there for any indication of what he does, let alone what he stands for.

The potential for Twitter integration on all revamped Government of Canada websites made for an intriguing Globe and Mail online headline this week — even if the actual news could be encapsulated in the form of a tweet.

Certainly, the item did its job of riling up the commenters, who are mostly blind to the fact that a social media platform supplies more freedom to rage about Treasury Board of Canada president Tony Clement than a newspaper website does. But who would be paying attention?

Bureaucrats being reliably reached in the future via 140-character rants would be a leap indeed. Customer service departments of service industries have fielded Twitter-based feedback with mixed results. No doubt, any reports of a smooth conflict resolution via social media is seen as good publicity.

Whether civil servants are really prepared to have their interactions aired is one of the challenges of Open Government. Frustration would ensue if much of the bureaucracy used Twitter in the vein of Cap'n Crunch — whose account @RealCapnCrunch depicts a breakfast mascot who is too eager to acknowledge every mention.

The inaugural PS Engage learning and networking event in Ottawa on Monday provided a stage for the Canadian government to announce formal guidelines for playing the social media game.

Yet the lukewarm reception to the idea that layers of bureaucracy must continue to be involved in the most elementary interactions with the public served as a reminder that the future of communications can't be left to career policymakers alone.

Fortuitously, that evening, a second Metaviews salon in the capital city picked up where the October event left off, by asking the question "Will There Ever Be Open Government?"

This question wasn't going to be definitively answered in one night, of course, but a mixture of insiders and outsiders — all of whom have wondered about a more effective evolution of online public service — seized the opportunity to swap thoughts.

Disruption was the central theme of one conversation — as everyone in the room has closely observed the transformation of all media industries over the past decade. Open Government can similarly provide a breakthrough for the younger generation of civil servants. Currently, the way most of them interact on the job compared to in their personal lives remains a century apart.

While tents are being forced down at Occupy sites across the country, the Treasury Board of Canada has finally gotten around to erecting its virtual one, with the publication of "Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0".

What could have been an opportunity for the Government of Canada to present a new wave of information in a different light, though, has taken the form of another bureaucratic document.

Does information have to look so officious in order to be taken seriously? Treasury Board president Tony Clement has attached his name to something that resembles the Terms of Service agreements that no one would ever read. So, it's up left to more scintillating social media services to dissect its significance for the public service, and the public it serves.

"The federal government has hit the like button on social media," was the best the Canadian Press could extrapolate to sum up the guidelines. Just in case you thought that NDP MP Pat Martin's use of four letter words to describe Conservative tactics on Twitter might have led it to be banned from Parliament Hill.

Government could never have invented something like social media. Yet, more than anyone else, politicians are expected to be accountable to the public when using it.

Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor was recently inspired — by a similar Slate monitor of Sarah Palin — to track potential Facebook comment deletions on the part of Stephen Harper's squad. And he was rewarded with evidence that many comments critical of the prime minister didn't last long — although some remained.

Should there be a federal standard for which responses are considered acceptable? What if they're attached to a page that fully verified where the commenter was coming from?

Curiously, there are two different official Facebook pages for Harper. The more popular one — with over 67,000 followers — is run by the Conservative party, while a more obscure one is maintained by the Prime Minister's Office, even though their content has been nearly identical. So, the lack of civility might have something to do with its assertively partisan origins.

These issues related to effective communication have now become an inextricable part of the discussion surrounding Government 2.0.

"I gather it's been the worst kept secret in politics for the last few days," said Peggy Nash at the Friday morning announcement that she hopes to be the new NDP leader, "but that's OK, I believe in open government."

The proclamation showed that a certain terminology has worked its way into her subconscious. But the finance critic wasn't talking about "Making 'Open Government' About Actual Government" — discussed last week at a Metaviews event in Ottawa.

Rather, it reinforced that politicians are now forced to put so much energy into burnishing their social media image, that it comes at the expense of understanding how the departments that they're charged with overseeing need to be fully accessible online.

Going down the rabbit hole of Open Government-related rhetoric can be as maddening as the efforts to hash out solutions to salvage the information or entertainment industries from disruption. The difference is, while technology will transform our tastes in decades ahead, a traditional structure of public service will remain.

Social media expert Tony Clement played off his Twitter reputation Tuesday morning at the Government Technology Exhibition and Conference in Ottawa. Clearly, the new Treasury Board president is seen as the most qualified Conservative cabinet spokesperson for the federal Open Government initiatives, a plan for which he promised would be presented next March.

For the mainstream press, the main takeaway appears to have been a call for the federal government to move toward a paperless operation. But there is nothing radical anymore about moving information to a screen.

Mercifully, as we've seen in other disrupted industries, a change in delivery systems provides the opportunity to transform the substance of the communication into what the public wants.

Consultations will be involved in the process of piecing the plan together, promised Clement, which is certainly better than the paradox of keeping deliberations about Open Government closed.

Yet, the discussion was already advanced 12 hours ahead of Clement's keynote, at a Metaviews discussion event in Ottawa, titled "Beyond the Kool-Aid."

I've spent the better part of the last five years working at the confluence of public policy, people, and technology and can say with certainty that the experts in the field agree: the proliferation of digital communication technologies is fundamentally reshaping all sectors of society. While this may be most apparent in the newspaper, music, or television industries, to think that governments are somehow immune to the changing environment is irresponsible. Thus far governments have managed to operate under the radar, espousing collaboration as the new modus operandi of the public service while hiding in the murky rhetoric of ‘doing more with less'; but frankly it’s no longer a viable option for dealing with the coming change.

Digital is different, so let's do things differently

If you don't believe me, look at what is happening across the pond in the United Kingdom where budgets are being slashed on average of 20% but up to 35% in some cases. The harsh reality, as the Brits are learning, is that they can't even afford to do more with less. Being more collaborative isn't the same thing as being innovative. Similarly, all the collaboration in the world doesn't break you out of old mental models or help you re-imagine your role in a rapidly and ever changing society. We need to cut through the noise of ‘greater efficiency through greater collaboration’ and the rhetoric of ‘doing more with less’ and focus instead on doing things fundamentally differently. Given the profound impact of digital communication technologies on our society, I think that doing things differently starts with cultivating a better understanding of how digital is reshaping what citizens expect from their public institutions and how public institutions can best respond to those needs.