Monday at 3:30 at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, Nancy Scola and I will be facilitating a Core Conversation entitled "Whitehouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government." We'll provide an overview of the concepts behind employing open source principles to government through technology and how the new administration is running with their campaign promise to improve government transparency online. Then the majority of the session will comprise a discussion about what participants want to see coming out of government in terms of information, and how people most want to be a part of providing input.

When I first pitched the idea to the conference organizers, it was just around election time, so I had to give a vague description of what was happening in the sphere: "The 2004 and 2008 campaigns' use of collaborative tools, blogs and social networking have shown citizen activism and online communities can wield powerful influence. In 2009, our challenge becomes how to harness these tools in order to reopen the policy-making process." It's a big question and we have just under an hour to discuss it, but Nancy and I are both confident that we can incite some positive ideas.

Once the Core Conversation is concluded, we'll write up a report and publish it here. We will also be submitting it to people in the new administration so they know what feedback from the people in the room was. Anyone who wants to comment on the report online can do so, and we'll include comments/additions in what we send to the White House.

To get warmed up for our session, we also recommend checking out the OpenGov Ignite Talks at Fiddler's Hearth, 12:30-2pm Monday.