Open AccessMuniGov 2.0, A New Residency Requirement: Local Government Professionals in Second Life
Author(s) -
Ines Mergel,
Michelle Gardner,
Pamela Broviak,
William Greeves
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
journal of virtual worlds research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1941-8477
DOI - 10.4101/jvwr.v4i2.3522
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , local government , public relations , voting , core (optical fiber) , business , public sector , political science , knowledge management , public administration , computer science , telecommunications , philosophy , linguistics , politics , law
The virtual world Second Life allows social interactions among avatars - online representations of real-life people – and is slowly adopted in the public sector as a tool for innovative ways to interact with citizens, interorganizational collaboration, education and recruitment (Wyld 2008). Governments are setting up online embassies, voting simulations, interactive learning simulations and virtual conferences. While there are very prominent and elaborate examples on the federal and state level of government, we have seen only a handful of applications on the local level. One of these local examples is MuniGov2.0 – a collaboration of municipal government professionals who regularly meet in Second Life. The goal of the group is to support each others geographically distributed implementation attempts to incorporate new technologies in the public sector. Interviews with the founding members and core group show clear mission-specific needs that Second Life collaboration can support, but that there are also technological and behavioral challenges involved using this highly interactive environment. The article will highlight the challenges, how they were met, lessons learned, future directions of the project and ends with recommendations for the use of Second Life in local government.