The G20 was established in 1999, in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, to bring together major advanced and emerging economies to stabilise the global financial market.
The main focus continues to be global fiscal planning and management in an effort to stabilise the world's economy. The series of summits brings together the heads of state of the world's advanced and emerging economies to help regulate and manage the world's financial sectors, discuss related development topics, ensure financial security, etc.
Given the impacts of the latest recession on the world's economies, the G20 has taken on new and more pronounced political importance.
While a typical multilateral event is centred on government-to-government discussions, there is a major ecosystem that is often built around such events, an ecosystem that often includes academia, business leaders, the media and various youth movements. In this case, all major elements were included in the world's most connected multilateral event ever.
Anyone who has been involved in international or multilateral meetings knows that organisations and participants in such events have typically collaborated via e-mail or telephone, even as recently as the 2009 Pittsburgh Summit. Policy development, negotiations, networking, etc, were all done via outdated technologies such as the telephone or e-mail, or in person during these summits, which by then was often too late. The world is a big place, and connecting with people in the months leading up to such a large summit often proved difficult and sometimes even impossible. Simply put, no other field within the public sector was in greater need of a shift in how it conducted its outreach and communications than the global public sector, and no other sector could benefit more than this one in adopting social media practices.
The solution was simple, the G20 needed to adopt social media practices, doing so quickly and efficiently with as little human impact as possible. To this end, a partnership was struck between the Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN), a federally funded network representing most major Canadian technology firms, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DF AIT), which was ultimately responsible for the G20 summit and its execution. CDMN member Open Text provided a hosted social media platform, available throughout a variety of mobile platforms and the Internet, while DF AIT provided the business context and framework to engage all participating countries as well as their executive management teams attending the summit.
This experiment was truly to be the first of its kind: all 20 countries, their leadership and government employees participating on a social media site, both online and with their mobile devices, sharing policy views, negotiating country specific policy positions, networking, etc. All participants, from different backgrounds, with online profiles, multimedia capacity, videos, blogs, wikis, etc, leveraging true 2.0 capacities in a public sector domain. For the first time ever, the world's governments were online in one platform engaging in global fiscal planning.
In addition, CDMN also provided a second service for non-governmental interested parties such as universities, major thought leadership organisations, youth movements, the world's press, business leaders, etc., providing these groups with an opportunity to contribute what is called 'social knowledge,' all in support of the Toronto G20 agenda. By social knowledge we mean one's contribution to an existing body of knowledge, often found on static Web pages, by providing real-time collaboration and dialogue through social media exchanges. This body of knowledge proved invaluable to the G20 ecosystem and continues to live on today on www.g20net.org.
Lastly, Open Text and the CDMN were also able to develop an interactive Web presence to the Experience Canada Pavilion, a facility hosted within the G20 International Media Centre designed to promote Canada to the world throughout the summit. Online immersive technologies were used to showcase all the participants in this pavilion who were proud to show Canadian know-how and innovation to the world's media. This online environment is available at www.vg20net.org and continues to be seen by thousands individuals from around the world, another digital Canadian innovation in the context of multilateral events such as the G20.
What was achieved out of all of this, you may ask? Well, let's take a look at the obvious:
* Governments from around the world, from different backgrounds and with different rules, collaborated on a single social media platform, accessible from their mobile devices;
* Policy development and negotiations were conducted in an enterprise 2.0 fashion, and the Toronto summit was enabled like no other global public sector event of its kind;
* Non-governmental entities were enabled like never before, leveraging the partnership struck between DFAIT and the CDMN;
* Social mobility was introduced into multilateral events and new media concepts were brought to the forefront. In addition, more strategically, the event accomplished the following: Canada, through DFAIT, CDMN and Open Text, was able to provide the world's most connected global multilateral public sector event of its kind and continue challenging as one of the world's most connected countries;
* DFAIT demonstrated tremendous leadership in a way never before experienced in a global public sector setting, and for this they should be commended, striking key partnerships in support of a well thought out and defined e-communications strategy; and
* The Toronto summit has set the standard for what can be achieved within a public sector domain by leveraging the power of social media to generate collaboration amongst interested parties, seek out new contributors and manage all the content associated to such multilateral events.
With the dust barely settled on the Toronto G20 summit, it is more and more apparent that other nations are interested in maintaining the services established for the Canadian event. Much of this interest is the result of the heads of state all requesting ongoing discussions on key agenda items to maintain the momentum between summits; for this most important requirement, social media has proven to be the answer. Social media maintains records, provides an engagement layer never before experienced, and promotes dialogue in a world used to collaborating by e-mail and telephone.
Certainly, the efforts of many organisations and key individuals was required to get both the government and non-governmental sites off the ground, and the sustained efforts and interests of participating countries will be required to maintain the social media presence for future G20 events. However, one thing is clear at this point: social media usefulness in a public sector setting has been concretely demonstrated once and for all, and the future of the public sector is definitely a social one. The world's leading public sectors have demonstrated this quite clearly during the G20 in Toronto.
For further information, please contact Rob Shaw: tel +27 83 626-3811, fax +27 86 646-4178, e-mail rshaw@opentext.com.
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