White House confronts barriers to Gov 2.0

Regulations and technical limitations pose challenges in the federal government's move to "Government 2.0," the trend of Web-enabling government data and processes, Andrew McLaughlin, deputy CTO for Internet policy, said in a speech today in Washington, D.C.

Several issues come into play as the government increasingly uses popular Web sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Flickr to share information and interact with the public. Advertising on commercial sites is one of them. The U.S. government doesn't run ads on Web sites because it doesn't want to be seen as endorsing commercial products, but sites like Flickr and YouTube want to run ads on sites the government uses to host photos and videos.

As of now, some sites offer ad-free pages as a public service, but it's unclear how long they will continue to do so. "Do they offer their sites for free to the government forever?" McLaughlin asked rhetorically. "That's not a good business model."

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