There’s an article by me in the latest newsletter from the Citizen Services office of the General Service Administration. The issue is devoted questions of citizen participation in governance.

I had the chance to interview some personal heroes of participatory culture, including Eben Moglen, a crystalline communicator and evangelist for the end of information ownership; Brian Reich, a guru of change-means-change and not just cool tools; and Beth Noveck, author of Wiki Government and, more importantly, keeper of the Open Government initiative at the White House.

The Intergovernmental Solutions newsletter is published in print and PDF. Nuff said. But my piece is re-posted at TechPresident.com.

The money line:

Our culture of instant punditry can make it hard to see the difference between innovation and transformation. Real change happens not at the speed of a website launch or an election night, but at the organic, often maddening, pace of institutions and behaviors.

The full publication also has pieces you should check out from Katie Stanton, director of citizen participation in the White House and Carolyn Lukensmeyer of AmericaSpeaks, who was pioneering citizen engagement techniques before anyone had thought to use the forward button or a cell phone to hand more power to the people.