I just stumbled on an interesting page on the wired.com website.  It's not just any site actually; it's a wiki.  The purpose of the wiki is to help make relevant government documents more easily accessible for anyone who wishes to see them. 

     The goals of the wiki range from reasonable, such as converting the documents out of pdf and lotus files (which apparently, are terrible, from what I gathered), to pie-in-the-sky.  Wired's hopes on the possibility of making all government data available fall into the latter category.  The wiki says, "We agree with the Sunlight Foundation's Greg Elin that the single most important thing any government agency could do to make itself more transparent would be to create a data catalog of all its data streams."  Good luck with that. 

     Still, the wiki does promote some far-reaching and seemingly helpful changes.  For one, the site advocates making transparency "the rule, and not the exception." Along the same lines, these advocates are also suggesting that agencies that do make their data public for research be rewarded in some way for allowing their work to help others.  This is an especially pressing matter for scientists. 

     Wired hopes to use their wiki as a mediator between the government and citizens.  Also, based on research by the community, Wired hopes to get a feel for what types of data its users are more interested in accessing.  I did not pick up on whether the government is willing or able to work with the magazine, but the wiki is a valuable resources nonetheless.  Aside from serving as a useful primer for some of the issues related to accessing government data, the wiki also provides several links to companies such as Sunlight Foundation whose goal is to make government data usable. 

    This made me think of Communities of Practice by Ettiene Wenger.  We have several entities--the website, its users, and the various firms whose goal is make government data accessible-- working together for a common goal.  Drawing on the varied and dispersed expertise of journalists, experts, and the public, we are witness to a beneficial use of Web 2.0 technology.  May the folks at Wired be successful with their goals.