Mashup

How could mashups serve international governance? Would mashups serve to make government more effective?
The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data. In easier terms, mashup consists of a whole bunch of information provided on one page or even on a map. For instance the mashup can provide weather conditions, the status of the country and if disease related it can even provide the information of the number of people dead and infected with a certain disease.

Applications such as mashup’s are definitely effective for governments. But this relies heavily on the set up of e-governance. E-Governance is such as a webpage, where citizens can interact with the government via through emails or conduct transactions (Lecture 9 11-16-09). Efficiency is the main goal for E-governance, and if it allows citizens to do a number of things on one webpage, it will definitely improve the efficiency of a site. A great example of this is provided in the Holliday and Kwok article on E-government. It clearly describes the role of e-government and its interactions between the government and various businesses. In this situation mashups would be very effective since they would make it easier for foreign investors to invest in a country based on its different aspects of information provided through one webpage. This would be very effective in terms of business and government since it would receive more foreign investments in an effective way. Mashups provide a number of possibilities in terms of improving the governments and making it more effective.All-in-all, mashups are are effective and the main goal of e-government is to be efficient, therefore, they match perfectly together.

Here’s a link to a mashup: http://www.idemc.org/index.php?area=