I like the sound of Government 2.0: Collaborate with citizens online and you can change government from a sewer-dwelling raccoon into a purring housecat.

Social media lets us try for a kind of politics that was impossible until now. I hope for great results. For many, Government 2.0, or “collaborative government,” will mean just “friending” a local cop. But in full flower, Government 2.0 can mean far better service, and far more government-and-citizen collaboration than ever before.

Even before we had social media, the glare of public attention was a proven antidote for bad politics. Citizens getting up their elbows in policymaking has always been another strong medicine.

Trouble is, that “sewer-dwelling raccoon” is always smarter than people think. When he’s hungry, he purrs like a housecat and covers stinky laws with high-minded names. Advertising fools just enough voters — so often complacent and impatient — to throw a new law onto the books. On and on it goes.

Such a stinky new law is just what Californians got in 2000. Proposition 34 was sold to voters as campaign finance reform. It was a ruse. (A few days ago, a report confirmed suspicions, and a major drafter of the proposition insisted he was “outraged.” Yeah, and round up the usual suspects.)

One other fix, more honest, came 100 years ago: California amended its constitution to give citizens the ballot proposition. It was the only way for voters to bypass the paralyzed Legislature and loosen the Southern Pacific Railroad’s grip. It worked. But more recently, ballot propositions have helped tie the state’s budget in knots.

In the long run, who knows how social media, visual analysis, and other tools may be used in government? What will matter most of all is who uses them. If it’s “the people,” which people?

I hope this new, pervasive politics mobilizes a new wave of smart activists — the way desktop publishing and, later, weblogs enabled editors and writers. Or the way tools like Tableau and Lyza are enabling independent-minded, creative analysts today.

As these activists learn about politics, I also hope that more citizens than ever before step up to watch, push, and verify. Such a voter would be Citizen 2.0, the real hope.

Otherwise, it’s going to be that raccoon again — this time on Twitter.

In the 32 days since the end of TDWI’s San Diego conference, one phrase has come to my mind repeatedly: “The soft stuff is always the important stuff,” uttered by Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research. He was summing up a panel discussion, but the insight applies so broadly he could have used it for most other panels, too.

Leadership, persuasion, negotiation, generosity and knowledge and other such things all count at least as much as technology. The “soft stuff” is the axle grease, and yet the vehicle usually gets the credit. Bad grease makes any wheel worth a lot less.

Take one subject I wrote about in July, Government 2.0. It’s the idea that Web 2.0-inspired tools and attitudes will engender a new era of collaboration between officials and citizens. Each will benefit, and the public spirit will flower like it never has.

It’s a great idea and perhaps inevitable—despite an organization that promotes it. nGenera’s wizard is the visionary Don Tapscott, who does an admirable job of promotion. But when I probed for more than happy-talk, Tapscott’s little man behind the curtain—the Government 2.0 “program director”—did his feeble best to raise a stink when I didn’t accept his platitudes for my two BI This Week stories. Bad axle grease.

Take another subject: buying a house. My 85-year-old uncle tells about shopping for a house just north of New York City. Twenty years ago, he and his wife bought a house based on one visit in the dark. They trusted the agent. “We usually trusted others, and it usually worked out,” he says. Also, as a pioneering neurochemist and director for many years of a New York state lab, he erred on the side of generosity with those who asked for his help. He found that the goodwill generally comes back. Good axle grease.

If the soft stuff is so important, where does it fit on a balance sheet? Sorry, in the U.S. there’s no clear slot. You train a talented employee to analyze data, and you’re screwed if she leaves—as sure as if your warehouse flooded and several pallets of books got soaked. The books are written off like any asset, but not the valuable new analyst. Read all about it in Denise Caruso’s “The Real Value of Intangibles” in strategy+business magazine.

The “soft stuff is always the important stuff” quote was too good for the one place it would have fit in my story from San Diego. But I’ll find a fitting spot for it soon enough.

If bureaucrats were to shut down their websites and simply fed data to whoever wanted to comb it out, as one group will soon propose, would we have failed at Government 2.0?

Jim Powell, the TDWI editorial director, said yes, we would have failed. Without a built-in channel for the back-and-forth of genuine collaboration, there would be little collaboration.

At first, I wasn’t so sure.

First, who’s to say that officials really would engage in collaboration—even with that built-in channel in place?

Dave Wells, who points out the importance of BI culture, would likely say that success in Gov 2.0 would depend on culture. If officials don’t buy in, no technology’s going to make it work.

Wikipedia, Jigsaw, and Facebook and others find success within self-selected groups. Those who don’t see their value simply don’t show up. What’s to force officials to pay attention?

Until now, the main way ordinary people became powerful was by concentrating their influence in groups. The Sierra Club, for example, has no formal authority. Yet its nearly one million dues-paying, letter-writing members have as a group earned respect and fear among lawmakers. That’s the same for the National Rifle Association and many other groups, too.

These groups make better use of the new flood of data than individuals can. Smart groups hire smart analysts and publish their results. Most individuals didn’t have that reach.

Then the mob would find a voice. The swirling masses would come to a consensus like astral dust coalescing into planets. Then the crowd would have gravity. Then officials would have to take notice whether they liked all this Web 2.0 stuff or not.

At least that’s how it looks to me today.

Almost no one has mentioned Government 2.0 in the same breath as business intelligence—yet they’re destined for each other.

Government 2.0 is about turning the old one-way dialog, from all levels of government to you, into genuine collaboration. Voting as we know it is “dumb,” while blogging, wikis, mashups, collaborative filtering, social networking sites and other Web 2.0 stuff is “smart.” Government will listen. Government will engage. We’ll all have a great time just being citizens. Perhaps when we do vote, the choices will make sense.

Even if, as I suspect, all that takes decades to play out, the technology to run it will march to the front line right away.

In back of all that cool Web 2.0 stuff will certainly be the data wrangling technology and methods for managing the wisdom deposited by you and me: master data management, data warehousing, data mining, harvesting of unstructured data, and visualization.

Can government do it alone? Not likely. One of the most intriguing ideas—to be proposed this fall in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology—would have government provide just an API: take your data to mine it, store it, repackage it, and visualize it at will. Plug’n'play.

It’ll be a new day for data and for an industry that knows how to make sense of it.

I was thinking about Government 2.0 at about midnight last night—when the dark, quiet world gives way to ghosts. Then it’s easy to imagine BI tools and methods opening government to the masses.

I had been reading about open-source government last night after Letterman signed off. That’s when everyday life recedes and gives way to things that might be, could be. I call them ghosts, and you might call them memories or fantasies or even perfectly modeled government data.

In that state of mind, somewhat in this world and somewhat out of it, I asked a nearby ghost what good might come of Government 2.0.

By the way, what the hell is Government 2.0? Here’s what I understand: It’s the use of wikis, blogs, and other Web 2.0 stuff to encourage a new wave of collaboration among citizens, government officials and civil servants.

Whatever it may turn out to be, I know the concept is alive right now. A friend just got pulled out the freelance world into a comfortable government job surrounded by what he describes as very smart guys barreling forward on it. (He doesn’t work with the other type.) I’ll hear the details tonight over a St. Peter’s porter.

The best of his observations will make their way into a BI This Week story I have to write by Sunday. The rest of the story will derive from material around the Web, from a Tableau Software user, and from the ghost’s narration.

Government 2.0 could be a dream come true, and it could be a nightmare. It’ll be both.

Will it be government workers with thousands of unseen eyes looking over their shoulders? Tell me, do goldfish perform better in clear-sided bowls?

Are crowds wise enough for this task? A similar question arose before and after the American and French revolutions, when some smart people insisted that a monarchy should run things. As it turned out, they were correct—and not.

When I asked the ghost what he thought, he vanished. Lunchtime, I guess. I’ll have to try again.