When negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program broke down last week, the question of why they did loomed in everyone’s mind. In response, Secretary of State Kerry offered some weak explanation that Iranian negotiators had to get approval from higher ups back at home. Kerry’s comments were a deflection from blaming the French for putting the kibosh on the agreement. Rather than deflecting from the French, Senator John McCain, in a rare move for a conservative Republican, complimented the French for their bravery in stopping the agreement, proclaiming, “Vive la France!”

Branding of a country is determined more by its value systems and governance principles. I was in Rwanda last week after one year. Every time I visit the country I observe a number of positive things that we Kenyans have not succeeded in achieving over the years.

We have seen citizens empowered to use their voice, many for the first time ever. We have witnessed several countries fall to the "soft power" of people organizing, and then acting on the organization to effect change of a type we have never seen in our collective human history.

What is Gov 2.0? Gov 2.0 is all about a new culture of open governance, greater citizen involvement through the judicious use of web 2.0...The world has started moving towards Gov 2.0 without even being conscious about it. What has made Gov 2.0 possible is the widespread availability of Internet connected desktops and hand held devices. At present India has 80 million Internet connections, and over 50 million people use social media.

What is Gov 2.0? Gov 2.0 is all about a new culture of open governance, greater citizen involvement through the judicious use of web 2.0. Gov 2.0 is about interactive democracy against representative democracy, it is about open administration that involves citizens participation against closed administration and it is about spirit of voluntarily sharing information against closely guarding it.

Suri said that the image of India’s foreign office has been that they’re “fuddy duddy”, and they joined Twitter and Facebook with the intent of building a positive narrative about india, development partnerships, and create Friends of India communities via facebook.”

he Public Diplomacy division of the Ministry of External Affairs was awarded the prestigious Gov2.in Awards 2011 instituted by Governance Now magazine for innovative use of social media and Web 2.0 tools in government.

While the use of the Internet to reach out to people and communicate a brand’s message to the audience effectively is starting to gain traction and become the norm in India, the effective use of the digital medium by the government, which could create transparency and empower the citizenry, is not something which has seen large scale deployment in India yet.