Embrace Blogging

World Bank has another new blog out, this time on its Doing Business project. There is a short mention on Malaysia in one of the posts too.

An excellent addition to the World Bank Group existing blogs, which include:

• Private Sector Development
  
• Poverty and Growth
  
• End Poverty in South Asia
  
• Innovations in Emerging Markets

Careful observers would have noticed that World Bank's sister organisation, the IMF, has also started blogging, including by its very Research Director, the famous MIT professor Simon Johnson:

• Public Financial Management
• Simon Johnson's Blog

On a slightly tangential note, private sector from all over the world has long embraced blogging as useful tool of communication, and currently the public sector is fast following suit.

This note from David Miliband, the Secretary of State of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the UK Government, succinctly captures the pragmatism of embracing blogging:

Politics should be about dialogue and debate, and new technology makes this more possible than ever. But the gap between politicians and the public seems to be growing.

This is why in my last ministerial job I began writing a blog. I found it a great way to engage with people: to explain my work and my thinking in a more personal and less formal way than the usual Ministerial speeches; and to hear directly what people thought of what I was doing.

As Foreign Secretary I want to keep blogging. But it will need to be a conversation with people across the world, as well as with the people of Britain.

At the heart of this is the idea that diplomats need to reach out beyond governments to talk to people – at home and around the world. I want to explain to you the decisions we are making and what we are trying to achieve. And I want to hear from you what you think about what we're doing, what we could do better, and how we can solve problems which affect us all, such as conflict, climate change and poverty.

And in stark contrast, these are the learned opinions of our leaders back home, which quite accurately reflect the overall perception on blogging by our government:

"There are no laws in the cyberworld except for the law of the jungle. As such, action must be taken so that the "monkeys" behave."

- Khairy Jamaluddin

"The public should be wise in identifying the websites of goblok (Indonesian slang for “stupid”) bloggers, who are willing to be tools of others to destroy the nation...

These writers do not have an Asian mentality but lean towards a Western thinking because they were educated overseas... Thus they assume that the Western style of democratic freedom is better. The goblok writers only have their own interests at heart and should be ignored"

- Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin.

Sigh.

PS: I am still waiting for comments on my previous post =)