Phil Becker in the opening session just said: "universal networking drives information towards the public domain."  This resonates with something Ray Ozzie said yesterday: "what if all email was public?"  Governments deal with this issue more than other organizations because there is an expectation that government information is public domain by default and private only in specific circumstances.  Powerful forces fight at the interface of these two domains. I do know that having all email public would make most people uncomfortable.    I don't know that anyone has studied the effect of networks on the public nature of government.  Sounds like a good masters thesis for a technically inclined political scientist.