This interview turned out to be extremely current thanks to the fact that in April 2012 Russia expressed desire to join the Open Government Partnership, OGP – international organization, which unites more than 50 countries.

Jeanne Holm is currently the Chief Knowledge Architect at Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA, where part of her duties is propaganda of innovations in the sphere of knowledge administration and use of social networks. She is currently a member of International Academy of Astronautics, teacher at the University of California, head of e-government group in the W3C consortium, has more than 130 publications on information systems, knowledge administration and innovations. She was honored with many awards, including NASA Medals "For outstanding service" in the category "Leadership" (twice), three Webby awards   from the  International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and  namely thanks to her NASA was honored with four international awards Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) for achievements in knowledge administration.  At present Jeanne Holm is actively working on the implementation of open governmental project of the White House Data.Gov http://www.data.gov/.

Tatiana Ershova asked Jeanne Holm several questions:

• What, to Your view, is the fundamental difference between industrial society and knowledge society?
• Will this new structure with its imperatives of sharing, cooperation and development shake the foundations of the capitalism with its imperatives of competition, personal success and material welfare?
• One of Your activities is to support multi-generational learning. This is a new and a very attractive concept. Could You please explain its essence in a few words?
• There are very different views on modern social media – from rhapsodical to neglecting or even contemptuous. What is the sensible approach, what means utilizing social media and harnessing their power?
• One of Your specialties is inter-agency and inter-organizational knowledge sharing. This is completely beyond traditional paradigm of government functioning where each agency tends to be a "Kapitel fuer sich" (‘thing-in-itself’), at least in my country. How do you think it is possible to change the old paradigm?
• Open government, open data – all these brand new notions are now conquering the world very fast, though a couple of years ago they were discussed mainly by scholars and experts. What do You think is behind this victorious advancement?
• What to Your opinion is an Open Government? Where should the society lay the subtle border between the government’s openness and its function to ensure the nation’s security?
• My traditional question: What would be your message to our readers and all those interested in making Russia an advanced information society?

The full text of the interview will be published in the 6^th issue of the "Information Society" journal edited by IIS.