Atom Feed
January 29, 2009
I recently in passing lamented the lack of links from the new Whitehouse.gov to George Bush’s version. Matthew Battles has pointed me to the archive of it. He also points to the version right after Bush’s 2001 election, which is hilariously bellbottomsy in aspect.
January 23, 2009
Nicholas Lemann has a terrific piece in the Jan. 26 New Yorker that says that personal characteristics are not enough to make someone a great president. To achieve that status, Obama “has to create institutions that will outlast him.” His examples are the United Nations, NATO, and social “legislation and regulation that affect very large numers of people and are built to last politically and economically…”
One could certainly point to health care as possibly being of that status, especially if Daschle steps up the game so that it’s more than reform ‘n’ extend. It’s also possible that building a new world role for America could put Obama in the Hall of Great Presidents even if no official institutions come out of it. Likewise if his action on global warming and all around greenness changes not just our policies but our assumptions. But let me suggest another place Obama could do something monumental. Yes, the Internet. And, yes, I do understand that this is not as important as world hunger and poverty. Nevertheless…
There are two basic ways a government can use the Internet. First, it can automate and improve existing processes, greasing the gears of government. From this, one gets efficiencies, cost savings, shorter lines, and occasionally frustrated citizens who can’t find anyone to explain to them why nothing happens when they click on that link…
Second, the government can use the Internet as a way of increasing the intimacy of government. This itself can be divided into three parts: Intimacy among members of the government, among the citizenry, and among the government and the citizens. (Note: All of these divisions are messy and overlapping. What else would you expect?)
Intimacy implies three things: We know one another better, we trust one another more, and we care about one another more deeply. (And even though talking about intimacy among government workers is somewhat creepy, I’m going to stick with the word.)
The first category — intra-government intimacy — is the least interesting and least urgent. It would entail taking advantage of the various social networking technologies, and perhaps thinking anew about the trade-offs between security and knowledge, as is happening in the intelligence community … [added a few minutes after posting] as with social software experiments already underway throughout the government. Maybe Hillary Clinton can experiment with letting some branches of State twitter. [Note, minutes later: Micah Sifry points out that people at State are already twittering, and there is a social network in place.]
More interesting are the ways in which democracy can become more intimate among citizens and between citizens and government. Intimacy there both provides new tools for action and reinvigorates democracy itself.
I am not suggesting that we set up a Bureau of Intimacy that comes forward with a 94-part plan. Rather, if we recognize that we have this opportunity, our government and we ourselves can start doing some stuff. Like what?
The lowest hanging fruit at the moment is WhiteHouse.gov. It’s a big step forward from the previous occupant’s version (and, by the way, where is the link to the archive of that version?), but it’s trying to convince us that Obama is swell. Ack. The White House is ours, not any president’s, and WhiteHouse.gov ought to be ours as well. That doesn’t mean we get to write it ourselves. Rather, it ought to be thought through from the point of view of what we, the citizens, want and need.
One easy change: Get the blog right. Right now it’s press release stuff. No comments. No links. In other words, it’s only a blog because it says it is. How about hiring a couple of bloggers who will take the point of view of citizens writing from a unique vantage point: The freaking White House. What’s it like? And how about some vigorously argued pieces from officials? And, why not stir in guest bloggers for a week at a time, people who actually know how to blog? (The rules might be something like: It has to be family-friendly, and it’s about the White House, not about the individual blogger.) As the blog gets more confident, it could start engaging more with what the blogosphere is saying. They could even turn on comments at some point.
Another relatively easy change: Start allowing officials to engage in the blogosphere.
Slowly, the administration might want to introduce social networking services designed for citizenry. This doesn’t have to be on the scale of Facebook. And it probably wouldn’t be introduced by the government because we’re more likely than the government to come up with the right system. (Disclosure: I’m on the board of advisers of the Open Resource Group which is offering open source conversation software for each Congressional district. Who knows?)
But we don’t have to wait for a good citizen networking site to open. We can make our democracy more intimate through many small steps. Intimacy can become pervasive. For example, transparency is usually touted as a requirement for accountability. But it also can be seen in the light of intimacy: Transparency leads to intimacy if we have the tools by which we can make sense together of what we now can see.
Intimacy sounds like it’s about feel-good democracy. It’s not. Real intimacy is built on truth, and truth worth a damn requires trust. This is not the trust of a buyer and seller but of people who care about one another. Truth, trust and caring are in a reciprocal relationship. They are, one might say, intimately related. And, if they do result in our feeling good about our democracy, literally only the most cynical will object.
January 8, 2009
This widget comes via Ask Your Lawmaker. (Thanks to Deborah Elizabeth Finn for the link.)
January 1, 2009
This systems seems really good. You cast your vote using a computer, but the computer prints out a paper document. This prevents the ambiguity that inevitably occurs when users directly fill out paper ballots, such as when a voter fills in one circle by mistake and then puts an X through it. The resulting paper ballot shows the choices the voter made and includes a bar code for optical scanning. The software is entirely open source. It uses off-the-shelf, inexpensive components.
By the way, open source paper ballots is the leading idea in the Tech Policy section of Change.org’s contest.
December 29, 2008
The Obama transition site has started up a second round of “Open for Questions,” in which anyone can pose a question, we get to vote on our favorites, and the transition team responds.
Here’s the first round.
I like the symbolism of this. It signals not only an interest in open government, but a trust in citizens, a willingness to experiment, and a desire to put technology to use. But, I hope this time they answer more of the questions.
December 21, 2008
Joe Trippi is doing a chat at FireDogLake. Here’s one of his responses:
I think we are about to see the first “Connected” presidency. JFK was the first Television president — Obama will be first “connected” president — and congress is going to be the big loser in all this — because I think we are going to see a President directly connected to more Americans than any other President in history — and when 25 members of Congress are standing in the way of health care reform — they are going to find themselves standing between Barack and a hard place — between the President and millions of Americans organizing to pass his agenda. On the other hand the Obama administration is the Wright Brothers now — no one has ever done this before and there is a lot they could get wrong — being too careful and listening too much to the Washington establishment.
December 11, 2008
What really thrills me about the new question tool the Obama administration has posted at Change.gov is not the tool itself — although I like it very much — but the webby way it was introduced: Put it up, see what happens, adjust it as necessary. Imagine this approach applied by the federal government off the Web when appropriate.
I also like that the explanatory text for the “Skip question” button is “meh.”
Apture, a free app I’ve been using on this site for many months, enriches links. You select a phrase in your blog and click the magic button, and Apture suggests links to you from multiple sources and in multiple formats. You select the ones you want, and Apture then puts a link in your post that, when clicked, pops up the selected info, and will play even play the selected video or whatever that. For example, here’s an Apture link that will display info that I’ve selected about Madonna.
Now Apture has done a special data collection for Congresspeople. Great idea. Click on the little Congressional dome next to the Nancy Pelosi’s name to see an example. (The Washington Post has started using Apture for this.)
December 4, 2008
John Horrigan of Pew Internet & American Life project wonders what their online research says about possible national broadband policies, if we were ever to have one. The essay begins this way:
…America’s middling standing in world rankings on broadband adoption has served as a call to arms for the new administration to develop a national broadband strategy…
The body of research from the Pew Internet Project, dating to 2000, indicates that online Americans might have one more suggestion: Make sure the internet remains a place where users define what it means to be digitally connected.
John points to many-to-many collaboration as the new wave, and refers us to research showing that while 42% of cell phone users use them for something other than making a call, that number is even higher for minority groups. So, a national broadband policy should not only keep the bands open for innovation, but it should cover wireless devices and other devices. And, suggests John, as e-gov services are rolled out, they ought to be held to a very high standard for usability.
“Only connect“? Nah. Connect everyone, with whatever devices they want, and with the freedom to go where they want and invent what they want.
December 3, 2008
Change.gov, the transition site, has moved its content to a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. So, anyone can use it so long as they attribute it back to its source. Very cool.
Open content is, of course, a creativity magnet. Already, apps have sprung up that let you get Change.gov content on your iPhone and as a widget elsewhere.
A government whose first instinct is toward openness! What a difference a mere 69 million votes can make!
Next: Putting government under revision control, as Tim O’Reilly advocates.
Joho the Blog uses WordPress blogging software.
Thank you, WordPress!
