How Social Software Can Improve Democracy

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 9, 2008 @01:07AM from the liveblogs-from-the-senate-floor dept.

Geek Satire writes "Politics breeds cynicism; politicians seem to pander to contradictory focus groups to get elected, then break their promises to everyone. Mass mailings and faxings overwhelm their staffs, and who knows if you can tell your representatives what you really think? Experienced techie and political consultant Silona Bonewald (creator of the Transparent Federal Budget) believes that simple software solutions can fix these problems and more. O'Reilly News recently discussed with her how social software can improve democracy and leadership."

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Ways to get involved in civic-technology projects by taubz · 2008-11-09 02:49 · Score: 5, Informative

There is a growing but now well-established community of techies focusing on this at the federal level, especially for the U.S. Congress. There are open-source projects like my GovTrack.us http://www.govtrack.us/getinvolved.xpd and oGosh!: Open Government Open Source Hacking http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OGosh and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=45606565313.
There's no end to what techies can do to work on improving civic life. I really encourage you to check out any of those links to get involved.