Slashdot Mirror
How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?
UltraAyla writes "With the announcement that President-Elect Obama will record his weekly address as a YouTube video to be posted at Change.gov, questions arise as to how an Internet-fueled candidacy based in part on a platform of government openness can begin to use technology to make government transparent. Aside from popular Slashdot policies, such as Net Neutrality, how do you think government (either in the United States or elsewhere) can best utilize technology to engage the public and make government more transparent and accessible?"
Reader Rick Zeman points out a related New York Times story about how Obama will have to give up some of his communications gadgets because of the Presidential Records Act. Despite that, he apparently hopes to be the first US president to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office.
"Obama for America" is (was?) the legal name of his Presidential campaign.
I'm frankly surprised that that is the case and I wonder if it isn't the law per se as much as a somewhat hidebound cya interpretation of the law.
Obviously, we can't have the president using some goofy webmail account loaded with cross site vulnerabilities and hosted god-knows-where, nor can we have him using the RNC mailserver, beyond the reach of document retention laws*cough*. That said, though, email security and retention are not exactly rocket surgery. Strong crypto is a consumer level technology at this point, and virtually every corporation of any size already has experience with massive email retention. If anything, it is easier to build a retention system for electronic documents than it is to build one for paper documents in equivalent volume.
You're missing the point--it's not that they can'tbuild a retention system, it's that they don't want one. They don't want every word or thought (or lobbyist/Abramoff buying them off) captured for posterity.
Plus, the NSA would probably shit a brick if the Pres had a Blackberry since every BES packet flows through a foreign country.
It wasn't removed, just re-arranged. In fact it's still under "Agenda", the fifth tab in from the right and under the "Change.gov" logo at the top. From there you can click on any particular policy you want to know about.
Or just go to: http://www.change.gov/agenda/
This was his campaign website during the elections. Pretty sure a lot of the policy stuff is the same, here.
HTH,
Bill
Graphics are actually one very heavily used thing in congress. Nearly every senator puts one up when they're talking about something and the reps like to put one up and hoot in front of it while throwing shit at each other. One of these days I hope a representative decides to put up a picture of Goatse.
Anyway, I went off on a tangent. Point is, folks use graphs to prove their point all the time in government. Doesn't change the fact that nobody cares.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
Humans don't naturally question leadership. They accept leadership decisions as absolute. Increasing the reach of leadership through GooTube broadcasts, radio broadcasts, & loudspeakers driving around the streets merely reinforces leadership decisions.
Absolutely. The beauty of the community model is that there is always a small number of people willing to digest, integrate, and increase the availability of valuable information. Like Wikipedia, 90% of the contributions come from 10% of the participants, but the 90% still reap the benefit. That's known as the power law.
It's off-topic, but let me just say that this is why I want academic journals opened up. I know there's a case to be made against it, and we'll have to deal with those concerns. But I want a world where this community mechanism applies to science, where the operations of different graduate labs across the country are understood in context in an accessible way.
Well work done by government employees does not have copyright. But for most government software they pay outside contractors to develop the software which is then licsenced to the government. This results in the contractor retaining copyright and preventing public distribution of the source code.
In reply, I would point to http://smart-city.re-configure.org/ a chapter in the book Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. People will become more interested in participating when it becomes more exciting to be part of the process and can see the results of their participation.