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.

Comments

Executive Privilege

[Renaissance 2K]

I didn't realize, until reading this article, that law is what forced the presidents to remain unwired. I just always assumed they were out of touch with the technological curve.

Still, that makes the president the only American citizen completely immune to spam, phishing, and those annoying e-mails laden with photos of dogs dressed up like superheroes.

That's some pretty hearty executive privilege.

Re:Executive Privilege

[porcupine8]

Yeah, I was pretty surprised at that. I understand that there may be security risks, but it seems like the pros would outweigh the cons. And while Obama may be able to do his job without a blackberry or any email at all, with only a slight loss in efficiency, what about presidents 20, 30 years from now? I imagine that at some point there will come a time when such restrictions actually get in the way of the president's job in a meaningful way.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[russotto]

Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

But the laws aren't actually made there, either, except in a few rare cases. The laws are written by lobbyists and decided upon in behind the scenes deals; the committee meetings usually just ratify the deals already made. And in those rare cases, the committee meets in closed session.

How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

[John Hasler]

You mean one that values appearance over substance, is full of malware and bugs, crashes a lot, and isn't even compatible with itself? That's the usual kind. We've already got one. Worldwide, we've got hundreds.

comm theory

[globaljustin]

to add a little comm theory to your point...

technology doesn't fundamentally change communication (whether it be words, pictures, video, or audio). It may change the style and method of delivery (the 'channel' and 'code') but the content of what is being communicated does not change.

'web 2.0' is a nothing term. some try to pin it down with a technical definition that is usually along the lines of 'web pages that automatically refresh' or somesuch, but the fact is, its usage is so broad that any effort to make it a useful, defined term is pointless. once marketing people and Time magazine got ahold of it, it was finished...

Obama's administration is going to re-open the channels of communication between the exec. branch and the populace. They will do so using all technology CURRENTLY AVAILABLE including YouTube and Facebook. FDR did the same thing with his fireside chats.

Obama isn't doing anything particularly novel...but having an executive who actually communicates effectively with his constituents IS going to be very different from what we've had!

Re:comm theory

[daigu]

I'm sorry, but the medium fundamentally changes the message. One example among legions: a hand written thank you note on a good card that you took the time to mail after a job interview sends a completely different message than an email - even if the words used in both are identical.

Spend some time thinking about the last time complex emotions were conveyed using television. Try listening to this interview with Neil Gaiman that has a brief discussion about A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where something works over radio that doesn't work over television or in a movie.

Style and method of delivery are part of the content.

Re:comm theory

[LingNoi]

I just call it more then one site I need to allow on noscipt.

Web 2.0, where websites insist on you loading over 10 websites worth of javascript crap.

Re:comm theory

[ScentCone]

run up a multi-trillion dollar debt, fight an undeclared war

Check with Congress. The president can't spend a dime that the congress doesn't collect as taxes and authorize as a budget item. And, presuming you're talking about Iraq (or were you talking about Bill Clinton's use of the military in, say, Kosovo - no war declared there, either), the president didn't use force there, either, until congress specifically authorized it.

deliberately sabotage attempts of the majority

Which majority are you referring to, exactly? If you mean that the party with more seats in congress doesn't always get its way when it can't muster a super majority of votes in the senate, but seem to think that this has only been true while the current administration has been in the executive branch, then you are really being myopic about it. Were you not around while Dems were filbustering the Republican majority in the legislature? Or when the party in the majority had its agenda "sabotaged" by Bill Clinton? What makes your particular, contemporary dislike for the centuries-old system of checks and balances worth a second glance? It's not new, not even close.

And lest you think that a particular idealogy is somehow moving into a sweet spot of sweeping unamimous authority and some large mandate come January, remember that Obama only won by 6% of the people that voted, and that as usual, close to half of the people who could have voted did not bother to do so. And of the seats gained by the democrats in congress and the senate, many of those newly won seats are now occupied by very conservative dems who are not at all of the Pelosi/Reid stripe. But even if they were, would you really expect their political opponents to cease to vote on behalf of those who re-elected them? Should the democrats, when they were most recently in the minority, have given up their own principles and not voted according to their own values? Why? Do you really think that whoever owns the most legislative seats should expect to be able to steamroll the wishes of the other half of the country?

If one party as a very good case for something, they should have no trouble getting a majority of the votes to back them. It happens when it needs to. And it doesn't happen when the sponsor of the legislation is weak on the issue - and that's exactly how it should be.

ignore the constitution when it's convenient

Specifically?

That the President isn't actually running an undeclared war

Against who? The Taliban wasn't a nation-state. It was a brutal movement of armed thugs from other countries that was occupying Afghanistan's meager civic roles and marketplaces and harboring another group that had been carrying out terrorist attacks around the world for years. The constitution's language surrounding war declaration doesn't even fit that situation. Would you have just sat on your hands, then? And what of Saddam Hussein? The hostilities he started when he invaded Kuwait never ended. The UN's sanctions against his regime were never relieved because he never complied with the terms of his withdrawl from that nation, and never stopped shooting at coalition aircraft. For years. So, should a declaration of war have been used to aid Kuwait? How about Somalia? How about in Kosovo? Should one be issued before we could aid peacekeepers in Darfur? Why?

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Meccanica]

dumbing down the work of government to cartoon-form, with nothing more than a series of 5-second sound-bites, then good luck. But that's not government in action, it's a soap-opera.

I've always heard it called 'television news'.

Re:We can do better - visualization

[xant]

Actually, I just thought of another one: how about a visualization of the ways Congress and the President are spending their time. Group the time spent in various ways ("Bookkeeping", "military issues", "energy policy", "inappropriately texting interns"...) and allow us input on how the group as a whole spends its time. They work for us, goddammit, and we should get a say in what they focus on. I'm a boss at work, and when I think one of my engineers is spending too much time on a particular trivial task, I'll let them know what I think they should work on instead.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[omeomi]

nobody is interested because 99% of it is BS anyway. Do you think listening to Bush's radio address will actually make you more informed about facts or about inane talking points that'll be repeated by news shows as "news" anyway? Give the public actual information and I think you'll find them more interested

Direct democracy

[rwa2]

Right now we don't have a "real" democracy in the same way the ancient Greeks practiced it... the U.S. has a representative democracy where we elect a few people to make all of our decisions for us. I don't think this is a bad idea considering the scalability issues. However, the Web 2.0 age could allow people to have more direct input and metrics in the decisions they really care about, and not just give up their choice to whatever their elected representative feels on that one particular issue.

The easiest way to give the control back to the people would be to give them some control over how their taxes are allocated. Right now, we pay a certain percentage of our income in taxes, and the government decides how much to budget for each department. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually "earmark" your tax dollars? Don't want to support the war in Iraq? Want a certain percentage of your taxes to go support the Dept. of Education or NASA space exploration instead? This would be a great way of directly measuring people's priorities, and give people the sense that the work they do to make money does not go towards what they consider "waste".

Right now, we sort of have an indirect way of controlling where our tax money goes... you can make tax-deductible contributions to certain charities, or at best you can feed up to $2500 or so to a Political Action Committee to lobby your elected representatives for you. Both of those methods strike me as rather inefficient.

The government can start small... giving people control over a small percentage of their taxes and gradually increase it as the new balance of power is worked out. Also, maybe they could limit it to a fixed amount per capita, so the people who pay lots of tax don't get a disproportionate amount of control.

Anyway, I'd like to have more control over where my tax dollars go, and increase competitiveness within the government organizations to show that they put the money to good use.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Think of it like source code. Have I personally read the kernel code? Nope. Have other people? Yes. Did I gain a benefit from that? Yes.

Not everyone has to be able to sit through every committee meeting. But all it takes is one person pointing out the interesting point for everyone to tune in to.

Re:rm -rf

[grcumb]

done.

Done like dinner, you mean.

I don't know that I've ever seen a more (inadvertantly) astute summary of the 'small government' argument. Using rm as a tool to remove the operating system that makes its own existence and purpose possible is directly analogous to the argument that we should use government to shrink itself.

Logically, it can only end in disaster. The moment government cedes its ability to operate in a particular area (and in this example, it's /bin), it ceases to be effective.

We all know that the libertarian approach wants simply to reduce waste and reduce the government 'footprint'. BUT... that's not practicable. As we've seen from all of the small-government proponents who took office, the effect is the inverse to what voters intended - deregulation becomes license for special interests (most often corporate leaders) to run rampant in pursuit of short-term interests. And that is precisely what regulation was supposed to avoid.

And still, government grows.

It grows because those very same interests who laud deregulation in some areas actually want and require regulation in others - again, to protect their own short-term interests.

The issue of what role government should play and the question of what constitutes (heh) an appropriate size are critically important to a healthy democracy, and in that sense, libertarianism provides a healthy, skeptical check on the desire of some to govern everything, all the time. But the discussion has to begin with the premise that some regulation and legislation must exist in order to protect the long-term health of the government and the people.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[plopez]

The proper analogy is that the original government was like Unix

Wrong still. The original platform was formed by committee, with compromises over features, scope and departmental subsystems roles (i.e. state's rights). It was based on compromises and feature creep. 10 new features, called the bill of rights, were added at the last minute when some user balked at adopting the platform as not user friendly enough. Since original deployment, the platform has been modified an number of times with features being officially added and removed. Other features have been extended, added or deprecated in often creative ways by super users (often referred to as "presidents" or SCOTUS). See previously mentioned bill of rights. There has been a growing tendency for the super user to have root access without sharing the password other power users, even though the original program called for decentralization of roles.

HTH

Re:Step 1 - Get the MORONS out of government....

[John Hasler]

You are in for a crushing disappointment (unless you are a True Believer). While Obama does not appear to be a moron himself there will be plenty in his administration.