Running a Town Over Twitter

dkatana writes: You may call Jun an ancient town — it was founded by Romans 2,200 years ago. But Jun's mayor is known worldwide for using the latest technology to run the city. Back in 1999, when he was deputy mayor, the town declared internet a basic universal right for its citizens. And now political parties run "virtual" campaigns without printing posters. But the most impressive accomplishment of Jun's mayor is running the entire town administration and public services using Twitter. He has more followers (350 k) than the mayor of NY. A third of the 3,800 residents have Twitter accounts, and they use the platform to interact with the city administration at all levels.

Comments

So corporatism merging with government.

[o_ferguson]

In other words, fascism.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[TWX]

Not facism when a government uses a service without being a partner to it. After all, the telephone system is private.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, the telephone system is private.

The telephone systems is a fascist monopoly granted to corporates to further white privilege.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, maybe not.

But it is certainly the height of stupidity. Where do they find idiots like this?

What's next? You have to have a Facebook account to get a utility hookup?

This whole social media thing is waaay out of control. Fuck, the Borg have nothing on people like this.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Crashmarik]

Hold it when corporations merge with government it's fascism
When government merges with corporations it's socialism

Good to have that cleared up, I have never been clear on the difference.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[XxtraLarGe]

Hold it when corporations merge with government it's fascism
When government merges with corporations it's socialism

Good to have that cleared up, I have never been clear on the difference.

Think of it as right-totalitarianism vs. left-totalitarianism. One's mostly concerned with your bedroom activities, and the other's concerned about your bankbook. The problem is your bankbook can impact your bedroom activities, or vice versa, so eventually fascism/socialism have to regulate those activities as well. Hence the cause for your confusion. The difference is probably more easily explained using cows.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[David_Hart]

Hold it when corporations merge with government it's fascism

When government merges with corporations it's socialism

Good to have that cleared up, I have never been clear on the difference.

Think of it as right-totalitarianism vs. left-totalitarianism. One's mostly concerned with your bedroom activities, and the other's concerned about your bankbook. The problem is your bankbook can impact your bedroom activities, or vice versa, so eventually fascism/socialism have to regulate those activities as well. Hence the cause for your confusion. The difference is probably more easily explained using cows.

I thought that the standard was to use pigs...

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[swb]

I think fascism as an ideology usually has a predominant nationalistic and ethnic component to it. I think business interests intermeshed with the government is largely a byproduct of a totalitarian political system.

Fascism can be tricky to extrapolate to a specific economic policy because we don't have many functioning examples of governments run by ideological fascists and the ones we do have were short lived and marked by extremes of policy and historical notoriety that make coherent analysis tricky.

The Nazi party (National Socialist German Worker's Party) parlayed its romanticism of the German Volk into some socialist policies while at the same time it coaxed and coerced skeptical German capitalists with big wartime spending.

Somebody once tried to explain fascism as the weird marriage of progressivism and racism into one ideology. I think it's a strangely apt definition that encompasses some of the strange outcomes.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Crashmarik]

The difference is probably more easily explained using cows.

I thought that the standard was to use pigs...

Nope nope, The pigs make the examples the sheep repeat them.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Dutch Gun]

Since when is a government office using Twitter "merging" with it? When government computers run Microsoft Windows, are they also "merging" with Microsoft? When they use a Selectric typewriter, are they "merging" with IBM?

Governments and private industry always have and always will work together. The government doesn't actually *produce* anything, and as such, relies on the private industry for many products and services, just like other businesses do. That's how things work. I'm a little mystified by the knee-jerk auto-outrage.

Mayor José Antonio Rodríguez Salas (@JoseantonioJun) has encouraged all Jun residents to get a Twitter account to communicate easily with the town government. That way they can report issues about public services and infrastructure, send suggestions, participate in the town decisions and “talk” to the mayor and council members directly.

Hmm, I'd tend to call this the exact opposite of fascism.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[TapeCutter]

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[TapeCutter]

The far left of the (traditional) political spectrum is communism. not socialism. It's easy to be confused since in the US media, 'socialist' (like terrorist) is a catch-all phrase that has been used to explain the evils of regimes as diverse as Nazi Germany and Red China. Both communism and fascism are a total(itarian) merge of state, religion, business, and the press into one entity - the (absolutely) powerful and corrupted state. Every other system has some degree of independence between those conflicting power centers, ie: the corruption is still there, but at least it's not absolute.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[o_ferguson]

"Please sign up for this black-box-code, third-party service so that you can know if the trains are running on time." :p

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[swb]

I don't think the media has ever really used the socialist angle on Nazi Germany, at least not as an explanation for its evils. To do so would be to invite confusion into the media's narrative of Nazism as right wing authoritariansm and the political spectrum -- the NSDAP labeled itself as socialist and implemented policies that looked socialist, so how could they be socalist and right-wing at the same time?

Before you know it people would start calling it the common sense party -- get rid of the unproductive, national pride, a strong military, reign in the rich, support the family man who is the backbone of our country...

That's what's so interesting about fascism, as an ideology it doesn't follow the economically driven left-right political definitions clearly.

The wartime nature of Nazi Germany's economy I think confuses the seperation of business and state in fascism. I also think the power of German industrialists relative to the Nazis is understated. Krupp, Thyssen, etc were extremely rich and influential and the Nazis needed their money and backing and their industries working.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're basically required to use a third party private company's service in order to communicate with your -local- government. And only a third of this town's 3,000-some population even has an account. So the only people who really get a voice are those who submit to this corporation. No, that sounds very close to the definition of fascism.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[dunkelfalke]

I don't think the media has ever really used the socialist angle on Nazi Germany, at least not as an explanation for its evils.

Even a German politician used that - Edmund Stoiber, the former Bavarian prime minister once said that Nazis have been socialists first and foremost. He earned a lot of facepalms for that, but then again, everything he has ever said, was just as stupid.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Jack Griffin]

Hmm, I'd tend to call this the exact opposite of fascism.

That's because you're not taking into account that you are in an Internet forum. Here, whatever a government does is fascism.
Capitalism = Fascism
Socialism = Fascism
Left, Right, Up, Down, all Fascism

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Richard_at_work]

The alternative being the government spending money creating a replacement? How is that not worse?

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Ol Olsoc]

The difference is probably more easily explained using cows.

Spherical cows.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Ol Olsoc]

That's how things work. I'm a little mystified by the knee-jerk auto-outrage.

Because this is slashdot. Auto-outrage is what .we do best. A whole collective of Herman Cain's, pissed off about the presidents Libya policy, when not knowing what it even was. But we know we oppose it

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Ol Olsoc]

So you're basically required to use a third party private company's service in order to communicate with your -local- government. And only a third of this town's 3,000-some population even has an account. So the only people who really get a voice are those who submit to this corporation. No, that sounds very close to the definition of fascism.

The third party service argument is a little silly. Even if printed via gutenberg press, the bus schedules are almost certainly going out to a third party for printing.

Running a local guvmint via twitter is stupid for a number of reasons, but fascism isn't one of them. Unless of course the government was fascist to begin with.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[dcw3]

The telephone system is a regulated utility. Twitter, not so much.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[dcw3]

So, via tax dollars, the government is responsible for communicating that schedule to the citizenry. By not doing so, they're not taking on that responsibility, and instead forcing users to sign up for an unwanted service. Why should we have to put up with some kind of sign up, giving private companies more of our info, or putting up with their advertisements, when we've already paid the government, and they should just do their fucking job.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which government requires you to sign up to Twitter to view the train schedule? Not Jun, I assure you. If you want to contact government, you can still go in person, call by telephone, send them an email or Twitter tweet or Facebook post. If you want to view common public information, you visit the government web page without signing up for anything beyond your your standard Internet connection. Twitter and Facebook are nothing but convenience media. Everything you need to see is available on their official website.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Crashmarik]

Not an environmental problem.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[Richard_at_work]

If the government used a website you would still have to sign up for internet access.

If the government used a phone number you can call, you would still have to sign up for phone service.

This is no fucking different to legacy approaches.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[dcw3]

This is no fucking different to legacy approaches.

It's not about fucking internet access, that's not what I stated, I'm talking about creating an account with some private company such as Twitter, FB, etc. The govt. could easily post the data on a .gov site without any signup requirement. We shouldn't have to be beholden to some private company to access data that should published on a simple flippin' govt. site. There's no need for anyone to sign up.

Re:So corporatism merging with government.

[ls671]

Exactly what I was thinking. I do not have a twitter nor a facebook account. I am starting to wonder if I will have to have some of those to fill up my income tax report next year...

Tweeting the street sweeper

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could call the street sweeper to my street here in Burlington. I don't remember the last time I saw it last.

Re:Tweeting the street sweeper

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you. In downtown Toronto street sweepers come by almost every night, late, sometimes 1 AM or 2 AM and wake everyone up. It's because of the endless construction.

Disgusting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interaction with any particular government should not require consuming the services of one particular company. Outsourcing should be a last resort for any function of government, only when it is impossible to employ people directly to provide relevant functions, and only temporarily. But outsourcing long-term to one particular company is the worst.

Having seen their "Twitter monument" in the town centre - a fucking monument to a private company - this passes almost for a parody of privatisation of government.

Re:Disgusting.

[garcia]

The Public Sector does a lot of things well, but it is not great at many others and thus private/public partnerships are an absolute requirement for government to run effectively. If the Public Sector were really out to avoid all outsourcing, it would be detrimental to the core competencies of its staff.

So, if we're to take a step back and say that a lot of government's utilize SIRE or GovDelivery to host, manage, and deliver their documents to the public, are you instead suggesting that the Public Sector bring these functions in-house and build infrastructure and management solutions to do this themselves?

You believe that web/email hosting solutions should not go to IaaS organizations and instead should be handled by high-cost internal IT groups which may not be as inexpensive or effective as those in the Private Sector?

I think your view is incredibly short-sighted for many of the functions of the Public Sector. While the Public Sector *must* do a better job managing the Private, that is besides the point; they simply cannot do what you claim they should, especially while being mindful and reacting quickly to their citizens.

Re:Disgusting.

[Jack Griffin]

While the idea of using Twitter offends me, the concept of outsourcing actually makes a lot of sense in the public sector, especially if you are outsourced to local businesses. This guy is only a mayor of a tiny 3800 person village, so there not much oversight at that level, but any state or federal type service would struggle to get such an idea approved for specifically the reason you mention.

Re:Disgusting.

[Ol Olsoc]

The Public Sector does a lot of things well, but it is not great at many others and thus private/public partnerships are an absolute requirement for government to run effectively.

Noooooooooooo! Jesus man, the libertarians are gonna descend upon you like crocodiles on a wildebeest.

3...2...1....

If...

[digsbo]

such technology were available to Maax, Dar wouldn't have stood a chance.

Jun is a commuter town.

[Nutria]

And I'm betting it's a *wealthy* commuter town.

#GynoGripe

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until the government makes a disparaging comment about videogames. It's actually about ethics in municipal services, they'll say.

Helping a full third of all citizens?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> running the entire town administration and public services using Twitter...a third of the 3,800 residents have Twitter accounts

So...the government is accessible to a full third of all citizens? (And probably not the elderly who need the most services.) What's the win, exactly?

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[jandrese]

That's probably a lot more than the number of people in a normal town who have the time and means to go down to City Hall during business hours to get something done.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as more like a 3rd of the community is actually loosely communicating with the people in charge. That's significantly better then any town you will find in the USA I would wager.

That's entirely different then everyone having access to the DMV or the court house or the ability to dial 911, you know, government services.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think most towns have a lower barrier of accessibility, you're dumber than you should be.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[MerlynEmrys67]

a third of the 3,800 residents have Twitter accounts

That isn't even the most objectionable thing in the summary. I found that the mayor of the town of 3,800 has 350K followers, I can imagine the signal to noise ratio involved there. Does the mayor have to filter through 1000 twits to find one that actually came from a constituent. Even worse if he uses twitter to do simple polling... What does his followers say vs. the people that actually live there.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with listening to a third of the citizens?

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[XxtraLarGe]

So...the government is accessible to a full third of all citizens? (And probably not the elderly who need the most services.) What's the win, exactly?

That depends on whether or not you're a Malthusian...

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

A third of the population means that most families have twitter accounts.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the entire article you'll find that residents register their accounts with the city council. I believe most of them are sending DM to the city, which knows who is a resident.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably he has a private list on Twitter of citizens registered with the city.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Harlequin80]

Where did it say that phones and email and snail mail are no longer available? If anything having 1/3rd of your communication going via twitter you will reduce the load on the other areas and hence reduce waiting time.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[BitZtream]

Or you know, visit a website like any sane town.

Wtf thought using Twitter was a good idea needs to be taken out back and shot.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[BitZtream]

Only if you're (as in you personally) are too stupid to know how to mail a letter.

Are you? Because that's the only way you could be so ignorant as to think Twitter is more accessible than postal service.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're eliminating personal confrontations. That's what. And when you don't talk to someone face to face, it's easier, much, much easier to lie, cheat and steal.

A real mayor doesn't just know about important events in the city, but is actually there when they happen.

Ps communicating so much with the government ... are they really that incompetent they need so much micromanagement?

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't expect most commenters on here to read the articles or even to be able to solve simple technical challenges.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[penguinoid]

Only if you're (as in you personally) are too stupid to know how to mail a letter.

Are you? Because that's the only way you could be so ignorant as to think Twitter is more accessible than postal service.

Acquire stamp
Acquire envelope
Acquire paper
*Acquire computer
*Acquire printer
*Acquire printer ink
Compose message
Print message
Label envelope (note: this step could easily be longer than your average twitter message)
Take message to post office
Wait
Wait
Wait
Wait some more
Wait for message to be cleared by security staff
Wait for message or summary of message to be sent to politician
Hope no one faked your name and address on envelope and message

*some steps can be replaced with a pen, but for many people this may be slower and less legible (but in many places, that marks your message as slightly more important)

What could be simpler?

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

government ... are they really that incompetent they need so much micromanagement?

Really? You're wondering if Governments are incompetent?

Absolutely

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Email

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[Jack Griffin]

What could be simpler?

Email or a web page
A lot more 1/3 of people have it, and it isn't dependent on one foreign entity to make it work.

Oh and not that I send letters much these days, but I'm pretty sure it isn't as difficult as you make out. If my 85 year old grandmother can do it, I'm sure you'll manage.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[umghhh]

what article?

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[jandrese]

Most town websites I've seen are fairly unidirectional. They are for disseminating information out, not for communicating with town officials. Sure they usually have an email address, if you can find the email for the right person in the town.

I guess the advantage of Twitter is that nobody can go on long rambling tirades like they can with email. It enforces brevity.

Re:Helping a full third of all citizens?

[ls671]

you mean, there is an article somewhere?

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer decentralized e-mail mailing lists and RSS feeds/blog comments using whichever apps and OS I choose.

Most politicians already summarize complex issues

[Ukab the Great]

in 140 characters or less.

Re:Most politicians already summarize complex issu

[Trepidity]

Plus these days Twitter gives you 140 characters and an animated GIF, which ought to be more than enough for any political soundbite.

Nice!

[nospam007]

In my town, we communicate with the administration with modulated speech sent over copper cables, or e-mail or we just scribble ink on some dead tree and send it with a courier from the postal service.
Or we just fucking walk there.
Works great and not only one third but three thirds have all that.

Re:Nice!

[Harlequin80]

And in this town they communicate with the administration via modulated speech sent over copper cables, or e-mail or scribbled ink on some dead tree or via electronic instant messaging system.

Get off Slashdot's lawn!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can just imagine the nerdgasm here if a town somewhere started using USENET to run government business. But now that the old folks on Slashdot are too crotchety to use something as newfangled as Twitter, it's a moral outrage.

Unless the town literally stopped using any other method to communicate then this is just increasing peoples access to government. If you are against that then there is something really wrong with you.

My Twitter acc

[Whiteox]

I've had twitter for about 6 years now and I still don't know how to use it.
Occasionally I get an email from them that Thomas Lennon posted something. When I open it, there is a single post by him which I don't really understand, followed by a bunch of other posts by randoms that don't make sense.
Is that's what twitter is about?

140 Characters

[BadPirate]

Hi Mayor, and thank you for taking the time to hear my issue. I'd like to whistle blow to report a member of the city council his name is J

Re:Most politicians already summarize complex issu

[penguinoid]

Yes but most politicians talk in feel-good empty-speech which doesn't make any promises nor commitments (but hints as though they were) and usually doesn't even express an opinion (but hints as though it were the same opinion as yours).

Phishing

[manu0601]

For civil servants, receiving instructions from city mayor directly through twitter looks like a beg for social engineering.

Mayor of NY

[Anonymous Coward]

NY is a state (New York). It has a governor. Cities have a mayor, not states.

Nice headline!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had this image of a small town uplifted onto wheels and being used to run over Twitter, putting an end to Twitter several years early.

promoting a walled garden

[swell]

I RTFA (cute story) and I'm finding mostly negative comments here. I feel the same way but am looking for a positive aspect.

Can Twitter produce a verified historical trail of messages relevant to an investigation? Where I live, government and utility officials are being forced to reveal their communications for the last several years (it seems there is a possibility of corruption, yes unthinkable but there you have it).

Can a person be clearly held responsible for statements they have made (no chance of a hacked account)? Will Twitter still exist in three or seven years? Is there any provision for private, secret communication on Twitter? (I don't know the answers, I'm not a member.)

I know nothing about Twitter but that it is fast and convenient for casual communication. That's probably good for some informal government/citizen/media interaction. "Hey, streetsweeper, could you pass by my street next week?" Could it be used for voting or serious polling of public opinion? I doubt it--after all it is a closed, proprietary, walled garden part of the Real Internet which is available to almost everyone. Email and snailmail seem to carry more weight where I live and voice phone calls are remarkably potent for getting bureaucrats and politicians to respond.

There, I looked for a positive aspect but found little. Sorry.

Re:promoting a walled garden

[Jack Griffin]

The worst part is that the people who use Twitter tend to be the left side of the bell curve. So the 2/3rd of people that don't use it are having their views shouted out by the minority of attention whores who feel the need to announce every emotion they are feeling at any given time. The benefit of writing a letter is it gives you time to reflect on your opinion. This can only end in tears.

Re:promoting a walled garden

[Anonymous Coward]

to be the left side of the bell curve

Are you now talking about IQ, or politics, or what? (Oh wait, have I just repeated myself there???)

Why is everyone so upset?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand all the anger against this. Yes, it isn't a perfect system. As programmers we always are trying to find the perfect system. This is politics, it deals with people and as such can never be perfect. If you have a third of the populous listening to you, you've effectively beaten the US (my home country) in voter awareness. Now, there is an argument to be said of over-saturation. That is, it makes the incumbent's voice louder than the opposition's. However, that can, and will (if not has already been), be resolved by the adoption of the same platform by competing views.

Bottom line, is everyone upset over the government using technology to engage in conversation with it's constituents, or upset over the idea of evil (government) using good (technology) to progress the social construct that is government? I mean, I'm a libertarian, but damn...

Twitter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all things. How long until we outsource all of our government?

I was seriously considering (I'm in Geermany) outsourcing the parliament to India. They'd be more friendly, probably more helpful and way cheaper -- and every four years they could run an election simulation to keep the customers happy.

Little would change, I think.

(captcha was "liberty"... mpffht :)

Sounds good, if government provides internet acces

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the problem here, it's certainly nice that most of the work can happen out in the open so we can all keep an eye on what our (local municipal) government does with our taxes.

But people without internet, pc and/or smartphone will have a problem if this becomes an on-line exclusive.

Like how the government pays for the mailboxes all over town, and has an address you can send your mail to, they should provide you with internet access so you can talk to them, in case you don't have any.

This can be in the form of a public PC in a library.

You call that editing

[DudeTheMath]

Would it kill you to add "a suburb of Granada, Spain" to the summary?

Re:Most politicians already summarize complex issu

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes sense. Why should a politician promise something they know they cannot fulfill? I know you may be cynical about politicians and the truth (how do you know a politician is lying: he's moving his lips) but it's not always feasible to promise then difficult to fulfill requests. I wouldn't complain about an empty feel-good speech that goes nowhere, I would complain about the performance of recent history compared to election promises as well as governance that would negatively affect the society in the long run.