Dave Witzel's blog

DC's Digital Public Square

2008-10-24T13:11:41-04:00

Yesterday Nancy Scola gave a great overview of the "Apps for Democracy" challenge. The contest is a way to promote and enhance the amazing, real-time, data catalog the District of Columbia has made available to the public.

In September, Washington DC's CTO, Vivek Kundra spoke at an event hosted by Forum One called Web Sites Without Walls: Influential Strategies for Data and Content Syndication. In his talk he points out that 80% of what government does is public yet government tends to guard data and argue why it should be withheld. When government data is made available, it tends to be late, incomplete, and difficult to use.

Kundra went on to describe DC's version of Jefferson's concept of the "public square," a modern "digital public square," where data is available to for-profit and non-profit organizations and government workers have modern technology tools to support their work. The Fenty administration's vision of an open, participatory government where citizens can hold government responsible using current data is refreshing and exciting.

Here are Kundra's slides with audio - a well-spent 12 minutes. After you get pysched up by this talk, go ahead and join the Apps for Democracy contest.

Creating the Digital Public Square

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wes08sep forumone)

Yesterday's Word Was "Defense"

2008-09-11T16:23:16-04:00

And the day before it was "energy." At least it was in the Congressional Record according to the Sunlight Foundation's Capitol Words project. (Disclosure: PdF's Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry serve as senior strategic advisors to the Sunlight Foundation.) On Tuesday I moderated a panel about sharing web content at the National Press Club where Sunlight's Clay Johnson gave a great overview of this fun and useful tool.

Capitol Words gives you a "the most common word used that day" perspective into what is happening on Capitol Hill. It uses data from the Congressional Record as compiled in Louis (which happens to be down right now. Something about the Louis server having an unfortunate encounter with a pot of coffee.)

Data goes back to January 2000 opening up the opportunity to see topics change (or not), over time. Clay gave this example of June 2008 when energy policy was clearly the focus of much debate.

Of course, as he pointed out, energy was also the topic of conversation in June 2007 and even before, in June 2005. Is there something we need to learn from history here?

Inspired by Clay's talk I had to see what the Congressional Record looked like with the text visualizations at IBM's "many eyes." So I scraped the Congressional Record for the House for one day (giving me new respect for the value of Louis!) I ended up with a tag cloud, a "wordle" (kind of like a tag cloud) and, my favorite, the word tree.

I'm convinced -- the potential for using new visualizations and smart database manipulation to improve the work of government is a rich arena.

September? Already?

2008-09-10T12:26:42-04:00

With all the noise from the people campaigning to govern it is easy to forget that there is still governing going on. So, in the spirit of "policy, not (much) politics," here's a summary of some interesting non-campaign activities of note.

Publications

Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Deliberation: A Framework for Action [pdf] - though based on a conference held in 2005 (my how time flies) this 51 page report provides still-useful insights into creating, sustaining, and profiting from online citizen engagement.
Leveraging Web 2.0 in Government - from IBM's Center for the Business of Government this 41 page report defines "web 2.0" for government managers, summarizes opportunities, and identifies barriers. It warns that "governments may become increasingly remote to the citizens of tomorrow" and that government needs to "move away from portals to citizen-centric Web 2.0 applications such as 'mashups' to deliver products and services to users’ devices."

Events

Democracy 2.0 Grant Summit - Money in Politics (Sept. 18-21, Washington DC) - Hosted by Mobilize.org, the summit "presents members of the Millennial Generation with the opportunity to identify a need in the local, state, or national political arena, develop an idea or solution that would address that need, and present a proposal for funding."
Here Come the Millennials, Politics Beware (Sept. 18, Washington DC) - The Internet Advocacy Roundtable hosts a talk by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of the book Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.

Blogs
If you haven't yet, check out Craig Colgan's Municipalist blog which claims it is "Fearlessly investigating the dark and mysterious world of public sector blogging." And indeed it is, with over two-dozen profiles of public sector bloggers. I didn't even know there were that many!

Okay, back to the campaign now.

Little Known Fact: Sara Palin Storms Twitter

2008-08-29T17:03:33-04:00

A major party candidate picking as his running mate the little-known Governor of a large but remote state has at least one humorous by-product - a desperate and wide-spread attempt to learn more about her. The result is the "Little Known Facts about Sara Palin" meme. Go ahead, it is Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend -- indulge yourself.

Helping the Man via Software: Mozilla for Government

2008-07-23T10:54:45-04:00

Last month Matthew Burton wrote a stimulating essay 'Why I Help "The Man", and Why You Should Too' generating responses like "Right on!," "a spectacular essay," and "Hear! Hear! (I even got a little choked up.)" In the essay Matt says "We need a Mozilla Foundation for the government."

Now, encouraged by the response, he's taking more steps to define his open-source-support-of-government vision. This afternoon at 2pm Matt will be taking questions and comments online about the essay and the Mozilla for government concept. He'd even take questions about his other projects including Readable Laws and Speechology.

Submit your questions now and come back later today to join in while Matt is online.

Twitter in a Teacup III: Could this be Progress?

2008-07-13T21:50:08-04:00

When I finally hit "publish" on Friday's post, "Twitter in a Teacup Part Deux: The Speaker Has Spoken," I figured I could safely head for the beach free from concern that anything exciting would happen before I made it back inside the beltway on Monday. Boy was I wrong.

The Gray Lady picked up the story today (p. A21 in the National edition). Falcone chose to emphasize the partisan angle writing "But some Republicans, like Mr. Culberson and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, are crying foul. They say the proposals are an attack on free speech and fear that Democrats will seek more restrictions." Otherwise, the old media got the story pretty much as it has unfolded on twitter.

However, they missed the big plot twist. On Friday Representative Culberson (R, Houston) posted a response to Speaker Pelosi's letter from the day before. In it, without any partisan posturing, he makes an entirely reasonable suggestion. Quoting his letter:

With good reason, there are no restrictions on our ability to conduct radio, television or newspaper interviews or conversations in our official capacity, and these interviews are often done using our office computers or telephones. These interviews can and often do appear in the same publication or broadcast alongside political or commercial advertising.

There is no logical distinction between communications using these old media outlets and communications using new media on the Internet. Therefore, I am recommending that our House rules treat communication over new media outlets on the Internet the same way we treat communication over the old, traditional media outlets. That is, without any restrictions except for common sense, including no video or photographs from the House floor.

What's more, Rep. Culberson said he shouldn't have made this a partisan issue. In an interview with O'Reilly's Tim O'Brien, Culberson said "I made a mistake in even mentioning Democrat or Republican... the community has helped me understand to keep the partisan labels out of it, that's good advice which I have taken to heart." He also gives props to twitterer @technosailor for helping him understand how to focus his attention.

Anyway, the storm I had downgraded from a kerfuffle to a mere brouhaha and fully expected to blow away out to sea has taken a constructive turn. Rep. Culberson wants to "bring the House of Representatives into the 21st Century and help shine sunlight into the operations of the People's House." That's something we can all get behind.

Oh. And here's a picture of the beach.

[Thanks to scriptingnews for the Fail Whale image and Rob Kohn for the beach whales.]

Twitter in a Teacup Part Deux: The Speaker Has Spoken

2008-07-11T09:47:58-04:00

I'm officially downgrading "twitter in a teacup" or, as Nancy Scola branded it, "twitter dome" from a kerfuffle to a mere brouhaha. Capping an exciting day of flying tweets (Let Our Congress Tweet counted 356 tweets tagged #LOTC08 this morning) and crashing blog posts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally weighed in.

After demonstrating her social media quals by pointing out "I have a blog, use YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Digg, and other new media to communicate with constituents," Speaker Pelosi's letter finally gets to the meat of the matter, saying "inaccurate rumors have been circulated asserting that the suggested standards allowing for web video outside of the House.gov domain would affect Member blogging or use of sites such as Twitter."

There you have it - the rumors are inaccurate. And I take some comfort in knowing that Speaker Pelosi reads @shelbinator's blog. (I assume it is in her feed reader, right next to LOLcat of the day.) There is some more detailed discussion of the aftermath on the Open House Project list including of Rep. Capuano's response to the response to his letter that set this whole thing off.

Two important lessons we should take:

First, two-way, timely, frank, communications with Congress is a big deal for both parties. Moreover, there is already a core of aware, connected people, willing to improve communications. We should build on this.

Second, who owns the infrastructure matters. The issue is broader than "are Congresspeople misusing public resources by sending campaign snail mail masquerading as official business." As Mark Tapscott points out, people are smart enough to recognize the ad next to a YouTube video doesn't mean an endorsement. We take for granted that communications with our elected officials will be mediated by commercial entities be they the Washington Post and New York Times or Fox News and Comedy Central. In our new age of social media should we continue to trust these intermediaries? Why should we rely on CNN (owned by Time Warner) and YouTube (owned by Google) to decide which of our questions get asked in debates? Even if twitter were stable enough to support meaningful political discourse is it the right place? Why can't our public square be controlled by the public?

[Thanks to scriptingnews for the Fail Whale image.]

GovTrack Opens Up. Even More.

2008-07-10T17:33:18-04:00

Joshua Tauberer, wizard and chief elf behind GovTrack.us, has added another layer of openness to a site that is pretty much see-through already. GovTrack, an independent tool to help the public research and track activities in the U.S. Congress, already provides its data and a programming interface. Recently, Josh released the site's source code - both the components that build the legislative database as well as the front-end components that build the site and display results.

Josh has been managing GovTrack single-handedly and, hoping to see involvement by other programmers and data crunchers, has prepared an initial list of project ideas. He has released the code under the GNU AGPL license thereby requiring code modifiers to make their modifications publicly available.

I was lucky enough to get to talk with Josh last month and he agreed to talk about GovTrack on video. Here he gives a brief description of GovTrack.us (40 sec).

Here he talks about open sourcing the site's code (46 sec).

Twitter in a Teacup

2008-07-10T10:21:58-04:00

Further proof that what happens in twitter doesn't necessarily stay in twitter is the continuing controversy (?!) over the use of new technology by Congresspeople. John Culberson (R, Social Media) kicked it off with a cry into the tweet stream "I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen's ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them." His cry was answered by the ever-vigilant twitterati. @westhorp proclaimed Culberson a "twittering hero being persecuted by dems" (can't tell if tongue was in cheek or not) while @batterista and @shelbinator were trying to figure out if someone called someone else a jerk.

Frankly, I was disappointed that Culberson, who I have nominated as "Most Connected Congressman" played the partisan card. As cooler heads took a closer look at what transpired, it looks like the culprit -- Mike Capuano (D, Clueless) -- was actually trying to relax the horribly out-of-date Congressional Franking rules, an effort left-over from a months-ago flap about Congressional use of YouTube. Not surprisingly, one of the better discussions of the issue is taking place on the Open House Project email list and Nancy Scola provided a good overview in her PdF Roundup yesterday.

As in so many riots, while the initial incident seems minor, the outcome matters. How citizens and Congress communicate is a big deal. Daniel Bennett points out "I have chafed at various rules that have kept Congress from using new technology, I have always supported in general the rules that kept Congress from acting inappropriately" while Clay Shirky warns "Don't make the mistake of assuming an unpoliceable rule is also unenforceable." So, capitalizing on the kerfuffle, the Sunlight Foundation [Disclosure: PdF founders Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry advise the Sunlight Foundation] has launched "Let Our Congress Tweet."

You can join the fun by tweeting "Congress, change the rules. Talk to us on our social networks. http://LetOurCongressTweet.org Let our Congress Tweet! #LOCT08" Follow the news yourself while it breaks (on twitter, of course!)

[Thanks to scriptingnews for the Fail Whale image.]

John Wonderlich Talks About the Open House Project

2008-07-08T12:04:57-04:00

The Open House Project is a non-partisan group working to enhance public access to Congressional information. Launched by the Sunlight Foundation [Disclosure: PdF founders Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry advise the Sunlight Foundation] in early 2007, it works to understand and explain how the House of Representatives integrates the Internet into its activities and recommends improvements.

The Project's goal is not a radical transformation of the House with technology but rather to "pave the cow paths" created by existing procedures. [Ed: arguably, this is how downtown Boston got its streets, but they paved the paths of a drunken donkey.]

Radical or not, the Open House Project email list has some very interesting discussions. Recent posts cover:

whether to make "Dear Colleague" letters available online
the threat of a rules change which would prohibit Representatives from using public websites (like YouTube)
the meaning and importance of "Legislative Reductivism" and
what edits can be made to the Congressional Record

John Wonderlich, founder of the Open House Project and now Sunlight Foundation Program Director, will be taking questions from us on Thursday, July 10, at 2pm EDT. He'll describe the project, talk about what it has done, what is planned, and how to participate. Ask him questions now and come back Thursday to join in while he's online.

Sound Bites from "rebooting america"

2008-07-05T22:44:00-04:00

Yesterday, the 4th of July, I finished reading "rebooting america." Kind of appropriate I think.

rebooting america is a compilation of essays edited by PdF'rs Allison Fine, Micah Sifry, Andrew Rasiej, and Josh Levy. It includes pieces by Esther Dyson, Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, Steven L. Clift, Jan Frel and Nicco Mele, Newt Gingrich, Jeff Jarvis, Howard Rheingold, Joe Trippi, David Weinberger, and about 35 others. You can buy the book in paperback or get it for free online (isn't the Creative Commons wonderful?)

The essays tend to be short - 4 to 8 pages, cover a lot of ground, and often disagree. Here are a few of the tidbits I liked:

However, because government had virtually withered away, the revolutionary mobs in the street found that they had no one to rebel against but themselves. (Zach Exley, p. 22)
A democracy needs such "echo chambers," even though their discussions inevitably appear like nothing but a bunch of homogeneous supporters rah-rah-ing each other. Conversation among people who are in basic agreement builds relationships and foments political movement. (David Weinberger, p. 37)
Large-scale collaboration, among widely-dispersed populations, is manageable, sustainable, and effective. (Yochai Benkler, p. 49)
...Justice Department granted only 4% of the FOIA requests it received in 2006... (Ellen Miller, p. 61)
The longer the state remains unchanged, the harder it becomes for it to enforce any laws other than those that protect itself. (Jan Frel and Nicco Mele, p. 89)
...just five levels of councils, each consisting of only fifty people, is enough to cover over three hundred million people. (Aaron Swartz, p. 99)
Most normal people don't want to be politicians. They might like to solve a problem or two, but they are not going to make a life of it. (Martin Kearns, p. 117)
The answer to improving the legitimacy of our democratic institutions is nothing short of a fundamental overhaul of the practices of government to eliminate the single points of failure. (Beth Simone Noveck, p. 193)
So I'm stumped by the question of how to redesign American democracy. Citizens will feel - and will be - more powerful when they design the new system themselves. (Scott Heiferman, p. 200)
Electronically publishing the collective wish of the populace for each House bill would result in the "digital" will of the people." (Pablo del Real, p. 202)
The loss of the civic commons is a major reason for current widespread feelings of powerlessness. (Harry C. Boyte, p. 213)
Now that we have the technological means to open up government and make every action transparent, we must insist on a new ethic of openness. (Jeff Jarvis, p. 215)
The bottom line is that digital natives largely do not participate in civic affairs out of a sense of duty or obligation but a sense of personal fulfillment. (W. Lance Bennett, p. 226)Our Founding Fathers created a system that rebuffs change, particularly radical and significant shifts. We must look for venues where new ways of doing things can bear greater fruit - through individual and then institutional renewal. (David B. Smith, p. 232)

Let me know what bits you like. Happy reading.

Policy not (much) Politics Events for July and after

2008-07-02T14:58:34-04:00

Upcoming events that are sure to touch on issues of participation and democracy include:

Netroots Nation (formerly known as YearlyKos) "amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate." Micah and Andrew will represent PdF there, you can get $75 off (enter promo code "PDF"), and it is in Austin this year (July 17-20). How can you lose?
If you can't leave Washington, DC you can hang with the Feds at "Social Media for Government" (July 14-17). Sessions will include topics like How To Monitor Community Conversation, RSS, podcasting, and social media on the intranet.
If you can't leave your desk, John Wonderlich from The Open House Project will be taking questions live and online on Thursday July 10 at 2pm ET.
For the more academically inclined, the IEEE's ICDIM has a track on "eGovernment and eParticipation at the crossroad: how social software, SOAs and semantic technologies transform the citizen-state interaction". While the conference isn't until November, the call for papers is out now.

I'll track what I hear about on this calendar. Leave a comment or send me a note if you know of an event that should be included.

Use this handy button to add the calendar where you need it:

Jerry Michalski Talks About Small 'g' governance

2008-06-30T10:24:39-04:00

At a New Politics Institute event in May, futurist Jerry Michalski gave a wonderful 15 minute talk about emergence of the global brain, society's historic distrust of democracy, and evolution of the social contract.

Of particular interest to us, he discusses "small 'g' governance" as opposed to "big 'G' Government" and the question of how we will govern ourselves. This thread was highlighted again during the second day of the PdF last week. We'll continue to push on this discussion in a participatory interview with Jerry on Wednesday, July 2, at 1pm ET (10am PT).

Watch the video below and ask Jerry questions now. Come back Wednesday to participate when he is online live.

Sarah Schacht says "Want some candy nice legislator?"

2008-06-28T13:58:38-04:00

While knowledge may be power, sugar is sweeter. Sarah Schacht, founder and Executive Director of Washington (state) based Knowledge as Power, understands the potential of luring people with candy. In her case she is talking about helping Washington State legislators with sweet new tools to manage the overflow of email they receive.

In some sense Schacht is helping legislators cope with a problem her group helps create. The primary objective of Knowledge as Power is to "help individuals become effective citizens within the legislative process." Knowledge as Power's beta service helps citizens track issues they care about, communicate effectively with their legislators, and understand legislation being considered, as well as the ins and outs of the legislative process.

While in Washington DC recently Schacht took a few minutes to answer questions on video. Here she provides a brief (1 min 8 sec) introduction to Knowledge as Power.

Here Schacht describes soon to be released email tools - some of her sweet tools for luring legislators (1 min 17 sec).

HyperDemocracy: From Personal to Participatory and Beyond in One Day

2008-06-27T19:46:06-04:00

There is no small irony that a conference focused on participation, democracy, grassroots, and bottom-up, should pull together one of the most powerful lineups of "smart white guys delivering excellent presentations" I've ever witnessed. Moreover, the series of independent talks shined serious light on the question of "what will 21st century democracy look like."

Douglas Rushkoff kicked off the morning attacking the very name of the event, using biblical references to argue that "Personal Democracy" was an oxymoron. Rushkoff, who released "Open Source Democracy" way back in 2003, preached (ED: can a Rebbe preach?) that democracy is inherently collaborative, not individualistic.

Lawrence Lessig then delivered a highly choreographed and carefully timed slide show explaining, though today's corruption isn't as egregious as in the 1800's (who knew Daniel Webster was such a dog?), since government is so much larger it matters even more. Make sure you watch the video when it comes out.

Jonathan Zittrain from Harvard cautioned us utopians with a brainy stand-up comedy routine about the potential for collapse of the generative internet. In particular, he warned about laws that don't have public support and called for "civic technologies" where we get to decide how the technology is to be used. This time I'm convinced to read his new book.

Gilberto Gil, on the non-white guy panel, gave a more bureaucratic sounding talk (considering he was playing the Nokia Theatre that night). Gil talked about how technology is enabling a peaceful revolution and how Brazil has blurred the boundaries between civil society and government by including alternative voices.

The pièce de résistance came from Mark Pesce who, reaching even farther into history than Rushkoff, started with the beginning of man. He pointed out that for almost 2700 generations "humanity remained a static presence" and argues that "fifty thousand years of cultural development will collapse in about twenty" adding "this is coming as a bit of a shock." (I'm quoting from his write-up of the talk.)

Pesce argues ominously that we are in a hyperconnected world that creates "hypermimesis" (ED: does he mean "rapid learning"?) and individual power creating "a hyperconnected polity." The down side is this polity is demanding and unconstrained which will lead to a "war of all against all." He says, "The future looks nothing like democracy, because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him."

PdF Founder Andrew Rasiej, reacting to Rushkoff's critique, ended the day suggesting that PdF be rebranded the "Participatory Democracy Forum" causing a flurry of activity as people checked to see what domains were available. Nancy Scola is holding the domain hostage with terms to be announced but likely to include an increase in vacation days.

But the thing is, what if Pesce is right? Then Rasiej is fighting the last war. We don't need participatory democracy (instead of an oxymoron that's just redundant), what we need is "hyperdemocracy". In the word of Andy Carvin's tweet, the day was "hyperawesome".

[Photo of Lawrence Lessig in front of his Daniel Webster slide by Phil Hawksworth. Thanks Phil!]