Personal Democracy Forum

Daschle's Health Care Response Video: Interesting, Or Not?

2008-12-02T16:56:33-05:00

A week ago, the Obama-Biden transition team solicited ideas for improving health care. Today, the team responded to our comments with a video from Tom Daschle (recently nominated for Secretary of Health & Human Services) and Lauren Aronson.

(Comment preemption: Yes, Tom Daschle's glasses are funny.)

Here's the gist of what they said:

They got 3500 comments.
One person recommended we focus on preventive care
Another proposed a "Health Corps," akin to the Peace Corps. They say they will look into it.
Others mentioned cost control and insuring employees.
Daschle says they have already begun implementing some of the ideas, but he does not say which ones or whether those implementations were the direct result of this solicitation.

Is this video something that we tech-politics geeks should be excited about? I'm cautiously optimistic. The optimism is due only to the fact that the team is demonstrating Web literacy. I'm cautious because of the PR nature of the message, which is essentially a "Thank you for your ideas" in video format.

For a transition that officially began three weeks ago, it's fine work. We've been very eager to scorn Change.gov as failing to live up to our hopes, as if we expected interactive miracles to start happening on November 5. It is early yet.

Truth be told, there is nothing gutsy or innovative about this video. But if past administrations are our metric, then this team is doing well. Communiques like this one are a good start to a strategy that will probably get more and more risky in very small increments. When it comes to how the White House uses the Web, our community's expectations are higher than that of the general public. So we may have to wait a few months before Change.gov (or WhiteHouse.gov) impresses us.

Daily Digest: Renewing the Push for Open Government by Law, by Code

2008-12-02T12:43:22-05:00

Opening the Transition: Overnight, a new site went up detailing a push by Stanford professor Larry Lessig to petition the Obama-Biden transition to abide by not only the letter of open government principles, but the spirit. (Note: our Micah Sifry is a signatory to the letter.) Change.gov's embrace of a rather liberal Creative Commons license is, admits Lessig, "fantastically good news," but Lessig et al want the incoming administration to ensure that those sound legal choices are accompanied by open-leaning in-the-weeds tech decisions. Ars Technica's Julian Sanchez sees the "Obama-Biden Transition Project's" choices on copyright as good PR for Creative Commons that simply points to the government-in-waiting's strange nature. But an under noticed fact is the Change.gov blog's deserved chest-puffing over offering all its video content in easily remixable raw Quicktime format -- a none-too-subtle seconding of the truth that open government is nearly all in the details.
Obama's Ally in the Valley: Calls for Transformational CTO: California-based David Kralik heads up internet strategy for Newt Gingrich's American Solutions organization, and he's out with a look in the DC Examiner at how America's first CTO -- what he calls the "Chief Transformation Officer" -- should function. Some of Kralik's suggestions are a bit fanciful: the new CTO should telecommute from Silicon Valley, ignore the traditional metrics of power (funding, staffing, access), and dedicate a "Google '20% time'" to side projects. Others might have legs. The CTO, suggests Kralik, should spearhead an effort that requires government entities to be digitized and transparent by 2012 -- or else see their funding disappear.
Had the FEC Had Decided Otherwise...: In an ABC News opinion piece, the Center for Democracy and Technology Leslie Harris argues that the 'net-fueled political revolution of '08 wouldn't have been possible had the Federal Elections Commission embraced the regulations on online political speech that were bubbling up a few years back. (One read of Harris's piece, though, is that she conflates blogging and other media regs for all online politicking). For a look back at that fork in the road, take a look at what the Wayback Machine has on the Online Coalition. The most important lesson from the path the FEC chose? "[T]rust the Internet," says Harris.
When O Met Gen Y: For some very quick lunchtime viewing, have a look at this enjoyable four-minute clip of a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics session held a few months back, via Derek Baird. The panel featured techPres contributor and Nation writer Ari Melber and "Yes We Can" producer Wes Hill on how the Obama campaign made the sale to college-age Americans.

In Case You Missed It...

Kevin Thurman looks at the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s DLCCWeb program, which equipped down-ballot candidates with entirely affordable online tools. By learning how not to reinvent the wheel, Democrats-not-named-Obama were able to save big and campaign big, he writes. "[O]ver 300 websites...were launched through the program in the 2008 cycle," says Kevin. "These sites generated 13.9 Million views, generated 2,798,496 emails to supporters and voters, and raised $444,098.99 in donations" -- all for just forty bucks a month.

Nancy Scola questions Democratic Strategist's Ed Kilgore's thinking that the rightroots' attempt at rebuilding the GOP is weakened by a lack of "a preparatory period of ideological ferment."

Mike Turk says that the woeful Federal Voting Assistance program -- the Pentagon effort to help both military members and Americans abroad cast ballots -- reminds him that government IT programs often fall short "either on the development side...or on the marketing side." Hey, Mike, it could be worse. In '04, troubles with DOD's basic server configurations meant that you couldn't pull up the FVAP site from many places overseas.

Defense Department Voting Assistance Program Draws Congressional Fire

2008-12-01T13:48:30-05:00

A DoD program meant to assist military personnel in registering and voting is drawing Congressional fire over the hiring of a new overseer. A bipartisan group of Congressmen is irked that the Federal Voting Assistance Program has failed to meet the goal of making it easier for those in uniform to participate in the democracy they protect.

While not specifically an Internet issue, the Government Computer News (Yes, I read it. I'm that geeky) article had two passages that caught my eye.

Few military personnel appeared to be aware of the program in the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, and fewer received Federal Post Card Applications for absentee ballots by a DOD deadline in 2006.

Under normal circumstances, that would tell me there is a marketing problem. Developing a site or an initiative is really the easiest part of the battle in my opinion - it's driving eyeballs that's difficult. There's much you can do in the development process - from strategic decisions to user testing - to help move units. However, it often has more to do with the way you put it in front of your audience.

But I think the problems may extend past marketing because of the second passage.

But in October, Maloney criticized the system as unstable, error-prone and difficult to use. She said the site was inferior to an independent site developed by the Overseas Voting Foundation, which provides a more automated process.

“The current military voting system, as implemented by FVAP and its current leadership, is too cumbersome and convoluted to effectively serve those who serve in the cause of freedom,” the letter stated.

Now my libertarian streak immediately shouted, "What? A government program that's cumbersome, convoluted, and difficult to navigate? A government effort that's inferior to a private initiative? Get out of here!". But I'll refrain from sticking my finger in the government's eye. I still owe the IRS too much to kick that sleeping bear.

I will say that this is the trouble with a lot of government IT initiatives. They fall short on either the development side (inadequate user testing) or on the marketing side (once the site is up, they just expect people to find it. Both seem to be the case here.

Now, I didn't take a look at www.marines.mil before election day, but I suspect it looked a lot like it does now. Down in the very bottom is a link to vote. If you go through the process to create an exception for a page with a bad security certificate, you can eventually get to the FVAP page.

From there, the process gets awful. It's no wonder people don't use it.

For the incoming FVAP director, let me make a suggestion. Develop your process as a widget that allows you to begin the process wherever you find it? That way the marines.mil site wouldn't force you to go through a series of clicks and steps to get you to where you're going.

That may not get you around government website restrictions which I suspect prohibit embedding a widget housed on another domain (even one owned by another branch of government). You may need to go through your counsel's office to get some sort of approval to do that, but it would be better than what you're doing.

Daily Digest: Obama as Clinton Redux, in More Ways Than One

2008-12-01T11:44:54-05:00

History's Lessons for a Wired White House: He was a young Democratic president eager to use technology to open the presidency. Wait, roll back the tape -- we're talking Bill Clinton, circa 1994. Barack Obama, writes Politico's Carol E. Lee, Barack Obama will have the new-media tools and know-how to make Clinton's dream a reality. But, warns, Lee, the 42nd president's struggles might have lessons for Obama. The entrenched White House press corps staged an immediate (and ultimately successful) revolt when Clinton attempted to rework how the press and administration intermix.
Tracking the Evolution of Change.gov: Tech publisher Tim O'Reilly is arguing that the transition hub Change.gov should be put under revision control, so that we the people can keep track of the tweaks and adjustments the incoming administration makes to the site between here and inauguration day. O'Reilly's commenters, though, point out an important truth -- there's no need for this to happen from the inside. We've got the tools to track changes from the outside in. That said, what would be great is for government bills and regulations to have section-by-section permalinks, so that we could link and analyze to our heart's content.
Incoming Administration Faces Information Overload: As of Thanksgiving day, Change.gov had attracted some 290,000 resumes for political appointments. That's more than twice what greeted the incoming Clinton Administration in '94 and more than six times what the Bush Administration pulled in in 2000. All those hopefuls are after just 8,000 jobs listed in the so-called Plum Book. That intense interest in executive branch jobs, reports the Chicago Tribune's Jill Zuckman, is causing some Administration officials to pull down their Facebook profiles -- just in case you attempt to poke them for reasons other than a friendly game of Scrabulous.
Palin's Unstoppable Online Power: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is still generating a great deal of attention online, reports Politico's Charles Mahtesian. (Thanks Shaun Dakin) The Republican vice presidential candidate is putting up numbers in the political space challenged only by Barack Obama. Some of it represents unmitigatedly positive interest in Palin. And then there's that turkey-slaughtering video that has been viewed an astounding 3 million times. But either way, it's all attention that a clever once-and-future candidate can use to good effect.
Just How Historic Was Obama's Presidential Run?: Wired.com's Sarah Lai Stirland has a detailed accounting of a recent Center for American Progress Action Fund event on the meaning and message of the Obama campaign that featured reporters, advocates, and political practitioners.
American Diplomacy in the Age of Facebook: Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy James Glassman is at the New America Foundation today for a discussion on what New America's Steve Clemons is calling "Facebook/Twitter Diplomacy." It's a provocative topic (particularly post-Mumbai), as Glassman has delved into using social networking to "encourage young people with political grievances to find outlets for their protests other than violent extremism." The session has wrapped, but the webcast is archived here.

In Case You Missed It...

Nancy Scola says that somewhere there's a director obsessively managing the production of the Chicago-run of Obama's weekly video addresses. Nancy also reports on Change.gov's adoption of Creative Commons licensing and rounds up the social media response to the Mumbai attacks.

And Matthew Burton says that, from Twitter Vote Report to the Motrin Moms furor, November "'twas a good month for Twitter."

'Twas a Good Month for Twitter

2008-11-29T12:32:28-05:00

I think it's still too early to talk about how useful Twitter was during this week's Mumbai attacks. The tendency is to assume it was more powerful than it actually was; Om Malik's take is the only skeptical viewpoint I've found so far. But we can say that Twitter has had a great month. Here's an incomplete list of Twitter's organizational/democratic/self-governance accomplishments in November. I'm probably missing some, so please add them as comments:

Twitter VoteReport received 11,000 messages on Election Day regarding polling wait times, irregularities, and broken machines.

A group of angry moms ended a Motrin ad campaign before it could even start, solely through Twitter. Here's Brian Lehrer and Virginia Heffernan with some background on this story.

Mumbai, of course. The headline of this Forbes article captures the magnitude of this event for Twitter. Alexander Wolfe says this event "is likely to be viewed in hindsight as the first instance of the paradigmatic shift in crisis coverage: namely, journalists will henceforth no longer be the first to bring us information."

My own Twitter circle--primarily government IT-types--was full of conversation about these events, and in the past day, we have begun to plan a strategy for deploying an internal Twitter clone to federal networks. I'm sure this same conversation will be had at many other large organizations in the coming weeks.

Despite Mumbai's TV Network Crackdown, Attacks Spur Stream of Social News Coverage

2008-11-28T15:34:45-05:00

Law enforcement in Mumbai, the Indian city that has been the scene of devastating terrorist attacks this week, invoked section 19 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995 in an attempt to clamp down upon TV networks' live reporting coming out of the city. "Coverage of the actions taken by the police against the terrorists in South Mumbai," reported India's Business Standard, "is causing impediment in the police action."

A news black out might stop TV crews from broadcasting. But it hasn't done much to stem the stream of live news about the coordinated attacks pouring out of Mumbai via all forms of social media, from Twitter to Flickr to Wikipedia. CNN's Stephanie Busari has a look at Twitter:

With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.

Many Twitter users also sent pleas for blood donors to make their way to specific hospitals in Mumbai where doctors were faced with low stocks and rising casualties.

Others sent information about helplines and contact numbers for those who had friends and relatives caught up in the attacks. Tweeters were also mobilized to help with transcribing a list of the dead and injured from hospitals, which were quickly posted online.

As Twitter user "naomieve" wrote: "Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action."

Since the attacks, hundreds of compelling live-from-the-scene photos from the city's Colaba district have been uploaded to Flickr -- some appearing almost immediately after the attacks began. One showing fire trucks dousing the landmark Taj Hotel, uploaded by Soumik Karon on Thursday, sparked a compassionate croos-border comment by Paidipati, based in Sengkang, Singapore: "This is very unfortunate...the commoner has no security anymore. My prayers to all those affected."

(A note: It's unfortunate that many of the Mumbai attack photos are, like Karon's powerful photo of the Taj, shared under strict copyright. Those terms make sharing them online difficult.)

A Twittering Flickr user by the handle @Vinu has made an instant name for himself by being one of the earliest to share photos of the attack. Wired.com's Sarah Lai Stirland has a brief interview with @Vina, a.k.a Vinu Ranganathan, who reported that his tweeting about his photos got his Flickr account usefully boosted. "A Flickr staff who got my twitter," said Ranganathan, "decided to give me a 3 month gift of Pro."

One factor in the stream of social media coming from Mumbai may be that mobile technologies like Twitter and cell-phone photos are particularly useful in places like India where there's an extraordinarily high comfort level with mobile phones, as the Wall Street Journal's Mei Fong and Loretta Chao suggest:

Compared with the U.S., "the cellphone system and SMS culture is stronger in Asia," said Sree Sreenivasan, a new-media professor at Columbia University.

Ranganathan was by no means alone in turning to Twitter to cover and discuss the attacks. Tweets marked with #mumbai have poured in since Wednesday -- prompting, of course, a great hashing over of how reliable such social media reports can be. The London's Times Online breathlessly reported that Tweeters were asked by authorities to stop sharing information on Twitter.

ABC News, though, has noted that the source of those reports was tracked down to a 16 year-old Boston high-school student named Mark Bao, recently profiled in a Boston Globe story on young tech entrepreneurs. Here's the twist. Bao has taken to defending his sources -- on his Twitter account, of course, saying "please don't blog and assume before emailing me at mumbaiupdates@gmail.com."

Finally, there's Wikipedia. The social encyclopedia's entry on the attacks was started by "Kensplanet," a.k.a. John Kenny. Kenny is himself a Mumbaikar and avid Wikipedian, having made more than 7600 edits. The entry on the attacks began with just 23 words: "The 26 November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks were a series of attacks by terrorists in Mumbai, India. 25 are injured and 2 killed." It's since grown into a robust news resource, complete with casualty counts by nationality, a timeline of the chaotic events -- and a section on how social media has responded.

(Photo credit under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license by Stuti)

Daily Digest: Did the Internet Matter?

2008-11-28T10:52:09-05:00

"Does the Internet Matter?": That's the title of a new report out from Temple University's Institute for Business and Information Technology. Making use of some techPresident data, Temple's Sunil Wattal, David Schuff, and Munir Mandviwalla considered how social media in particular shaped the '08 presidential primaries. Their conclusion? While YouTube and MySpace may help lesser-known candidates find footing, only blogs seem to correlate with boosts in Gallup poll numbers. ( You might notice that the report requires a password, but we've got one for you: "templeowls.")
The Long Campaign's Lessons for Non-Profits: Over on NetSquared's Think Tank blog, Amy Sample Ward has been gathering thoughts from her fellow non-profiteers on what good thinking their organizations can glean from the 2008 election. The answers include speaking to young voters/supporters in their own language to striving to remain authentic. The post raises a provocative question, though: did the Obama campaign play it so safe that it missed the opportunity to trade mud-slinging for ideas?
Should Obama Be Relying on YouTube?: The Obama-Biden transition team is offering an early peek at this weekend's video address, this one on the topic of Thanksgiving. But CNet Blog Network privacy expert Chris Soghoian is adamant that "it is simply improper to rely on YouTube to foot the bandwidth bill" for these addresses. (Thanks, Shaun Dakin.) To be fair, the transition team is also making use of Yahoo! Video, but most people watching these spots are doing it through YouTube. And, Soghoian says, that video service's user tracking and other privacy practices make it the wrong partner for the President-elect.
The Promise and Peril of a Wired White House: Both Karl Rove and Joe Trippi share their take on what a wired White House might mean, in Cox News' David Ho's good look at how the web might shake up Washington. Rove suggests that lawmakers will be "livid if the White House facilitates" grassroots lobbying, while Trippi suggests that online organizing might leave legislators between a rock and a hard place. Trippi: "The rock is Barack Obama and the hard place is millions of Americans who are going to be pounding on them, calling them, e-mailing and knocking on their district office doors."
Register Your Favorites in the Mashable Awards: The Mashable Open Web Awards are happening now, and some sites you might know are up for recognition. In the politics category, familiar names include legislative tracker GovTrack and news hub Huffington Post. And in the non-profit space, there's the do-not-contact registry Stop Political Calls and microloan site Kiva.org. Voting ends Wednesday.
A Gift from Us to You: Hey, on this Friday after Thanksgiving, we offer up something we're truly thankful for: this adorable video of a kitten "driving" a Roomba. Awww...

In Case You Missed It...

Taking a look at Change.gov's ongoing discussion on health care that has attracted more than 2,800 comments, Allison Fine critiques the transition site as "a wiki wannabe." What she really doesn't like, says Allison, is that the effort is "so close to being something so much better."

And Nancy Scola dives in to Project Masiluleke, a South African experiment in mobile activism that is connecting those in KwaZulu-Natal province with HIV/AIDS lifelines.

The Transformative 120: Text Messages Prove a South African HIV Lifeline

2008-11-26T15:13:55-05:00

Taken together, a handful of numbers are adding up to a powerful HIV/AIDS lifeline along South Africa's northeastern coast. Of the six million South Africans infected with the disease, just one in ten are currently in treatment. The HIV infection rate in KwaZulu-Natal province (KZN) stands at a breathtakingly 39 percent. Meanwhile, a whopping four-fifths of all South Africans have access to a cell phone.

But a new program called Project Masiluleke -- Zulu for "wise council" -- is using the 120 characters commonly left over in cell phone text messages to connect South Africans who desperately need testing and treatment with the nation's HIV/AIDS resources.

But let's back up a bit. The cost of making a cell phone call in southern Africa can be, as it is in many spots on the globe, prohibitively expensive. But text messages are, by comparison, cheap. Resourceful mobile owners in South Africa have figured out a workaround to the air time problem by texting friends and family the simple message of "Please Call Me" -- a tactic similar to how American teenagers once avoided collect-call charges by using names like "Brian PickMeUpAtSchool."

PCM messages, as they're known, are enormously popular. South Africans send an amazing 30 million of them a day, which is about one daily ping for every one and a half citizens. Phone carriers like Vodacom, finding their networks swamped with PCMs, made a decision. They'd let customers send a handful of them each day, for free. But they'd use the space left over by the short messages to subsidize the service through advertising.

And that clever marketing use of the white space left on the table by PCMs has, in turned, inspired a life-saving application in KwaZulu-Natal. During a trial run of Project Masiluleke this fall, mobile customers found that advertising given over to texts pointing them to the National AIDS Helpline (0800-012-322) and HIV911 (0860-448-911).

The results of the demonstration were promising. During the six week run, some 20 million Please Call Me messages went out with the HIV/AIDS hotline information. (Of course, that 20 million represents just a small slice of the PCMs sent during that period. It would be interesting to know who was selected to get the special messaging -- keeping in mind that targeting recipients for HIV info carries its own baggage.) Calls to the national hotline in Johannesburg jumped a remarkable 350 percent.

HIV and AIDS carry a nearly debilitating social stigma in South Africa, with even government officials at the highest level of government in Pretoria holding on to some warped views of the disease. That social reprobation means that many potential carriers of either HIV or TB (diseases that are closely twined in South Africa) resist getting tested.

Intimate and discrete, text messaging can be a powerful solution: at once both more immediate than an email and less invasive than a phone call. In a place like KwaZulu-Natal, where a Motorola RAZR might be someone's primary way of communicating with the world, texting can be a powerful lifeline that sits comfortably in nearly everyone's pocket.

Project Masiluleke grew out of the Pop!Tech conference held each year in Camden, Maine. In 2006, South African HIV and TB advocate Zinny Thabethe spoke about the disconnect between HIV carriers and treatment. The Pop!Tech Accelerator project teamed with the South African Praekelt Foundation's SocialTxt program, frog design, and others to launch Project Masiluleke.

The Please Call Me announcements are just the first step in Project Masiluleke's mobile response to HIV/AIDS. Once the PCM texts are relaunched as a full-fledged program at the start of 2009, they will be followed by texts geared toward reminding patients of scheduled anti-retroviral therapy and other medical treatments, "virtual call centers" staffed by HIV carriers, and at-home HIV testing augmented will mobile-phone based support.

(Credit for original photo: Pop!Tech)

Daily Digest: Obama Looking Eager to Open 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

2008-11-26T13:09:11-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers. We'll back with your daily dose of digest on Friday, likely ten pounds heavier. Enjoy the holiday. Gobble gobble.

Letting Us in to the White House: The time has come, argues Nieman Watchdog Project's Dan Froomkin, for President-elect Barack Obama to embrace a "wiki White House" with both arms. Offering a stark break from the opacity of the Bush-Cheney Administration will, writes Froomkin, "offer a vastly better way for the American people to relate to their government -- and maybe even learn to trust it again." It's already begun. Our Micah Sifry reports that the transition hub Change.gov has launched a groundbreaking threaded discussion session around health care, using a full-featured tool called IntenseDebate. This, says Micah, "is huge." This turbo-charged blog comments system "is a terrific start on fulfilling Obama's promise to make government more open and participatory."
Conventional Wisdom Turns Against CEOs as CTO: Obama promised to inaugurate the position of U.S. CTO, but, the question has been since November 4th, who, exactly? Or, more importantly, what kind of candidate? Early chatter focused on Silicon Valley executives like Google CEO Eric Schmidt or Amazon head Jeff Bezos -- mostly, perhaps, because those are the bold-faced names regularly found on the cover of Fast Company magazine. GovTech's Steve Towns profiles two alternative types of candidates, those with experience toiling away in government, far from foosball tables and free catered meals. Vint Cerf, while now Google's chief evangelist, has put in time working with the Defense Department and other agencies. And DC CTO Vivek Kundra has recently won praise for his innovative Apps for Democracy contest.
Busting Out of the "Finest Prison in the World": Obama seems unwilling to let go of his trusty Blackberry -- or the communications tendrils out into the real world it represents -- without a fight, Taegen Goddard reports. Obama told Barbara Walters that he's "in the process of negotiating with the Secret Service, with lawyers, with White House staff" about how he'll communicate once ensconced in the Oval Office. Here's hoping Obama doesn't clamp down on communication channels unless hard cold fact (and not just presidential tradition) makes it absolutely necessary.
Building the Post-Obama Movement: The Obama campaign(?) has announced a plan to hold campaign-style house meetings on December 13th and 14th. Under the banner of "Change is Coming," the self-organized meetings aim to allow supporters "to reflect on this monumental journey and plan on how they can bring change to both Washington and their own communities." The continuing trickle of interest in turning the Obama campaign into a movement seems to be coming out of Chicago is intriguing. That said, the lack of transparency about the process suggests that some players in the process are still scrambling behind closed doors to figure out what's next.
NASA's Filling CIO Position at the Speed of Light: NASA recently posted a job listing for a rather important job at the tech-based agency: CIO, responsible for "leading and managing all information technology strategies and initiatives" at the agency. (Thanks Andrew Hoppin) Strange thing is, the open period for the spot is from November 20th to December 4th. That's just 10 working days -- and over the Thanksgiving holiday. Unless they have a candidate lined up, it's a remarkably quick sprint to filling such a significant post.
How Did Times Readers Do in Their Cabinet Bets?: The New York Times' recently asked readers to guess who Obama would chose to fill his cabinet. It's showing them to be notably bad prognosticators. Though readers rightly had Robert Gates at Defense Secretary, those who played along with the interactive cabinet picker had Bill Richardson for the State Department job that went to Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano instead of Eric Holder at Attorney General, and Paul Volcker in the Treasury Secretary slot filled by Timothy Geithner -- whose fourth place showing in the readers' choices was behind Texas Representative Ron Paul.
A Look Back at How the Political Press Handled Tech: The Columbia Journalism Review's Jane Kim does a useful post mortem on how media made use of technology throughout the course of Election '08, from the Los Angeles Times' clarifying interactive graphics about Proposition 8 to CNN's notorious "holographic correspondents." Kim's advice to the press? "Don't fetishize technology."
Truly Critical Federal Blogging: The Transportation Security Administration's Evolution of Security blog has a timely Thanksgiving-themed post that answers the mission one of America's most pressing questions: "Can I take my pie with me on the plane?" 'Nuf said.

In Case You Missed It...

Matthew Burton is thrilled that Bobby Jindal is on Twitter, saying that the Louisiana governor's tweeting is active and substantive. Most importantly, writes Matt, "It's HIM! Or at least, it feels like it's him, and that's what matters." Great to see the GOP comer on Twitter, but he's going to have to go a bit beyond tweets like "PGA commits to tournament in New Orleans" before he gets a follow.

Change.gov Starts to Go Interactive, Intensively

2008-11-25T23:33:24-05:00

"Today we're trying out a new feature on our website that will allow us get instant feedback from you about our top priorities. We also hope it will allow you to form communities around these issues -- with the best ideas and most interesting discussions floating to the top."

Ordinarily, you wouldn't get too excited about reading those words on a website. But when they are on the official blog of the President-elect, things are a little different. In fact, this is a big deal. When you consider that for the last eight years, the occupant of the White House has essentially told the public "you get input once every four years, after that I'm the decider," this is huge.

A few hours ago, the Change.gov blog led with a post called "Join the Discussion" and pointed readers to a video from two members of the health care transition team. The first topic for discussion, "What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?" isn't really one that leads to choosing priorities, but there's nothing inherently wrong with using a general question like that one as a conversation-starter.

Already, there are more than 500 comments on the site (make that more than 600), organized into threads, and you can also rate them (as well as the commenters) and sort them by date, rating and freshness. This comment from one Jeremiah Jahn was off-topic, but telling: "I just wanted to say thank you for giving us a place to make our thoughts and comment heard. It's about time the government provide a centralized place for citizens to express their opinions where they feel they will be heard." [Emphasis added.]

Imagine what happens if those numbers--on not just any "centralized site" but the one that symbolically and perhaps literally has the attention of the President-elect--start climbing into the five- and six-digits. Before our eyes, we are witnessing the beginning of a rebooting of the American political system.

The system being used is called IntenseDebate, a tool built by these four guys: Jon Fox, Isaac Keyet, Michael Koenig and Austin Hallock. Yes, Austin is just 16 years old. The others look like they recently started shaving. I'm including their pictures because they deserve some credit for this breakthrough.

By using IntenseDebate (and the OpenID framework), the Obama transition is actually enabling a lot of interesting community development to start happening beneath the surface of a threaded discussion. Users get their own "commenter profile" on IntenseDebate, along with reputation points, and they can carry those profiles onto other sites that use the same system. Users can also choose to follow other IntenseDebate users, so if someone is really diligent they could start to gather a group or a crowd around them.

Back on Change.gov, there is a new "comments policy" that looks eminently reasonable:

To maintain a respectful dialogue, we've posted the guidelines of our comment policy below.

* Stay focused. All viewpoints are welcome, but comments should remain on the topic set by the original blog post, discussion question or other type of initial entry.
* Be respectful. Ad hominem or personal attacks, profanity, and aggressive behavior are prohibited. Instigating arguments in a disrespectful way is also prohibited.
* Tell the truth. Spreading misleading or false information is prohibited.
* No spam. Repeated posting of identical or very similar content in a counter-productive manner is prohibited – this includes posts aggressively promoting services or products.

We retain the discretion to determine which comments violate our comment policy. We also reserve the right to remove violations. We expect all contributors to be respectful.

What can I say, other than, this is a terrific start on fulfilling Obama's promise to make government more open and participatory. (It may well be a violation of the archaic Paperwork Reduction Act, which actually requires all government agencies that want to request any kind of information from more than ten members of the public to first get clearance from the Office of Management and Budget, but thank goodness no one cares--maybe we can finally get that law amended to allow this sort of thing across all government agencies.) Yes, other government websites already have blogs with comments, though if you look at the State Department's Dipnote blog or the TSA's blog, you'll see that they filter comments before posting them. Here, Change.gov appears to be letting comments go straight to the web, unfiltered. (Mine got posted instantaneously.) You can embed a link in your comment, but you can't embed a YouTube video (I tried.)

We shall be watching this, intensely.

It's Time for a Wiki White House

2008-11-25T15:38:45-05:00

Barack Obama’s campaign promise to use the Internet to “create a transparent and connected democracy” will be put to the test when he launches a new White House Web site on January 20.

On that day, the Bush administration’s stodgy, wheezing version of whitehouse.gov will be carted off to the National Archives in its entirety, leaving precisely no legacy – and no limits.

Obama is already being touted as the first Internet president, but the Internet is about more than e-mail blasts and rallying the likeminded. If he and his team truly embrace the paradigms of the modern Internet – as defined by blogs and YouTube, Facebook and Google, instant messaging and crowdsourcing, wikis and reader comments -- Obama’s whitehouse.gov will bring unprecedented accountability to the White House. It will offer a vastly better way for the American people to relate to their government – and maybe even learn to trust it again.

Imagine a White House Web site where the home page isn’t just a static collection of transcripts and press releases, but a window into the roiling intellectual foment of the West Wing. Imagine a White House Web site where staffers maintain blogs in which they write about who they are and what they are working on; where some meetings are streamed in live video; where the president’s daily calendar is posted online; where major policy proposals have public collaborative workspaces, or wikis; where progress towards campaign promises is tracked on a daily basis; and where anyone can sign up for customized updates by e-mail, text message, RSS feed, Twitter, or the social network of their choice.

And that’s just for starters. Because the Internet doesn’t look kindly on information that just flows one way. To live up to their promises, the president and his staff are going to have to do more than just talk – they’re going to have to listen, and respond. So imagine a Web site where the president regularly answers questions sent in by citizens; where ordinary people can vote up or down items they want brought to the president’s attention; and where Americans from across the political spectrum engage in honest debate.

That last part, of course, is the most problematic. The virulence and low signal-to-noise ratio of unrestricted commenting on the Internet has been a source of despair to people who run far less prominent Web sites. One can only imagine the kind of hostility and nuttery the White House site would evoke. But another way to look at it is that the imperative of user participation, along with the inevitably huge demand, provides an opportunity to develop best practices in harnessing mass Internet participation.

The goal should be to create a process whereby good ideas, relevant personal stories, informed opinions and perhaps even consensus on some issues can bubble up from the public. And while that may sound impossible, organizations like Wikipedia provide one model for handling vast quantities of user-submitted content with great if not perfect success. That model calls for a huge number of community volunteers working under the guidance of a small number of staffers. The White House is uniquely positioned to mobilize a small army of volunteers to monitor public comments should it choose that route.

I spoke to several experts who occupy the intersection of technology and politics, and they strongly believe it’s time for a cutting-edge White House Web site. New York Law School professor and technology expert Beth Noveck dismisses the current whitehouse.gov as “brochure-ware,” and stresses that a key function of the next White House Web site should be to solicit public input. “It’s not only about channeling information to the president, it’s about creating a national conversation around issues of public importance,” she said.

Andrew Rasiej, a Democratic Internet strategist and co-founder of techpresident.com, envisions a whitehouse.gov “where citizens might feel like they are invited to participate in the actual process of governing through the incorporation of their ideas, their energy, and their willingness to hold members of Congress accountable.”

“I’m not saying that every single moment inside the White House needs to be a reality show,” Rasiej said. “but I do believe that an open and transparent White House will capture the imagination of the American public to be engaged in their civic lives in a way that will transform the country.”

And to make sure the site doesn’t simply turn into a propaganda vehicle, >a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/aftergood.html">Steven Aftergood, the head of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, wonders: “Maybe there’s a way to institutionalize a dissenting view, so you really have not the pretense of debate, but actual debate, that is accessible to the public… Maybe there’s something like the equivalent of a devil’s advocate on the White House Web site, who criticizes administration policy.” At the very least, it seems to me, some of the site’s staffers should have journalistic rather than PR backgrounds.

A 21st-century Web site could even address one of the most serious problems afflicting American public discourse: The inability to agree even on basic facts. Embracing “wiki culture” -- by having members of the public contribute to an evolving body of information and ideas -- could help develop a shared set of facts and assumptions. That could go a long way toward repairing the deep political fissures caused by our increasingly fractured media. It might even help build an American political common ground.

All this may sound like a lot to hope for, but Obama has already shown that he recognizes the transformative power of the Internet. A key part of his Internet-heavy campaign was the my.barackobama.com site, where top staffers and supporters alike wrote blogs, created and joined groups, organized events, raised money and mobilized volunteers. The campaign’s tolerance for dissent was tested early in the summer after thousands of Obama’s more liberal supporters formed a group opposing his stand on warrantless wiretapping laws. The group was not squelched. To the contrary, Obama posted a response.

And there are already auspicious signs that Obama intends to continue using the Internet in compelling new ways. His transition Web site, Change.gov, launched with not only press releases and position papers, but a blog – and several nascent opportunities for public participation. “The story of bringing this country together as a healed and united nation will be led by President-Elect Obama,” the Web site states, “but written by you.”

Perhaps the single most striking aspect of the Bush White House has been how opaque it is. More than with any other White House in history, the public has been unable to see in – and the president and his top aides have been disinclined to look out. This may well have been entirely by design, but the results were disastrous. Inside the bubble, the absence of dissent and lack of accountability were contributing factors to Bush’s legacy of poor decision-making, unchecked politicization, unremitting spin and arguably illegal assertions of unfettered power. Outside the bubble, the result has been a deep and abiding mistrust; a loss of faith in the competence of government -- and its good intentions.

The kind of transparency Obama has so far only talked about isn’t just a neat campaign promise, it’s essential to winning back America’s trust and confidence. And after nearly eight years during which the president routinely ignored, mocked or mischaracterized his political opponents, imagine a president and his staff engaging in respectful dialogue with supporters and critics alike. It would be enlivening to our democracy.

The crowning achievement of the Bush-era White House Web site was Barneycam, the online video adventures of the president’s Scottish terrier. But the Internet is an enormously powerful social and political force that demands transparency and genuine interactivity – not pet videos. The public and the press would do well to keep a close eye on the development of the next White House Web site for signs of whether the Obama administration will live up to its potential.

Dan Froomkin is the deputy editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project, where this column originally appeared. We thank him for allowing us to republish it here. He also writes the White House Watch column for washingtonpost.com.

Daily Digest: Reconsidering the Revolution's Small-Donor Base

2008-11-25T12:39:55-05:00

Small Donations, Mid-Sized Donors, and Obama's Cash "Revolution": A much-discussed new report from the Campaign Finance Institute looks at Barack Obama's fundraising records and calls into question what it calls the "myth" that the campaign was powered by small donors. Indeed, a whopping 49% of the contributions came in small bites -- $200 or less. But, the report finds, just 26% came from donors whose total contributions amounted to less than $200, a figure comparable to that of George Bush, John Kerry, and John McCain. Still, compared to those peers, a bigger chunk of Obama's contributions came from donors in the mid-range between $200 and $1000 -- though Obama still enjoyed the support of big donors who chipped in above the $1000 mark. Our Micah Sifry says the continued role those big guns makes for "a partial revolution, at best." But is there a qualitative difference between, say, a donor who kicked Obama $50 at a time online for a grand total of $500 -- including during periods the candidate looks like a long shot, and perhaps through the Obama campaign's "recurring contribution" program -- and one who hands over a $500 check to a campaign official at a grin-and-grab event? The Politico's Ben Smith says that the report's findings shake no myth he's ever believed. Additional looks at the report come from The New York Times' Michael Luo and ABC News' Jake Tapper. (Note Tapper's response from the Obama campaign, which puts the total number of donors at "3.95 million Americans," rather than the 3 million figure cited in the report.)
"There's Still a Big Hole in Our Game Plan...": "And that's the Internet," laments Republican National Committee chair hopeful Chip Saltsman, in Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas's look at the right's efforts to rebuild online. Vargas's piece features techPresident contributors Mindy Finn and Patrick Ruffini, two of the minds behind the RebuildtheParty.com effort to remake the GOP "from the grassroots up." Bloggers on the right, says Ruffini, need to learn from the online left "to be activists, too," says Ruffini -- as concerned about down-ballot races as internecine ideological battles. These online activists are eager to lean on the party establishment from the outside, though the Republican National Committee shows signs it's willing to embrace tech. Vargas quotes current RNC chairman Mike Duncan saying, "I've got three BlackBerrys. I've got a Kindle." Related: Finn and Ruffini are doing a washingtonpost.com chat on the GOP and the Internet today at noon ET.
Keeping Up the Democratic Web: But blogging alone didn't create Democrats' successes at the polls in '08. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein looks at the future of the progressive infrastructure, a puzzle made up of now-vibrant pieces: Center for American Progress (established 2003) Media Matters (est. 2004), Brave New Films (est. 2006), as well as SEIU and other revived union groups. "Behind the scenes," writes Stein, "they put in place a system that churned up opposition research, helped influence the media, charted out the electoral landscape, and was often seamless in delivering a message." Leadership on the left has come to embrace the movement approach to politics as standard operating procedure. Stein quotes outgoing Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean wishing that the DNC "becom[es] a grassroots organization."
Kossacks Take to Congress: The Nation's Ari Melber has a look at Congress Matters, a new blog-based site led by Daily Kos front pager David Waldman, a.k.a Kagro X. The collaborative effort aims to "bring the community-based political watch party that we've built at Daily Kos to the United States Congress," by focusing on legislative activism rather than tweaking the nascent Obama Administration. Recent topics include the ins and outs of the epic battle royale between Henry Waxman and John Dingell for the chairmanship of the critical House Energy and Commerce committee. Congress Matters plays off the Kos brand, with its familiar peachy-orange hyperlinks.
Open-Source Obama: Prominent tech world figure and open-source advocate Doc Searls has taken to Linux Journal to "claim Linux-based geek paternity for the successful presidential campaign of Barack Obama." Searls traces that ancestry way back to the '04 Dean campaign, and has an appropriately in-the-weeds look at the technology -- open-source and otherwise -- that powered the Obama campaign. (via Joe Trippi)
Call for Papers for Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '09: The next annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference will take place in Washington on June 1st through 4th. CFP is an often provocative look at social impact of computing and technology. This year's them is "Creating the Future." With its DC location, CFP '09 may well be a chance to bring together figures from the Obama Administration, law enforcement communities, and intelligence world. You might want to consider submitting a paper or workshop idea. The deadline is December 19th.

In Case You Missed It...

With an eye on the non-profit world, Sarah Granger considers election '08 as "a sweeping mandate to expand our technological infrastructure for the public good."

W. David Stephenson says the sort of liberation of government data that fueled the District of Columbia's recent Apps for Democracy contest "may in fact revolutionize the relationship between government and citizens." And Matthew Burton has this to say about the contest: "The Washington, DC government just procured 47 Web-based tools in 30 days" and at low cost. "This is good news in any year," writes Matthew. "But this year, it is a blessing."

Jindal's on Twitter

2008-11-25T11:54:59-05:00

Perhaps this is old news, but it hasn't yet been mentioned on PdF, so I'll mention it here: I just stumbled upon Bobby Jindal's Twitter page, and I'm impressed. Here's why:

It's active. He's been consistently posting about one tweet per day for the last two weeks. (Sure, two weeks isn't much, but given the timing of his account activation, his presence is more likely part of a long-term strategy than a fling: it is probably a reaction to the Obama campaign's successful online outreach strategy, and furthermore, it comes from a possible 2012 White House contender. Also, I think it's very telling that while Jindal became active after the election, BarackObama has done the opposite, posting heavily until the election and falling into silence ever since.)

It's substantive. There is a fair amount of life casting ("Here's me on MSNBC last night," etc.), but there's also some idea casting: several of his tweets are links to his blog, where he writes about policy issues in a half-way natural voice. Notably, his blog is hosted on his campaign's site--which has remained active despite be elected one year ago--instead of the official site of the Office of the Governor.

It's HIM! Or at least, it feels like it's him, and that's what matters. It's written in the first person, and it makes the governor sound like any other Twitter user. He is not as real as Representative Culberson--and, as someone being touted as the future of the GOP, he probably never will be--but he understands Twitter can be more than a press release feed. He (or an aide) is keeping up conversations with followers. Due to his relatively low volume, he can't keep up with everyone, but it's a start.

To me, Jindal is the first high-profile politician worth following on Twitter. Sign me up.

Daily Digest: Questioning the Marching-Orders Construct

2008-11-24T13:17:54-05:00

Building a Better Bully Pulpit: Is all this talk of openness and participation really just President-elect Barack Obama's way of supercharging the presidential bully pulpit? The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg considers whether Obama's most prominent use of technology will be to create a communications platform the skilled orator is well-poised to exploit. Stolberg's colleagues Daniel Lyons and Daniel Stone have their own take on what a "President 2.0" might mean, and their piece contains this nugget on the next steps of the Obama campaign's new media director Joe Rospars. Rospars, they report, won't be going to the White House. Instead, he's returning to Blue State Digital, joining "[o]ther top staff [who] expressed privately that the bigger opportunities and money will be found in dotcom, not dotgov."
We the People 2.0: The discussion of late about how President Obama might make use of his massive email list or build a "two-way" White House "misses the whole point," argues Craig Stoltz of the Web2.oh...Really? blog. The real takeaway from the '08 race, writes Stoltz, is that "people now communicate among themselves, without the permission, endorsement or encouragement of major institutions." It might seem natural to follow that line of thinking to conclude that have-our-say projects like ObamaCTO.org or Change.org's Ideas for Change in America (more on that below) aren't worth the trouble. The counter argument? That when it comes to these efforts, Obama isn't really serving as a deus ex machina. Instead, the incoming White House is simply a placeholder for our hopes and ambitions, and the real goal is to build our collaborative muscles and shape critical conversations.
We Have the Tools to Finally Pop the White House Bubble: The Media Consortium's Tracy Van Slyke suggests that if Obama really must give up the close contact provide by his beloved Blackberry, he should hire a team of "Special Community Liaisons" tasked with consuming new media on assigned issues, with the goal of spotting "top concerns, news, trends, and policy recommendations." Those liaisons would, in Van Slyke's plan, then use social tools to open up public conversations on the topic. But Newsweek's Jonathan Alter argues that Obama should buck the presidential tradition of giving in to the "splendid isolation" of the White House, and just keep his dang 'berry.
Government is Cool Again: Change.gov has taken in more than 200,000 resumes for executive branch political appointments, reports the New York Times' Michael Falcone -- though it's a bit unclear whether that figure indicates actual completed applications (which included a grueling nine-page questionnaire) or just simple statements of interest. (Thanks Shaun Dakin.) The optimist says that job seekers are energized by the change Obama has promised to bring to Washington. The cynic says that it's just that the White House is one of the very few employers in America hiring right now.
Japan's Online Politics (or Lack Thereof): Newsweek's Christian Caryl and Akiko Kashiwagi have a neat look at why online politics haven't exactly taken off in Japan, attributing the state of affairs to everything from the nation's non-neutral Internet to a culture that disdains direct confrontation. But one Japanese professor has a simple explanation: Japan's political establishment likes things the way they are, thank you very much. "Basically they want to suppress and eliminate any possibility for change," says Keio University's Kim Jung Hoon. "And the Internet is a major source of change."
Ideas for Change, and a Road Map: We mentioned above Change.org's Ideas for Change in America, where ideas for what's next rated mostly highly by the Change.org community will be sent on to the Obama Administration. The social-action hub has just announced that the project now has the backing of MySpace and a broad coalition of supporting partners, including techPresident, the Sunlight Foundation, Netroots Nation, VotoLatino, GOOD Magazine, Change Congress, Campus Progress, and People for the America Way. The end goal, states Change.org, isn't simply sending a note to the White House with a note saying "Get 'er done." Instead, once the top ten ideas are identified, "we will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of Change.org, MySpace, and our dozens of partner organizations and millions of combined members."

In Case You Missed It...

Gene Koo has part two in his great series called "From Campaigning to Governance." The focus of this installment is transparency, which, writes Gene, can help balance the problem of "asymmetric attention." That's where ordinary concerned citizens struggle when pitted against those with tremendous veted interests (read: lobbyists).

Allison Fine pushes back against the idea that what America needs right at the moment is more and better volunteerism, saying that our energies should be directed toward making government work.

Nancy Scola has a look at Barack Obama's second weekly YouTube address, saying that the series finds the President-elect navigating the tricky path of having enormous perceived power without the hard power of the presidency.

In "Change We Can Perceive In," Tom Watson says that when we consider how "believers" and "cynical pragmatists" seem to be differently judging the presidential transition, it might be the latter who "end up happier with President Obama."

Finally, from our Department of Horn Tooting, Craig Newmark of Craigslist has a nice mention of techPresident in which he says of the site, "you can get an idea of how the future is being invented there." Has a nice ring to it, no?

Progressive Nonprofits Turn on a Dime: Embracing and Challenging the New Administration Online

2008-11-21T22:45:44-05:00

Almost as soon as the polls closed, e-mail flurries began regarding how to make President-Elect Obama accountable for promises made during his campaign. In this difficult political and economic climate, organizations with decisive missions need to make sure their voices are still heard during the transition. As a result, progressive nonprofits have been scrambling to congratulate and challenge the incoming president to make sweeping change in his first 100 days in office using tools to make their cases.

Freepress e-mailed supporters: "Our job -- your job -- is to keep our momentum going and make sure President Obama makes good on his campaign pledges." Environmental Defense Fund has a new Transition Report series, "highlighting important developments related to climate action as President-elect Barack Obama assembles his team and sets his governing priorities." Amnesty International has launched a "100 days" campaign that calls on their website for "certain concrete steps in his first 100 days in office that would demonstrate a genuine commitment to bringing the United States into line with its international obligations."

And it continues. Moms Rising is asking members to "show your very visible public support by signing a huge card from MomsRising to President-Elect Obama that reads: 'We look forward to working with you to enact more family-friendly policies'." Women Count has a petition out asking for support in the creation of a presidential commission on women to "bring together the best thinkers from all backgrounds, sectors, and political parties, to impact the future of women in our nation." Thursday night, MoveOn held "Fired Up and Ready to Go" events across the country. Their call to action: "We'll launch a new campaign to help Barack win big changes—like health care and clean energy. We'll brainstorm other ways we can work together locally to take advantage of this new opportunity for progressive change."

These organizations - most of them still raw from fighting the Bush administration - now are able to use the tools and tactics they honed through that experience to embrace the new administration and bring their supporters along, engaging in the dialogue that began with the Obama campaign. Now the question becomes: how will the administration bring them into the fold?

There's an opportunity for partnerships - mass collaboration - in mobilizing and engaging people as the new administration takes the reins, and we've explored this to some level here at PdF already. However, as Micah Sifry notes, "This movement is far more important than any existing nonprofit." He recalls when the Red Cross servers crashed after Obama campaign urged supporters to donate during hurricane Gustav. What we have before us is not just a challenge to the new administration to make due on policy promises, but a sweeping mandate to expand our technological infrastructure for the public good.