Source:
New York Times....A new feature on President-elect Barack Obama’s transition Web site, Change.gov, which allows users to submit questions and then vote on the ones they most want answered, went live on Wednesday.
The tool, “Open for Questions,” already appears to be getting traffic. As of Wednesday afternoon, users sent in roughly 1,000 questions and logged more than 70,000 votes, and those numbers were climbing higher by the minute. The Obama transition team said that some of the most popular questions would be answered “on a regular basis.”
Leading the pack was this submission from Diana in New Jersey: “What will you do to establish transparency and safeguards against waste with the rest of the Wall Street bailout money?” Other questions in the top 10, based on user rankings, focused on what incentives Mr. Obama would provide to encourage “greener behavior across the country,” what steps he would take “to restore the Constitutional protections that have been subverted by the Bush Administration,” and whether the president-elect plans to lift the federal ban on stem cell research during his first 100 days.
“Open for Questions,” is part of the Obama team’s effort to create an online platform that provides a measure of interactivity, though the format is not a new one. The Web site, CommunityCounts, in partnership with several other organizations, has also been collecting text and video questions for the president-elect that users can vote up or down.
Change.gov also includes a discussion board where citizens can post comments on topics posed by the transition team. (The current question is: How is the current economic crisis affecting you?) The site also features a new section that lists the groups meeting with the transition team.
Read more:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/changegov-takes-questions/