e-Hail To the Chief: Obama Won With Web's Help. Now, How to Govern Using That Community?

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: e-Hail To the Chief
Obama Won With Web's Help. Now, How to Govern Using That Community?
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 31, 2008; C01

....A survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 51 percent of online Obama supporters expect to get e-mail, text messages or other communications from the new administration.

But how will all that online energy be channeled from campaigning into governing?

With some notable exceptions, federal Washington -- how agencies deal with citizens, the process in which policies and laws are created -- is stuck in the Encyclopaedia Britannica era. A relatively small group of editors and contributors is in charge. A growing portion of the country, however -- the Web-enabled set that swears by MySpace and YouTube (and note the emphasis on "My" and "You") -- lives by the wisdom-of-the-crowd, I-have-something-to-contribute ethos of Wikipedia. In the same way that anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, not only will Web-acculturated citizens speak their minds, but they also won't ask anyone's permission to do so....

(O)nline social networking is designed to foster a community. For that approach to be effective, WhiteHouse.gov can't just push information out -- it has to pull content in, too. And once it does so, the administration will have to decide whether, when and how to incorporate those voices into its decision-making process.

On Change.gov, a transition Web site launched two days after Obama won, a constant stream of information is doled out. You can watch YouTube videos of transition staffers. You can track meetings between the transition team and outside groups, which provide searchable documents online (and allow visitors to leave comments for the team). You can post questions in the "Open for Questions" feature, where submitted questions are voted to the top by other users. In its first week, the feature got 978,868 votes on 10,302 questions from 20,468 people....

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"This is a part of our Internet culture, and it's an emerging part of our political culture -- you, as a citizen, get to talk back to your government," says Google chief Eric Schmidt, who is also an Obama adviser. "I'm a child of the broadcast TV world. Aside from voting and watching TV and maybe joining a letter-writing campaign, what actual impact could I have on a specific policy? But the new set of tools online allow the government to open itself up and post a series of questions to its citizens. What should we do with health care? By asking that question, not only does the government become more porous, there becomes a much more dynamic dialogue between the government and its citizens. Change.gov offers hints as to how this works. We'll see if it transfers to WhiteHouse.gov."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/30/AR2008123003518_pf.html