Ten Online Ideas for Obama in Government

Steven from Minneapolis, MN — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:34:03 EST

Here are ten quick ideas for the coming Obama administration. The GSA commissioned this article last year. A PDF version and looong version with international examples is available.

Ten Practical Online Steps for Government Support of Democracy

By Steven Clift
Chair, E-Democracy.Org and Ashoka Fellow

This article will appear in the upcoming Intergovernmental Solutions newsletter of the U.S. federal
General Services Administration: http://tinyurl.com/2dhl9s

Does e-government have anything to do with democracy and citizen participation? Let's get
straight to the point - not yet.

Should it?

Yes. Government should be leading a charge into the increasingly and fundamentally interactive
web.

Information access, considered the safe starting point for government accountability online now
mostly presents the public a daunting needle in a huge haystack. This system is so complicated
that the valuable and substantive information that government produces is often ignored in the
increasingly interactive public lives of active citizens. . The lack of real and effective online access
to governance will substantially increase cynicism about and distrust in government among a
public that demands a more participatory representative democracy.

A bit of context: I coordinated e-government for the State of Minnesota in its early days. As a
citizen, I independently started E-Democracy.Org which created the world’s first election
information and discussion website in 1994. When “services first, democracy later” enveloped
most e-government projects, I went independent in late 1997. Since then, I've spoken and
consulted across 26 countries on "e-democracy.”

Here are the 10 things I would do in government at every level to help rescue our democracy in
the information age.

1. Timely, personalized access to information that matters.

Government decision-making information is not really public or relevant if people cannot act on it
when it still matters. Give people tools like personalized e-mail alerts based on keywords,
location, etc. and eliminate the "nobody told me" backlash government often receives due to
poor public outreach. Every government needs a “what’s new” democracy portal or a thematic
section covering all democratic processes as part of their main website.

2. Help elected officials receive and sort, then better understand and respond to email.

E-mail overload is the number one complaint I hear from elected officials around the world. Most
want to respond effectively, but simply aren't being provided the tools they need. If there ever
was an opportunity for open source collaboration among governments, this is it. In general, our
representatives and representative institutions must start to invest in the online infrastructure
they need to connect directly with the public they represent.

3. Dedicate at least 10% of new e-government developments to democracy.

Let’s define democracy starting with public input. In an e-service initiative, the 10% should start
with citizen focus groups to guide the design of the service, usability testing and studies to
generate user input and accountability, and post-transaction user surveys. If the investment is a
new content management system for information access, then use the 10% to add
personalization and survey input features or democratized navigation (those nifty menus that
show you the top ten articles viewed that day or week).

4. Announce all government public meetings on the Internet in a uniform manner.

All public meeting notices, agendas, handouts, and digital recordings must be online. The system
should be standards-based and tie state-by-state systems into a national network covering
federal, state, and local government public meetings. This is the only way for people to ask to be
pro-actively notified of any government public meetings within a certain geographic area
addressing specific topics that interest them.

5. Allow citizens to look-up all of their elected officials from the very local to national
in one search.

Along with the ability to look-up all public meetings, Americans should have the right to easily
determine who all the elected and appointed officials are who represent them currently. Just
before elected and appointed officials assume office, every government unit should be required
to submit contact information for those officials into a national database.

6. Host online public hearings and dialogues (or “e-consultations” as they are known
outside the U.S.)

As in-person public meetings begin to incorporate live online features, envision more deliberate
online exchanges to improve the outcomes of the decision-making process. If your government
agency hosts three public hearings across the country or your state, host the fourth hearing
online over a week or two and improve the format in the process. In 10 years, the legislatures,
commissions and city councils not holding hearings online will be in the minority.

7. Embrace the rule of law by mandating the most democratically empowering online
services and rights across the whole of government.

Technology itself is not forcing real institutional democratic change. I estimate that 90% of the
democratic innovations online that really share power are based on a political tradition or law
that existed before the Internet arrived. If we want all citizens to benefit universally from a more
wired democracy, then now is time to update our legal requirements and fund core online
democracy services.

8. Promote dissemination through access to raw data from decision-making
information systems.

Let’s explode decision-making data, like Congressional information and rulemaking related
content into bits via XML and open standards and make it easy to re-use public government data
from many sources to create views and searches that provide insight, understanding, and
accountability. Think “Web 2.0” interactivity built on top of government data by those outside of
government.

9. Fund Open Source sharing internationally across e-government.

Sharing and supporting open source software takes resources – a consortium of national
governments need to step up with collaborative funding. The new and less cluttered area of eparticipation tools are an ideal starting point within e-government to reduce technology costs and
build systems for use by multiple governments.. Efforts to place modules and customizations out
for community use will be key. Government and its vendors must contribute code back for the
wheels of reciprocal value to start turning.

10. Local up – a strategic approach to building local democracy online.

To build e-participation momentum, citizens need to experience results they can see and touch.
By investing in transferable local models and tools, more people will use the Internet as a tool to
strength their communities, protect and enrich their families and neighborhoods, and be heard in
a meaningful way. Every community needs an “online town hall,” E-Democracy.Org calls them
Issues Forums, for agenda-setting discussion of public issues. Comparative evaluation of access
and participation related online service and content indicators will introduce efforts for an online
"Democracy Tune-up." This same tune-up concept should be applied at the state and federal
level as well.

Conclusion

In the early days, folks thought the Internet was inherently democratic. Parts of it are, but that
mistaken sense of technological determinisms has not carried over to make constitutional and
legally-ground representative processes more open and responsive. Today, “politics as usual”
online may actually make things worse. Civically conceived e-participation efforts need to counter
such negative trends rather than being viewed as an extra option. Ultimately, each generation
needs to rebuild democracy with the special tools of their time. Our tools are online and our
democracy needs us.

Steven Clift leads the “Online Consultation and E-Participation” online community of practice at
DoWire.Org and shares numerous articles on e-democracy from Publicus.Net. An extended
version of this article with specific examples is available from that site.

Steven Clift's Blog

Ten Online Ideas for Obama in Government