How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

UltraAyla writes "With the announcement that President-Elect Obama will record his weekly address as a YouTube video to be posted at Change.gov, questions arise as to how an Internet-fueled candidacy based in part on a platform of government openness can begin to use technology to make government transparent. Aside from popular Slashdot policies, such as Net Neutrality, how do you think government (either in the United States or elsewhere) can best utilize technology to engage the public and make government more transparent and accessible?" Reader Rick Zeman points out a related New York Times story about how Obama will have to give up some of his communications gadgets because of the Presidential Records Act. Despite that, he apparently hopes to be the first US president to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office.

The medium is NOT the message

The problem with accessible government is that no-one's interested. Even where there are dedicated TV channels (e.g. in the UK) hardly anyone watches them. Why's that? Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

If by accessible, you mean dumbing down the work of government to cartoon-form, with nothing more than a series of 5-second sound-bites, then good luck. But that's not government in action, it's a soap-opera.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

But the laws aren't actually made there, either, except in a few rare cases. The laws are written by lobbyists and decided upon in behind the scenes deals; the committee meetings usually just ratify the deals already made. And in those rare cases, the committee meets in closed session.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

I think the point is more that the tedium can still be documented on a medium that is ideal for large abouts of tedious stuff - the internet - and then the interesting bits can be found and talked about. See what the UK group OpenSociety has done with www.theyworkforyou.com , like the processing of The Hansard into accessable form http://www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?pid=10068&pop=1#n4 [theyworkforyou.com]

Re:The medium is NOT the message

Think of it like source code. Have I personally read the kernel code? Nope. Have other people? Yes. Did I gain a benefit from that? Yes.

Not everyone has to be able to sit through every committee meeting. But all it takes is one person pointing out the interesting point for everyone to tune in to.

Re:We can do better - visualization

Actually, I just thought of another one: how about a visualization of the ways Congress and the President are spending their time. Group the time spent in various ways ("Bookkeeping", "military issues", "energy policy", "inappropriately texting interns"...) and allow us input on how the group as a whole spends its time. They work for us, goddammit, and we should get a say in what they focus on. I'm a boss at work, and when I think one of my engineers is spending too much time on a particular trivial task, I'll let them know what I think they should work on instead.

That is soooooo... 2006

What we need is a cloud computing government on a morph best-of-breed solutions platform to exploit efficient initiatives to envisioneer synergistic opportunistic public-private partnership solutions to national and global issues.

Let's for a joint public-private-faith based coalition to design a mutual framework and pray that it works.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

You jest, but Government really is a legacy system, written ~230 years ago by developers who have long since moved on. The people who came after them have been generally fearful of making any substantive changes, opting instead for minor revisions and, when new features became necessary, generally attempting to follow the techniques in the original framework without really understanding why those development strategies were used in the first place.

So what we have now is a maintenance nightmare. It was bad in 2000, but over the last 8 years, the government has relied almost entirely on contractors who have generally ignored any existing infrastructure and have re-written many things from scratch in languages that they've basically made up as they've felt the needed to. They've done this without any regard for stability, performance or maintenance going forward. They knew they'd be gone by 2009 and the problems they were leaving behind would have to be solved by other developers. As a result, we have one of the most resource hungry governments in the world, and the performance is pretty crappy. For example, there's a job that's been running for 6 years and still hasn't completed yet. No one is really sure what the job is supposed to do, but so far it seems that the only thing it's done is used a ton of resources to hack into another system and try to install another copy of our system in its place. The newly hired lead developer has indicated that he's planning to kill that job, albeit without the necessary '-9' flag, so that's hopefully going to free up some much needed resources.

It's at this point that the managers in charge should start looking at best-of-breed solutions from the rest of the world and trying to implement them. There are much more efficient ways to get things done that what we currently have, and we should begin by choosing a much more proven, stable and performant platform on which to build our government. And we should shift our security focus partially away from the external threats that have so far been our main focus. Instead, we should look at trying to eliminate at least some of the viruses running in our current system.

We need to face the fact that we've got the Windows Vista of governments. We had the Windows XP of governments before the last administration tried to entirely re-build our systems. They placed a priority on DRM and the appearance of security and generally built a system that requires more resources to run than we have. They've made cosmetic changes to distract people from realizing that the underlying infrastructure is pretty crappy. It may look current and modern, but at its core, it was written for an entirely different time and for an entirely different target audience. And its fundamentally unable to deal with the viruses that exist today (*cough*lobbyists*cough*).

We should be looking at ways to run Socialism (the OS X of governments...very user-centric, less gets done but people are generally happier, though it's hard to figure out exactly why that is considering how much they're paying for it) or Libertarianism (the Linux of governments...almost nothing is done for you, but if you're determined enough, you can make it exactly what you'd like and have a lot more resources left over for doing the things you want to do). Both of those platforms hold more promise going forward.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

You've got the right general idea, but the wrong analogy.

The proper analogy is that the original government was like Unix -- small, elegant, efficient, and decentralized. As society has gotten more complex, we've grafted on more and more onto the basic framework, making it far more complex. But at the core, it's still the right way to do things.

Windows Vista is Socialism -- an attempt to "cast off the past legacy of Unix" (analogous to Capitalism) and rewrite things to be all things to all users. And what you get is a gigantic resource hog that barely functions, but convinces people through pretty, shiny colors and pretty, shiny marketing that you have total freedom (e.g., "life without walls" or whatever their propaganda slogan is this month). And through ever increasing processing CPU power (/ever increasing debt spending), people believe that it works.

OS/X is the freedom of Unix, but with an attempt to add a user friendliness to the process -- kind of like Obama (though the jury is out on how much he actually believes in freedom, but let's go with it). Linux is more like a Libertarian government -- total freedom, but total responsibility as well, and only a geek's view of taste and beauty (in other words, little taste at all).

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

The proper analogy is that the original government was like Unix

Wrong still. The original platform was formed by committee, with compromises over features, scope and departmental subsystems roles (i.e. state's rights). It was based on compromises and feature creep. 10 new features, called the bill of rights, were added at the last minute when some user balked at adopting the platform as not user friendly enough. Since original deployment, the platform has been modified an number of times with features being officially added and removed. Other features have been extended, added or deprecated in often creative ways by super users (often referred to as "presidents" or SCOTUS). See previously mentioned bill of rights. There has been a growing tendency for the super user to have root access without sharing the password other power users, even though the original program called for decentralization of roles.

HTH

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

I would like to see some good version control. If you look at the congressional record, it's full of crap like "Strike out the sixth sentence of chapter 12, paragraph 348, replacing with: 'b. except where already addressed under USC 90.01.23'"

WTF? I would like something like Trac where you can click on ANY statement in the US Code and see instantly:

What changes have been made, over time
Who sponsored the changes
Who voted for, against, present
Links to related code, as needed
Public opinion related to the law
Press releases by public offices/personel about the law

All with a nice Google timeline kindof interface.

Executive Privilege

I didn't realize, until reading this article, that law is what forced the presidents to remain unwired. I just always assumed they were out of touch with the technological curve.

Still, that makes the president the only American citizen completely immune to spam, phishing, and those annoying e-mails laden with photos of dogs dressed up like superheroes.

That's some pretty hearty executive privilege.

Re:Executive Privilege

Yeah, I was pretty surprised at that. I understand that there may be security risks, but it seems like the pros would outweigh the cons. And while Obama may be able to do his job without a blackberry or any email at all, with only a slight loss in efficiency, what about presidents 20, 30 years from now? I imagine that at some point there will come a time when such restrictions actually get in the way of the president's job in a meaningful way.

Re:Executive Privilege

I'm frankly surprised that that is the case and I wonder if it isn't the law per se as much as a somewhat hidebound cya interpretation of the law.

Obviously, we can't have the president using some goofy webmail account loaded with cross site vulnerabilities and hosted god-knows-where, nor can we have him using the RNC mailserver, beyond the reach of document retention laws*cough*. That said, though, email security and retention are not exactly rocket surgery. Strong crypto is a consumer level technology at this point, and virtually every corporation of any size already has experience with massive email retention. If anything, it is easier to build a retention system for electronic documents than it is to build one for paper documents in equivalent volume.

You're missing the point--it's not that they can'tbuild a retention system, it's that they don't want one. They don't want every word or thought (or lobbyist/Abramoff buying them off) captured for posterity.

Plus, the NSA would probably shit a brick if the Pres had a Blackberry since every BES packet flows through a foreign country.

Tools for gov.

Wikis for pending legislation.

Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on /. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top.

Use an issue tracker for existing legislation. Have a problem with a law? File a bug. It may be marked as trivial or may get fast tracked as a patch. Either way you know it's status and can organize to get that status changed if enough people agree with you.

Use RSS feeds to distribute Congressional hearing notes, comittee transcripts, and legislative votes.

   

Re:Tools for gov.

Wikis for pending legislation. Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on /. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top

I've thought of this before. Though, I wonder about the value of any of it.

/. has a pretty good moderation system, or at least it seems to me. But while it works a lot of the time, it also sucks a lot of the time. Comments that sound right, or that people want to be true, are modded up, regardless of whether they are actually true. Comments on legal matters are probably one of the best examples of this.

Of course, from time to time you'll have a trusted source say something (think NYCL), but there are many instances when I've seen factually incorrect information modded to +5 Informative and stay that way.*

Furthermore, I get the feeling we'll be more likely to see something like this: http://obamacto.org/ [obamacto.org] than a more complex moderation system. Note that at the time of posting, "repeal the DMCA" is the third ranked suggestion. Of course we all know the problems with the DMCA (anti-circumvention provisions come to mind first), but repealing it would also get rid of safe-harbor provisions. How many people who clicked "vote for" thought of that?

In any case, it's not as if legislators are just going to look at the top five things on the list and implement them. At least, one hopes not.

Where a moderation system would work well is in the thousands of public comments that are submitted to, say, the FCC when they ask for public comment. That way instead of a flood of inane commentary, then can see some highly ranked ideas first.

*If my own comment becomes an example of this, here is a disclaimer :-)

Re:Tools for gov.

The Metascore [metagovernment.org] project (part of the Metagovernment [metagovernment.org] project) is working on a moderation system that would work for a discussion of that scale, which may be interesting. I do not know if they will come up with a working solution, but it is worth looking at.

A real how-to

This is really simple: provide data feeds to the public -- from various government collection sources.

End of story. We don't need the government to spend months, or years even, building websites which dumb data down for us. Give us the raw data feeds and let us create mashups, interactive content and let people make their own judgment based on it. Sure, some sites might need heavy design (such as educational loan repayment sites, etc).

A prime example of this data feed is something like DC's http://data.octo.dc.gov/ [dc.gov]

And what can people do with that? Well, something like this:

Drunken sailor map [baltimoresun2.com]

a request

The only problem I had with Obama was his vague speeches (hope, blah blah change etc) it seemed to say nice sounding things but not give any detail (lots of room for being weaselly letter on).
change.gov [change.gov] seemed 48 hours after Obama was elected to have (under the title agenda) a detailed policy list. This however disappeared quite quickly. Another [barackobama.com] site however seems to have all his policy details but is by a group called Obama for America, who are they, please post if you have any detail.

Re:a request

change.gov seemed 48 hours after Obama was elected to have (under the title agenda) a detailed policy list. This however disappeared quite quickly

It wasn't removed, just re-arranged. In fact it's still under "Agenda", the fifth tab in from the right and under the "Change.gov" logo at the top. From there you can click on any particular policy you want to know about.

Or just go to: http://www.change.gov/agenda/ [change.gov]

Another site however seems to have all his policy details but is by a group called Obama for America, who are they, please post if you have any detail.

This was his campaign website during the elections. Pretty sure a lot of the policy stuff is the same, here.

HTH,
Bill

How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

You mean one that values appearance over substance, is full of malware and bugs, crashes a lot, and isn't even compatible with itself? That's the usual kind. We've already got one. Worldwide, we've got hundreds.

Direct democracy

Right now we don't have a "real" democracy in the same way the ancient Greeks practiced it... the U.S. has a representative democracy where we elect a few people to make all of our decisions for us. I don't think this is a bad idea considering the scalability issues. However, the Web 2.0 age could allow people to have more direct input and metrics in the decisions they really care about, and not just give up their choice to whatever their elected representative feels on that one particular issue.

The easiest way to give the control back to the people would be to give them some control over how their taxes are allocated. Right now, we pay a certain percentage of our income in taxes, and the government decides how much to budget for each department. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually "earmark" your tax dollars? Don't want to support the war in Iraq? Want a certain percentage of your taxes to go support the Dept. of Education or NASA space exploration instead? This would be a great way of directly measuring people's priorities, and give people the sense that the work they do to make money does not go towards what they consider "waste".

Right now, we sort of have an indirect way of controlling where our tax money goes... you can make tax-deductible contributions to certain charities, or at best you can feed up to $2500 or so to a Political Action Committee to lobby your elected representatives for you. Both of those methods strike me as rather inefficient.

The government can start small... giving people control over a small percentage of their taxes and gradually increase it as the new balance of power is worked out. Also, maybe they could limit it to a fixed amount per capita, so the people who pay lots of tax don't get a disproportionate amount of control.

Anyway, I'd like to have more control over where my tax dollars go, and increase competitiveness within the government organizations to show that they put the money to good use.

Very Difficult To Do - And too easy to undo

I was the lead developer at the Rhode Island Secretary of state for several years. The administration I came in under was very pro-technology and allowed the IT department to explore Open Source, web services, REST APIs, RSS Feeds, etc. The later administration was very technology leary, felt that the IT department had too much power, and refused to provide real leadership. All the hard work that made the department a leader in technology and openness evaporated in period of months.

The Open Source technologies were done away with, the developers and system guys all left, and the IT department collapsed.

It is now all outsourced with no plans to expand their offerings, and have had to scale back on existing services.

I loved it till I hated it.

-CF

Re:comm theory

unless your theory happens to be that of Marshall McLuhan, in which case the technology (medium) defines (is) the communication (the message)

Re:comm theory

I'm sorry, but the medium fundamentally changes the message. One example among legions: a hand written thank you note on a good card that you took the time to mail after a job interview sends a completely different message than an email - even if the words used in both are identical.

Spend some time thinking about the last time complex emotions were conveyed using television. Try listening to this interview [bobedwardsradio.com] with Neil Gaiman that has a brief discussion about A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where something works over radio that doesn't work over television or in a movie.

Style and method of delivery are part of the content.

Re:comm theory

I just call it more then one site I need to allow on noscipt.

Web 2.0, where websites insist on you loading over 10 websites worth of javascript crap.