Every time I try to ramp up to tackle this post, I get struck by another by another, “oh, wow” when I visit Change.Gov. This week they have the Open for Questions experience (being discussed on our Consult@ group) and I just discovered their Seat at the Table option where groups can upload documents to provide input to the transition team.

Today, the respected Pew Internet and American Life Project released a survey on expectations about Obama’s use of technology in office (news reports). There are some great numbers (press release below). The shortcoming of the survey is that it focused on activism/communication - how people expect Obama to activate them or how they might act on behalf of the new President to push his agenda online. I fully expect Obama’s campaign, I said campaign, to continue BarackObama.com as an activist tool and its bottom-up engagement environment for supporters.

However, as President and with WhiteHouse.Gov (I assume Change.Gov will move to that domain Jan. 20), Obama represents everyone and the more important question to me is what do people expect from the next President and government as whole in terms of listening/engaging people online. Old politics transferred to the new medium in terms of broadcast communication is so Beltway.

That said, Change.Gov is already starting to answer that question by both accepting input in different structured form and by using the sites visitors to rate/vote up content/questions. In the past I’ve pointed out leading features on the websites of world leaders outside the United States. We were a desert in governance online. No more. Ha. Finally.

How will the next Administration use the Internet to listen to people and involve them in meeting public challenges? In this era, it is clear that government alone won’t have the resources to fix things for us, but it can play a vital convening role of citizen capacity from the local up to national level. Obama used a neighbor to neighbor tool to allow people to go door to door or call their neighbors to influence their votes, will they engage people at that level (because clearly the technology can) bring people together to not just support the President’s agenda but to instead solve local problems nationally? Wow, that would be something.

Even so, I do have some changes I’d to propose to Change.Gov and the next WhiteHouse.Gov. I’ll expand on these in the coming weeks on the U.S. Democracy Online Exchange - dowire.org/us

They will come in large part from my Ten Practical Online Steps for Government Support of Democracy and Sidewalks for Democracy Online articles, the practical e-democracy best practices “briefs” as well as my longer and older report to the U.N. titled E-Government and Democracy: Representation & Citizen Engagement in the Information Age.

Let me offer one. It is good that Change.Gov allows people to opt-in to e-mail contact. While the action specific e-mail update have been helpful, like Japanese Prime Ministers have done with considerable success, send out a weekly e-mail newsletter. Keep it concise and highlight the most important new things across your website. In Japan they send it out on Thursday’s when the bulk of the week’s new content in on the site. Most importantly it contains a short first person article most weeks from the leader of their country. I expect my next President to talk to me first person online somewhere. My not in an e-mail newsletter that will likely be read by more people than those who listen to or watch the weekly radio address.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
DoWire.Org
612-203-5181 - Mobile

P.S. The note from PewInternet:

From: Cornelia Carter-Sykes
Subject: Pew Internet Report: Post-Election Voter Engagement

After a presidential election in which voters increasingly went online to mobilize others and take part in the political debate, many of those who were active during the campaign expect to remain engaged with the incoming Obama Administration and mobilize others in support of his agenda.

This is the key finding of a new national phone survey from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which also found that:

* 62% of Obama voters expect that they will encourage others to support the new administration’s policies during the upcoming year. 48% of these expect to do so in person, 25% expect to do so over the phone, and 16% expect to promote the new President’s agenda to others on the
internet.

* Among Obama voters who were involved online during the campaign, 25% say they plan to mobilize support for the administration’s policies by using the internet.

For the full report please visit:
www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/271/report_display.asp

From:
digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report

November, 2008
www.macfound.org
Living and Learning with New
Media: Summary of Findings
from the Digital Youth Project

…

Major Findings

youth use online media to extend friendships
and interests.

Most youth use online networks to extend the friendships
that they navigate in the familiar contexts of
school, religious organizations, sports, and other local
activities. They can be �always on,� in constant contact
with their friends through private communications like
instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in
public ways through social network sites such as
MySpace and Facebook. With these �friendship-driven�
practices, youth are almost always associating with
people they already know in their offline lives. The majority
of youth use new media to �hang out� and extend
existing friendships in these ways.

A smaller number of youth also use the online world to
explore interests and find information that goes beyond
what they have access to at school or in their local community.

Online groups enable youth to connect to peers
who share specialized and niche interests of various
kinds, whether that is online gaming, creative writing,
video editing, or other artistic endeavors. In these interest-
driven networks, youth may find new peers outside
the boundaries of their local community. They can also
find opportunities to publicize and distribute their work
to online audiences, and to gain new forms of visibility
and reputation.

youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online.

In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity,
youth create and navigate new forms of expression
and rules for social behavior. By exploring new interests,
tinkering, and �messing around� with new forms of media,
they acquire various forms of technical and media
literacy. Through trial and error, youth add new media
skills to their repertoire, such as how to create a video
or game, or customize their MySpace page. Teens then
share their creations and receive feedback from others
online. By its immediacy and breadth of information,
the digital world lowers barriers to self-directed learning.

Some youth �geek out� and dive into a topic or
talent. Contrary to popular images, geeking out is highly
social and engaged, although usually not driven primarily
by local friendships. Youth turn instead to specialized
knowledge groups of both teens and adults from
around the country or world, with the goal of improving
their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers.
While adults participate, they are not automatically the
resident experts by virtue of their age. Geeking out in
many respects erases the traditional markers of status
and authority.

New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy
for youth that is less apparent in a classroom
setting. Youth respect one another�s authority online,
and they are often more motivated to learn from peers
than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed,
and the outcome emerges through exploration, in
contrast to classroom learning that is oriented by set,
predefined goals.

Implications

New media forms have altered how youth socialize
and learn, and raise a new set of issues that educators,
parents, and policymakers should consider.

adults should facilitate young people�s engagement with
digital media.

Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online,
youth are picking up basic social and technical skills they
need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting
barriers to participation deprives teens of access to
these forms of learning. Participation in the digital age
means more than being able to access serious online
information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators
being more open to forms of experimentation and
social exploration that are generally not characteristic
of educational institutions.

given the diversity of digital medi a, it is problematic to develop
a standardized set of benchmarks against whi ch to
measure young people�s technical and new medi a literacy.

Friendship-driven and interest-driven online participation
have very different kinds of social connotations. For
example, whereas friendship-driven activities center
upon peer culture, adult participation is more welcomed
in the latter more �geeky� forms of learning. In addition,
the content, behavior, and skills that youth value are
highly variable depending on with which social groups
they associate.

in interest-driven participation, adults have an
important role to play.

Youth using new media often learn from their peers,
not teachers or adults. Yet adults can still have tremendous
influence in setting learning goals, particularly on
the interest-driven side where adult hobbyists function
as role models and more experienced peers.

to stay relevant in the 21st century, education institutions
need to keep pace wi th the rapid changes introduced by
digital medi a.

Youths� participation in this networked world suggests
new ways of thinking about the role of education. What,
the authors ask, would it mean to really exploit the
potential of the learning opportunities available through
online resources and networks? What would it mean to
reach beyond traditional education and civic institutions
and enlist the help of others in young people�s learning?
Rather than assuming that education is primarily about
preparing for jobs and careers, they question what it
would mean to think of it as a process guiding youths�
participation in public life more generally.

More Information

More information about the study and the MacArthur
Foundation�s digital media and learning initiative can
be found online at www.digitallearning.macfound.org/
ethnography.

See:
whovoted.net

This ought to stir up some discussion. I’ve often felt use of this data in electronic bulk format by candidates campaigns to limit outreach to the most active voters was a state subsidy for exclusion. This is particularly true for local election where local candidates can easily concentrate outreach on the most likely voters … on the other hand it could be viewed as a way to keep the costs of campaigning under control. And in 1998 folks with Jesse Ventura’s insurgent third party campaign used this data to specifically target less frequent voters. The site below will raise awareness of the fact that this data has generally been available, just not online for all to use.

Steven Clift
dowire.org

Subject: “Who Voted” Website Provides Public Access to Voter Lists
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 11:57:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Todd Davies

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, November 3, 2008
CONTACT: Todd Davies (davies at csli dot stanford dot edu)

“Who Voted” Website Provides Public Access to Voter Lists

As voters go to the polls around the U.S. this week, a new website is promoting
the need for easy public access to voter lists. The site, called “Who Voted?”,
provides free web access to voter histories - the official lists of those who
are recorded as having voted in government elections. Site visitors can now
view records for four states — Florida, Idaho, Ohio, and Washington — by
searching on a name, voter registration number, or zip code. The site is live
at whovoted.net.

The Who Voted project grew out of a Google Summer of Code grant to Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), but the current website and the
views it represents are independent of CPSR. Who Voted is being hosted as a
research prototype on a server located at Stanford University. Members of the
project team include Todd Davies, Jeffrey Gerard, Reid Chandler, and Gordon
Lyon.

The Who Voted team plans to upload data from more states in the future.
Meanwhile, the team hopes to spark a conversation about the need for public
access to voter lists. Many states restrict the ability of the public to
access voter data, through laws that prevent its general release and/or high
fees for obtaining the data.

Since the late 19th Century, public elections in the United States, and in most
other countries, have utilized a secret ballot. This means that no one except
the individual voter is supposed to know for which candidates or propositions
that voter voted. The secret ballot protects voters’ privacy and generally
prevents the buying and coercion of votes. While it is widely viewed as
essential to democracy in large modern societies, the secret ballot makes
election results difficult to verify, and removes a communicative function in
the act of voting.

The Who Voted website attempts to address these problems while maintaining
ballot secrecy and voter privacy. It makes already-public information about who
voted, which is usually difficult to access, available to everyone for free via
the web. Citizens may check their own or others’ voter histories for personal
interest, or to verify that they were properly recorded as voting (or not
voting) in a particular election. These poll book entries generally mean that a
voter showed up at a poll, or cast an absentee ballot. It is still possible
for a vote to be invalidated later in the process.

In addition to promoting public verification of voter lists, another goal of
the Who Voted project is to spark conversation about the meaning of voting
itself as a socially responsible act. Research by political economist Patricia
Funk has shown that citizens are more likely to participate politically when
the fact that one has voted is publicly visible.

The site’s URL is www.whovoted.net. For more information, contact Todd
Davies (davies at csli dot stanford dot edu).

This is clearly a site in the works. It is changing before my eyes. If you have trouble pulling it up, below in the text from the home page as of 1:20 p.m. Central.

A few notes:

1. .Gov Sort Of - While using a .Gov domain, the “Obama-Biden Transition Project” say they are a 501c(4) organization, so that is interesting.

2. E-mail Opt-in - The top item is the option to leave an e-mail address and your zip code. Yes! Finally a government … ish site that realizes the most important hit is an opt-in e-mail connection that allows people to say “tell me when something is new.”

3. Public Input - The site is asking for public input!!!! “Tell us your story - www.change.gov/page/s/yourstory - and the issues that matter most to you. Share with us your concerns and hopes - www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision . � the policies you want to see carried out in the next four years.”

I wonder what they will do with a few million submissions? Perhaps crowd-source ratings to bring the best submissions (or most gamed) to the top for many to read.

If you’d like to advise the next administration on ways to use the Internet in governance and “pitch in” as President-elect Obama requested the other night … join the U.S. Democracy Online Exchange to trade notes and advice. While some of you may have a track to Obama insiders, why provide input the old-fashioned closed beltway kind of way?

Instead, live the dream of a new participatory politics by publicly sharing your input, advice, reactions, and ideas so they will be noticed by the builders of the next WhiteHouse.Gov and others. By crowd sourcing advice for use of the Internet in governance your great technical/political/design mind can not only influence Federal developments, but also efforts at the local and state level. This is it. What happens in the next three months will determine just how interactive the next four to eight years of American democracy will be NOT just to win and election but to meet public challenges and govern.

Join the U.S. Democracy Online Exchange online group (a combo e-list, web forum (no e-mail setting), blog feed, simple social net) from:

dowire.org/us

Steven Clift
Democracies Online
E-Democracy.Org

From:
www.change.gov/page/content/americanmoment

Thursday, November 06, 2008 | 75 Days Until Inauguration

Change.gov - The Official Web Site of the The U.S. Presidential Transition
“Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.” - President-Elect Barack Obama

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An American Moment

The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. It is about the great things we can do when we come together around a common purpose. The story of bringing this country together as a healed and united nation will be led by President-Elect Obama, but written by you. The millions of you who built this campaign from the ground up, and echoed your call for the change you wanted to see implemented by the Obama Administration - this process of setting up that new government is about you.

This transition is about selecting a new staff and agenda that will help reclaim the American dream and bring about positive lasting change to this country. In order to do that, we want to hear from you.

Tell us your story and the issues that matter most to you. Share with us your concerns and hopes. � the policies you want to see carried out in the next four years.

“I ask you to believe - not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours. I know this change is possible�because in this campaign, I have had the privilege to witness what is best in America. I’ve seen it in lines of voters that stretched around schools and churches; in the young people who cast their ballot for the first time, and those not so young folks who got involved again after a very long time. I’ve seen it in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see their friends lose their jobs; in the neighbors who take a stranger in when the floodwaters rise; in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb. I’ve seen it in the faces of the men and women I’ve met at countless rallies and town halls across the country, men and women who speak of their struggles but also of their hopes and dreams.”

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Subject: Announcement about the World e-Parliament Conference 2008 for
website
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:22:29 +0200
From: Ludovica Cavallari - info@ictparliament.org

…

*World e-Parliament Conference 2008*

**

The United Nations, through the Department of Economic and Social
Affairs (UN/DESA www.un.org/esa/desa), the European Parliament
(www.europarl.europa.eu ) and the
Global Centre for ICT in Parliament (_http://www.ictparliament.org_) ,
are organizing the World e-Parliament Conference 2008 on 25-26 November
at the European Parliament in Brussels.

The *World e-Parliament Conference 2008* represents a unique opportunity
for leaders and members of parliaments, parliamentary officials and
experts to exchange views at a global level on the impact of new
technologies as tools to strengthen the representative, legislative and
oversight functions of regional and national assemblies.

This event builds on the results of the World e-Parliament Conference
2007, held in Geneva in October 2007, and on the outcome of the World
e-Parliament Report 2008, the first publication on this topic issued by
the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Global Centre
for ICT in Parliament on 28 February 2008.

The World e-Parliament Conference 2008 is principally aimed at members
of parliaments, secretaries general, parliamentary staff and officials,
experts from international organizations and academics who work and deal
with information and communication technologies as instruments to
improve and modernize parliamentary business and citizens� participation
in public decision-making processes.

Specifically, at the Conference, the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament
and its partners intend to present and launch guidelines, tools and
concrete outputs developed in the past year to help parliaments assess
and benchmark their technological level and/or adopt new technologies in
the parliamentary environment.

Around 400 participants are expected to take part in the general debate
and parallel tracks forming the World e-Parliament Conference 2008 to
enrich the discussion around the challenges and benefits provided by the
daily use of ICT and the analysis of successful approaches, good
practices and lessons learned. Selected presentations will be delivered
by renowned experts and parliamentary officials to showcase cutting edge
solutions and case studies.

At the Conference, interpretation will be provided in English, French
and Spanish.

More information can be obtained by visiting the website of the
conference at: www.ictparliament.org/worldeparliamentconference2008/

*The Global Centre for ICT in Parliament*
www.ictparliament.org
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 251
00186 Rome, Italy
Tel (+ 39) 06 68136320 ext. 214
Fax (+39) 06 68211960