Rialtas.net – Government 2.0

Excellent article posted on October 30th 2008, by Peter M. Shane at the Huffington Post ‘Voting for Democracy: The Obama Vision of Open Government and Public Engagement’

Some excerpts:

The stakes here are hard to overstate. Americans have within their grasp a host of communication tools that could sustain a robust democratic culture of sharing, creativity and participation. It is so easy now to feel powerless, cynical, alienated from government, and distrustful of all public institutions. Senator Obama, however, is promising to lead a transformation in our political life. Imagine how people’s attitudes would change if citizens felt they could actually insist upon and then see results from the government’s embrace of fact-based solutions to the critical problems that individual citizens cannot conquer entirely on their own…

…The Obama platform is something of a “Top Ten” list when it comes to proposals for federal leadership in revitalizing democracy through technology. He would “make government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities.” He would establish pilot programs to open up government decision-making to meaningful public input. He would require heads executive departments and agencies to conduct significant public business in public and in venues that can be watched online…

…Obama promises to employ current information technology to permit citizens to participate in public meetings from a distance. He promises “a web site, a search engine, and other web tools that enable citizens easily to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials.”..

…A President Obama would require cabinet officers to have national “town hall meetings” online. He would improve government decision-making through Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs and wikis. He would recommit the federal government to providing access to public records. He will pursue both universal broadband and open networks to give every person in America genuine access to the tools of 21st Century democratic participation….

Read Original Post on the Huffington Post

Download Obama’s position paper on technology and innovation.  (62 KB .pdf)