From Social Government: White House Strives for New Forms of Engagement During State of the Union

Cross-posted from SocialGovernment, a site looking at how government is adapting to Web 2.0 and to which I am a contributor. 

When the President addresses Congress tonight on the State of the Union, the American people have one more way they can tune in to listen live. Last week, the White House announced the launch of an application with streaming video for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The application also features updates from the White House blog, the latest photos from the Administration’s Flickr album and archived video of the ongoing series “Inside the White House.” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs even made a short video saying that his daily press briefings will be streamed live and watchable on the free application, which is available for download in the iTunes Music Store.




Most presidential events and White House briefings are now streamed at whitehouse.gov/live — allowing the public to watch Administration events live and in their entirety. The addition of the streaming video application could drastically expand the potential reach of the Administration’s message and connectivity to the average citizen, making it a powerful political tool.

The State of the Union Address tonight will also be watchable on the White House Facebook application, where users will be able to post comments in real time and engage with others on Facebook.

On its surface, advocates of open and transparent government should applaud these moves — which show how a tech-savvy administration is using innovative technology to open the doors of the White House. However, users should understand where the content is coming from. Both the White House Web site and its applications are streaming content that is being produced by the White House, which ultimately is in control over which events are broadcast and by what methods they are accessible. There is no oversight or C-SPAN-like public access filter. That said, one would suspect that any attempts to manipulate media messages would not go unnoticed, given the increasing size and engagement of the audience.

Also this week, the White House and YouTube announced a partnership, Citizen Tube, where the public is invited to submit questions for the President via video and, next week, the President will respond, via YouTube, to answer them. Users will be able to vote on favorite questions using Google Moderator, according to the site. YouTube will also be live-streaming the State of the Union Address tonight.

Finally, WhiteHouse.gov released a series of short video statements from ever member of the Obama cabinet giving an update on the work of their department- the longest video is 90 seconds. The “Cabinet Reporting to You” videos are a first of its kind.

With these new ways of watching and interacting with the White House and the President, the administration is setting a high standard for engagement in its first State of the Union Address.

The Future of the Internet...Is In the Cloud

Cross-posted from SocialGovernment, a blog covering how government is adapting to Web 2.0, to which I am contributor. 

The future of the Internet is in the cloud, and it has implications for every sector of our society, especially government and business.

On Wednesday January 20 the Brookings Institution hosted a discussion on Cloud Computing including a keynote address from Brad Smith, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Microsoft Corporation. Smith unveiled a policy proposal from Microsoft which urged Congress to consider new legislation to regulate the cloud.

“We need a national conversation about how to build confidence in the cloud,” Smith said.

Defined simply, cloud computing is “computing delivered as a service over the Internet.” A national survey conducted for Microsoft by Penn, Schoen and Berland found that while 75% of Americans don’t know what cloud computing is, 90% use it.

Gmail and Google Apps are an example: the data do not reside on any one hard drive or tied to a single physical server. Instead, a user can access the data wherever, whenever, with an Internet connection. As more industries move data to the cloud, they are balancing the flexibility, reliability and choice of cloud computing with real concerns about privacy, security and legality.

The survey reflected that sentiment, while a majority of the general population and  86% of senior business leaders are “excited about the potential” of cloud computing, security and data privacy are concerns of more than 90% of those surveyed. And while there is growing confidence in the cloud (think about how many Americans use it for online banking, for example), there are also new inherent challenges.

The first is jurisdiction: Who is in charge? The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 would seem to extend to the cloud, but the law is terribly out of date and has not been modernized to keep pace with the development of the Internet. As an example, ECPA extends greater privacy protections to emails stored for less than 180 days than those stored longer. Obviously this is a throwback to the days in the 80s when keeping e-mails for long periods of time was burdensome and uncommon- but it is clearly not the norm today.

In the same vein, does the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, extend to the cloud? Do users have a reasonable expectation of privacy or do they relinquish that when using a third party (i.e. the cloud) to store private date? Many insist that the Courts must extend Fourth Amendment protection to the cloud, however they have not to date and there currently exists no legal precedent for such an argument.

While the US courts may soon consider the issue of constitutional protection, businesses that choose to host their data centers off shore raise the issue of international sovereignty and jurisdiction of the cloud. Smith says that Microsoft supports an international treaty defining access to the cloud but is cognizant that such an action in the near future is unlikely, and that in the interim it will be up to the private sector to make critical choices about the future of the cloud. 

Vivek Kundra, the Obama Administration’s Chief Information Officer, has spoken of the potential of cloud computing to increase access to data within government by, reducing time spent on procedure and increasing time spent on achieving an agencies fundamental mission and goals. He has estimated that the cost savings could be as great as 1/10^th. In a speech last year, Kundra chided what he sees as the focus of government IT on infrastructure maintenance rather than deploying technical tools to achieve goals.

At its core, the promise of cloud computing comes in giving users greater choice and access, in giving businesses greater flexibility and connectivity and giving government greater efficiency and transparency. Microsoft has introduced the Cloud Computing Advancement Act, which will continue a national conversation about the future of the cloud and the future of the Internet.

More information:

Read an op/ed about the Cloud Computing Advancement Act by Brad Smith in the Huffington Post

Politico also covered the issue this week in an article, “Microsoft Urges Greater Oversight”

Open Government Directive Workshop Asks "How Are We Going to Do This?"

Transparency. Public Participation. Collaboration.

They sound great in principle. As models, they are ideals that are worthy and noble to subscribe to. But goals are different than action steps. What we “want” is different from what we “have.” Now consider that the path to getting “there” is not laid out (or funded) and the scene will be set to explain the second Open Government Directive Workshop series that took place Monday at the US Department of Transportation.

About 175 people from across government, including agencies as diverse as the Interior and State Departments, met in a day designed to mimic the mindset behind the President’s Open Government directive: an open, transparent and collaborative daylong working session, where best practices were exchanged, relationships formed, and new ideas proposed.

One common refrain: “how are we going to do this?” With limited time and resources before each agency must submit their plan for open government to the Office of Management and Budget, and launch a website to announce their plans to the public, agencies are struggling to bring together the resources they need to comply with the Directive. While some speakers offered reminders that many of these tools and concepts are not new, it was clear that this change to the bureaucratic mindset was. As an example, in a PowerPoint presentation meant to discuss how his agency was an example of government 2.0 with an online collaborative working library, the first slide was a legal non-disclosure agreement against discussing the information to be presented. If we are truly going to live up to the spirit of open government, then this example showed the challenges that lie ahead.

The federal government is a large and diverse body and different agencies are clearly interpreting the presidential directive in different ways. A representative from the Health and Human Services Department talked about how his agency was implementing the directive within existing resources and procedures, saying that this will likely not be the last open government directive to be issued so it wasn’t prudent to make permanent changes now. On the other hand, the State Department showed real examples of how their global diplomacy initiatives are reaching people around the world, in real time.

11 presentations, limited to five-minutes each, revealed different initiatives taking place within our government. Despite some having evident shortcomings, there was a palpable excitement. This is something new, something exciting, and something that can have a real effect and actually make an impact.

How do we get there? Clearly a first step would be to alleviate concerns among those implementing the presidential directive that each trial need have tangible results. Government is well known for having a risk-adverse mindset- only appropriating funds and resources for programs that have a proven track record, for example. Government 2.0 is different. There is inherently an element of experiment and risk. This has to be embraced, not something to shy away from.

After the morning session, participants turned the workshop into an un-conference, following an open discussion format, in the hopes that the day would turn even more beneficial to attendees in their professional work and could therefore be directly applicable as they meet the demands of the Presidential directive.

The Open Government Directive Workshop Series will continue throughout 2010, roughly once per month. I attended today’s event as a correspondent for Social Government, an online blog dedicated to exploring the intersection of social media and government 2.0. All of the presentations, as well as archived video clips, of today’s event are available online at www.opengovplaybook.org. 

Why Open Government Is Important

Partisans on either side of the political spectrum will say that "change" they can believe in is hard to find, when looking back over the first year of the Obama Presidency. If anything, it seems as if the country has gotten more polarized -- over government spending, health care, energy and terrorism.

Among the President's campaign promises, there is one area in which his Administration has lived up to most expectations and stand in start difference to their predecessors: transparency and openness in government.

On the first full day of the Obama Administration, the President signed a "Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government," setting guiding principles for executive branch agencies to implement as they transitioned to new leadership. (Incidentally, the memo was signed on the same day that the President and First Lady opened the White House in a public Open House, which I was privileged to be invited to attend.) 

Last month, the President issued a Presidential Open Government Directive, which compels Executive Branch agencies to report back to the White House on how they will comply with three benchmark themes: transparency, public participation and collaboration.

While politics often guides what issues an agency prioritizes, the Obama Administration has made clear that the process by which that policy is implemented needs to change, adapting to meet the unique needs and possibilities of a new century. What's at stake is all-partisan: strengthening our democracy, by improving its efficiency and effectiveness.

As the Memorandum recognizes, new technology offers innovative and creative solutions to "Government 2.0." The Internet makes the objective of having government universally accessible to all Americans a real possibility. It should also be noted that on the policy angle, the Administration has made universal broadband a priority, beginning with funding from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the FCC recently began a series of cross-country meetings on the issue. Transparency of government operations increases accountability, allows for information to be more accessible and fulfill the spirit of public disclosure legislation.

Access to government information is only the first step. Interaction and participation with it is the next step. By allowing diverse opinions during the rule-making process, the quality of decisions will increase. Even within government, this is important. Technology and web 2.0 are knocking down cross-agency, even cross-department, barriers to participations. By allowing relevant government agencies and career professionals easy access to information, government operations increase and are improved.

Finally, the memorandum identifies collaboration as the third principle for government to adapt. While transparency and participation can be seen as taking place before and during the decision-making process, collaboration is a critical step in knowing what happens next- or answering the question, "how best can we use this information (data)?" The ARRA is a good example; the government set up www.recovery.gov to show how the $700 billion stimulus spending bill was being spent. Another great examples comes at the local level, with technical applications such as See Click Fix that allow for the public to use, adapt and collaborate with publicly available information and data- whether that be pointing out the need for city services- or the regional spread of a pandemic influenza.

With every major initiative, critics will point to areas in which the Obama Administration could be even more open and even more transparent--such as fulfilling the campaign promise to have all bills online for 72-hours before the President signs them, or opening up the closed-door health care negotiations to C-SPAN cameras--but it is irrefutable that the progress made over the last year is a dramatic step forward into 21st century e-government.

Note: Tomorrow, The Open Government Directive Workshop Series holds its second session, bringing together stakeholders from across government to discuss and collaborative how their agencies can learn from others in adapting to the principles set forward in the Presidential Memorandum. I will be live-tweeting and reporting from the Workshop for SocialGovernment. 

Tomorrow: Live-tweeting an Open Government Directive Workshop

Tomorrow, I'll have the opportunity to live-tweet a morning workshop at the Department of Transportation Headquarters in Washington on the Open Government Directive. I'll do so for SocialGovernment, a great project that I'm involved in with my colleague Ethan Klapper.

Here's a preview blog post that I wrote for SocialGovernment

Tomorrow, the Open Government Directive Working Series, an interagency collaborative event at the Department of Transportation, will take place in Washington, DC. The purpose of the series is to lead to a successful implementation of the Open Government Directive, and to develop momentum behind it. At the end of the working series, existing and effective practices will be combined into an OpenGov Playbook

Tomorrow, ten presentations will be made by federal agencies engaged in open government  best practices and there will be over three hours of small group discussions and dialogue.

SocialGovernment is proud to be the official Twitter partner of tomorrow’s workshop. Throughout the day, tune in to our Twitter feed, @socialgovt, for insight and analysis from the conference. Chris Golden will be attending and will be following the conference for us on the blog.

From Social Government: Congressional Transparency

In what hopefully will become a series of entries on transparency and Congress, I wrote this introductory post for the website socialgovernment.com today:

To a member of Congress, the Congressional website may just be another aspect of the responsibilities of their elected office, but to their constituents, having an up-to-date and effective portal may be their most valuable connection to the labyrinth of legislative procedure and executive agencies.

Rep. David Price (D-NC), author of The Congressional Experience: Transforming American Politics” writes of his duties as a Member, “I am only one of [many] strong-willed people trying to shape national policy outcomes, but as I often remind constituents…I am the only one of the 435 who is responsible for assisting individuals, organizations, and local governments in the Fourth District in their dealings with the federal government.” The Congressional website is where the power of transparency and open government can be fully realized.

The Congressional Management Foundation has outlined “Five Building Blocks of Effective Congressional Web Sites,” Audience, Content, Usability, Interactivity and Innovation. These suggested categories, and the annual Congressional “Gold Mouse Award” given to members who meet them best, are primarily created to enhance and improve a Congressional office’s online communication strategy. At the same time that effective communication with constituents and organizations is important, so too is the ability of a constituent to use the website as a tool to see, unfiltered, how their member of Congress is representing them.

According to the Sunlight Networks “Punch Clock Campaign,” only four United States Senators and four members of the House of Representatives currently post their daily schedules, showing constituents whom they are meeting with, on their official websites. New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand was one of the first leaders of this openness when she was first elected to the House of Representatives. Since she was appointed by New York Governor David Patterson to fill the Senate seat vacated by now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gillibrand has continued a commitment to transparency, in what she calls “The Sunshine Report,” by prominently displaying it on the homepage of her website. In addition to providing online access to her financial disclosure forms and earmark requests, Gillibrand has utilized social media to deliver her message of openness, saying in a YouTube video last month, “I think New Yorkers deserve leaders who are honest and up-front with the public. To address are economic challenges, we need greater transparency in government.”

Especially for new members of Congress, faced with comparably small budgets and staff, committing to transparency on their official websites can pose a burden. The Washington Examiner reported this week that about half of the 55 members of the House first elected last November still have the basic template-form websites they choose from the Office of House Information Resources (HIR). “The member can choose from five design templates, which provide basic information. Some are colorful and eye catching while others are sharp and formal. Representatives also have the choice to contract out for their own independent Web site design, but they have to pay out of their own office budget,” the article says.

The Democratic majorities in Congress have pledged to restore a commitment to openness in the appropriations process. In February, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) sent a letter to members saying that all offices, “must post information on the requests they have submitted to the Appropriations Committee on their official House website at the time the request is made.” Lawmakers were to have until April 04 to publish all requests, however, according to the Hill newspaper; over 70 offices did not comply. On Wednesday, it was reported that those members that missed the deadline, or are still not in compliance, will not be punished in any way, raising questions about the Leadership’s commitment to earmark transparency and reform.

As more members of Congress take to Tweeting and hosting their floor speeches or district events on YouTube, and with large and divisive issues including health care and energy expected to be debated in the next several months, the constituent demand for transparency from their members of Congress will only increase. In the weeks ahead, I hope to take a closer look at specific members’ websites and other issues concerning transparency in the legislative branch.