Once Barack Obama assumes the U.S. presidency in two months, he will have to give up his beloved BlackBerry:
In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.
Kind of ironic, seeing how heavily his presidential campaign relied on the Internet for communications and fundraising.
Even if he won’t be reading his e-mail anymore, Obama hopes to be the first U.S. president to have a laptop on his desk at the White House. He also plans to use YouTube to “communicate directly with the American people” even when in office. Is Obama truly the first Internet-era president? It will be interesting to see how these plans will be executed. I don’t have a very good grasp on how the U.S. government uses Internet for making information available, but if the situation is anything like in Finland, it’s not the matter of not having the information at your disposal. Oh no, there’s plenty of that out there for you to browse to your heart’s content. What’s more difficult is how to make it interesting. Government policy changes and committee minutes aren’t exactly what people go looking for as the first thing when they go online. A Q&A with the president will certainly generate more interest, but will the above-mentioned goal of communicating directly with the people mean dumbed-down answers not to confuse the Joe Sixpacks out there, or actual factual hard talk about politics?
Incidentally, a Slashdot commentator brought up some interesting tool proposals for a “Web 2.0 government”:
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.
[Via Slashdot]
