The "Coming Digital Presidency" is an article I wrote about the use of social networks and web tools in governing: http://mathoda.com/archives/189
Mark Drapeau
· 1 year ago
Ranjit, this is a very nice article. I have incorporated some of its ideas into something I am writing about policy moving into the next administration. Thanks for linking to it here. -Mark
pair o' dimes
· 1 year ago
I dig the idea of outsourcing home-school ed. Would also like to see public schools allow commercial involvement. There's unimaginable possibilities for our entire education system to embrace social networking. 1st grade through graduation a student could have an account that follows them no matter the school. Who needs arithmetic papers on the fridge when you can you can post it for the world to see?
Mark Drapeau
· 1 year ago
Thanks for your enthusiam! There are a number of white papers out there from think thanks and advocacy groups talking about how to use social tech tools for government in the broadest sense. Although I mainly work on Social Software for Security (S3) for the government in Washington, as a person I have an interest in the broader topic. I think there are many possibilities we have only begun to discover! Mark
Marc Vermut
· 1 year ago
Mark,
Really enjoyed the column. We are finally, I think, entering an age of empowered citizenry with access to information...if the government lets loose with the strings. And you start to see it in action with Tara Hunt's TransitCampBayArea. The real impact that people have is in starting local and building up.
Not sure how easy the top down initiatives are to accomplish, such as making the provision of health care more efficient through outsourcing. If the government is too large to figure out a national plan, I can't imagine the bureaucracy tackling such coordination effectively. What are your thoughts on how likely agencies like the EPA, FDA, etc are to opening up for citizen involvement when there is such fundamental disagreement surrounding their mission, methods, decisions and actions?
marc
Mark Drapeau
· 1 year ago
Hi Marc, thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. That's a big, broad question you asked and I'm not sure there's an easy answer. Or any answer, since the President and agency leadership will change shortly. But there is a great Washington DC example of more open government providing an infrastructure for data but allowing open analysis of it: the city itself. Washington DC's CTO, Vivek Kundra, is now working with Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs to run a contest called "Apps for Democracy" (http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/). (Mashable is the key sponsor.) The idea is that people and companies will create widgets to make useful sense of the city's data on traffic, crime, etc. Organizations in the federal government like DARPA already run contests looking for innovation - I don't see why similar things could not be done at (say) the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CDC, and other places with storehouses of data that could readily be provided to people, or are already available but in difficult to work with formats. -Mark
Peter Corbett
· 1 year ago
@Marc and @Mark - It's really interesting what the government a) has been willing to do in the past and b) will be willing to do now and in the future with regard to empowering citizens to take part in government.
As Mark mentioned, we've created http://www.appsfordemocracy.org to empower citizens of the world (it's open to all) to create widgets, web apps, maps mash-ups, facebook apps and more that will be useful for DC and beyond.
The key idea is this is a way for us to "save our own money" by not assigning huge IT contracts to single firms and waiting years for things to get built. We expected to see hundreds of cool, useful apps built in a 30 day period for....1% of the cost it would take to create them the traditional way.
Peter (@Corbett3000)
Will Evans
· 1 year ago
Have you seen what iStrategyLabs is doing with Apps for Democracy? Talk about real crowdsourced innovation to build better apps that serve citizens... http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/
Will Evans
· 1 year ago
Ooops - looks like I was beaten to the punch
Mark Drapeau
· 1 year ago
Will, I think we're all very enthusiastic about Apps for Democracy!!
All Comments
Really enjoyed the column. We are finally, I think, entering an age of empowered citizenry with access to information...if the government lets loose with the strings. And you start to see it in action with Tara Hunt's TransitCampBayArea. The real impact that people have is in starting local and building up.
Not sure how easy the top down initiatives are to accomplish, such as making the provision of health care more efficient through outsourcing. If the government is too large to figure out a national plan, I can't imagine the bureaucracy tackling such coordination effectively. What are your thoughts on how likely agencies like the EPA, FDA, etc are to opening up for citizen involvement when there is such fundamental disagreement surrounding their mission, methods, decisions and actions?
marc
As Mark mentioned, we've created http://www.appsfordemocracy.org to empower citizens of the world (it's open to all) to create widgets, web apps, maps mash-ups, facebook apps and more that will be useful for DC and beyond.
The key idea is this is a way for us to "save our own money" by not assigning huge IT contracts to single firms and waiting years for things to get built. We expected to see hundreds of cool, useful apps built in a 30 day period for....1% of the cost it would take to create them the traditional way.
Peter (@Corbett3000)
http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/
I'd like to get some sort of a database going which includes updates from all of the sources covering Gov't 2.0.