Change.gov Starts to Go Interactive, Intensively

“Today we’re trying out a new feature on our website that will allow us get instant feedback from you about our top priorities. We also hope it will allow you to form communities around these issues — with the best ideas and most interesting discussions floating to the top.”
Ordinarily, you wouldn’t get too excited about reading those words on a website. But when they are on the official blog of the President-elect, things are a little different. In fact, this is a big deal. When you consider that for the last eight years, the occupant of the White House has essentially told the public “you get input once every four years, after that I’m the decider,” this is huge.
A few hours ago, the Change.gov blog led with a post called “Join the Discussion” and pointed readers to a video from two members of the health care transition team. The first topic for discussion, “What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?” isn’t really one that leads to choosing priorities, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a general question like that one as a conversation-starter.
Already, there are more than 500 comments on the site (make that more than 600), organized into threads, and you can also rate them (as well as the commenters) and sort them by date, rating and freshness. This comment from one Jeremiah Jahn was off-topic, but telling: “I just wanted to say thank you for giving us a place to make our thoughts and comment heard. It’s about time the government provide a centralized place for citizens to express their opinions where they feel they will be heard.” [Emphasis added.] Imagine what happens if those numbers–on not just any “centralized site” but the one that symbolically and perhaps literally has the attention of the President-elect–start climbing into the five- and six-digits. Before our eyes, we are witnessing the beginning of a rebooting of the American political system.
The system being used is called IntenseDebate, a tool built by these four guys: Jon Fox, Isaac Keyet, Michael Koenig and Austin Hallock. Yes, Austin is just 16 years old. The others look like they recently started shaving. I’m including their pictures because they deserve some credit for this breakthrough.