Archive: Category: TechPresident

The Obama Administration took its first major steps toward implementing its promise to make government more open and transparent, with two presidential memoranda covering freedom of information, transparency and open government. The first memo directing all agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure." This is a 180-degree turn from the policies of the Bush Administration. Most interesting for e-democracy fans: The memo says "all agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government." The second memo reiterates those points, and adds more detail. It calls for information about government operations and decisions to be put online, and urges departments and agencies to get public feedback on the information of the greatest...

On the assumption that for the next 18-36 hours I am a) not going to be near my laptop much; b) not able to get much bandwith on my cell phone and therefore c) mostly Twittering whatever observations I have as we attend various Inauguration events, I'm going to try embedding my tweets here. Fortunately, that doesn't sound as perverse as it looks to type. So, in case you don't already follow @mlsif on the Twitters, you can see my current stream below....

Must viewing for all techPresident and Personal Democracy Forum readers: With just hours to go before the Obama transition finishes and the new government is born, the Technology Innovation and Government Reform group (i.e. TIGR) is featured on the Change.gov website. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to see a list of its members.) Three rising stars of open and collaborative government are featured in the video: Beth Noveck, author of the forthcoming book Wiki Government and longtime pioneer in this arena (she and her partners convinced the US Patent Office to embrace user-generated content with their Peer-to-Patent program); Vivek Kundra, Washington DC's pathbreaking Chief Technology Officer (check out his "Apps for Democracy" contest); and Andrew Mclaughlin, head of global public...

If you're on the Obama campaign email list, by now you've probably received a message alerting you to a special message from President-elect Barack Obama announcing the formation of "Organizing for America," the continuation of the organization that was built during his 2008 campaign. In a video posted on YouTube, Obama says: When I'm sworn in as the President of the United States, it will be because of you. You've built the largest grass roots movement in history, and shaped the future of this country. And the movement you've built is too important to stop growing now. Today I'm pleased to announce the creation of Organizing for America--the organization that will build on the movement you started during the campaign. As President,...

Are you a local elected official looking for advice from your peers on how to make better use of web technologies to relate to your constituents? Or perhaps you're a government IT specialist looking for support in your battles with footdragging higher-ups? Maybe you're looking for perspective from within the system on how government entities are implementing web 2.0 strategies? Or perhaps you are a not-so-tech-obsessed young public-minded public servant who is simply looking for mutual support, across the often silo-ed and stultified world of government work? You can find all of those things and more at GovLoop.com, an eight-month old social network created by Steve Ressler, a twenty-something federal employee living in Tampa, Flordia. Built on the free Ning.com platform,...

We've been doing some housecleaning (in preparation for rolling out a site upgrade) and it's been some time since I dug in and updated our list of top political blogs. Indeed, an embarrassingly long time. Sorry! Anyway, here's a fully revised and up-to-date list of the top 50 political blogs, along with two top 20 lists for the top liberal and conservative blogs. What immediately jumps out to me is how many of the top 50 are based on traditional media platforms like newspapers and TV networks, as well as some venerable journals of opinion. In 2005, the last time I delved through this data, nearly all the top blogs were by untraditional independent types. Now we're seeing a hybridization...

[With the federal government in transition, and high expectations for the Obama Administration to revolutionize how government uses the web and other technology to make its processes more open, interactive and effective, we thought it would be interesting to repost this white paper, which was recently posted online by the Federal Web Managers Council. The council is an interagency group of almost 30 senior web managers from the federal government, that includes web directors from every cabinet-level agency, several independent agencies, and representatives from the judicial and legislative branches. It serves as the steering committee for the Web Content Managers Forum, a group of nearly 1,500 government web managers across the country. These folks are on the front-line of how...

More than two-thirds of the 500,000 Obama volunteers who responded to an online survey asking about their interest in future activities in the wake of their involvement with the campaign responded that they "would like to continue to volunteer in the communities as part of an Obama for America 2.0 organization." And the number one thing these volunteers said they want to do next is work to support the next President's legislative agenda. So reported Paulette Aniskoff, the Obama Pennsylvania field director, who shared those numbers this past weekend during the Rootscamp gathering at Trinity College in Washington, DC. Saturday afternoon's talk by Aniskoff attracted at least 100 out of the approximately 500 people attending the "unconference." But while her presentation...

It's worth taking a moment to applaud the work of Macon Phillips and the other members of the Obama transition new media team, for how they have hit the ground running and built a dynamic, responsive and refreshingly open and creative government website. Every day, it seems, some new element appears on Change.gov: -Discussion forums on health care, the economy, and just today, community service; -Community rating of posted comments using IntenseDebate.com, a third-party service; -Responses from transition staffers on YouTube; -A quick and friendly shift from copyrighting everything to using the most open Creative Commons license and formats for sharing content; -Posting the names of the outside groups lobbying the transition as well as the text of their position papers, asking for comments on...

News continues to dribble out of Chicago on the future of Obama for America. First, Obama blogger Christopher Hass says there are now some 4,000 house parties occurring this weekend across the country to foster discussion of the movement's future--a healthy jump from a week ago. Second, attendees at last weekend's summit meeting in Chicago have received the following memo by email, which they've been urged to share widely. A copy made its way to my in-box and I reprint it below: Dear Volunteer/Team Leader: I wanted to be the first to share some of the exciting things that I've learned about how this movement of change will look going forward. The vision for this organization comes directly from President-Elect Obama: "We won because...