Will Johnston | Mind Muse

I just wanted to do a quick review of eDemocracyCamp, the BarCamp conference that I attended earlier today. For those of you who aren’t familiar with BarCamp conferences, they are user-driven issue conferences, usually focused around Web 2.0, new media, open source software, et cetera. In other words, people volunteer to organize the conference, and the specific workshops are led by participants who post information on their workshop at the beginning of the conference. The specific agenda for the conference is not set out until the day of the event, prior to that there is only a general topic. The system works surprisingly well. I didn’t realize what the format was until this morning and ended up co-leading a workshop on communicating with Congress.

This conference was specifically focused on the use of new web technologies in government. I couldn’t liveblog because WiFi access was very spotty, but the posts I did post my notes from the sessions. Oh, and before I forget, a huge shout out to Tim Bonnemann for heading this thing up.

MySociety

The first workshop that I attended was definitely my favorite. It was led by Tom Steinberg from MySociety.org, a UK based organization that facilitates constituent contact with government. They have a number of websites that connect British citizens to their elected officials. You can read more on them in my notes, but there were two that I found incredibly interesting and innovative.

fixmystreet.com - The idea is that people can go online to place a pin in a map when they see a tangible problem that the government should fix. So, if there’s a burned out car on your street or a broken streetlight, you can put a pin in a map with the specific location and a description of the problem, and the website automatically sends a message to the government with the pertinent information. You then receive an e-mail a couple of weeks later asking if the problem was fixed. If not, you are directed to another one of their web properties with information on how to directly contact your elected officials.

pledgebank.com - The basic idea is that people commit to doing something (contact a politician, donate money, volunteer, whatever), but only if a specified number of other people do the same. So, for instance, I could commit to giving $100 to Heifer International if 50 other people will do the same.

Communicating with Congress

My second workshop was the one that I led with Rob Pierson. We spent quite a bit of time talking about how Congressional offices can handle the increasing volume of e-mail from advocacy organizations. Rob is proposing the idea of a topic code that can be used by organizations to help offices aggregate mail according to the specific e-mail campaign.

My interest in the topic lies more in the use of newer forms of communication. How can Members of Congress use tools such as blogs, wikis, online video, et cetera to engage with constituents and get their input on the issues important to them? There are more details in my notes, but one of the biggest roadblocks here is what to do about input that wouldn’t be deemed appropriate to be displayed on a Congressional website. Most content that creates a problem is either vulgar or involves electioneering. Normally, if objectionable content needed to be filtered out, one could simply moderate input. However, any time government is doing the moderating, there are very significant concerns about government censorship. In other words, was a comment disallowed because the commenter is a dissenter or because of legitimate content concerns? In most cases this is obvious, but there are certainly times when the content will be more questionable. One way to solve this would be to change the rules/laws that limit what can be placed on a Congressional website. They could be amended to allow for any content so long as it was from a concerned citizen and not a person connected with the Congressional office. This, of course, raises other concerns, but it is one possible solution to the problem.

National Policy Discussion and Online Facilitation

Joe Goldman from America Speaks led the third workshop that I attended. The topic was how to have a large scale national policy discussion and how the Internet can be used to help facilitate this discussion. By large scale, they’re talking 1 million plus people. I think my notes were pretty clear on this one, so I’m not going to spend too much time on it, but the one question I do want to raise is if it is possible to do this in a truly effective fashion. People are willing to spend time and energy on the issues that they care most about; they are less willing on issues that may be important but that they are less interested in. For example, you’ll find me commenting on politics and tech blogs, but you probably won’t see me on blogs dedicated to renewable energy, even though I think that is a very important topic. If you’re only getting input from the people who are already passionate about the issue, there is little benefit to re-engaging these people. Perhaps this is an obstacle that can be overcome, and I think America Speaks has some good ideas about how to do this. However, this is one of my biggest questions in relation to a policy discussion of this size. Again, I may have to explore this issue more fully in a future post.

I’m not going to do a review of the final two sessions of the day. The first workshop I attended during the fourth session wasn’t useful for me, so I ducked out and sat in on another workshop, meaning that my notes for both are very incomplete. That session ended a bit after 3 PM, and I decided to take off and spend some time with my wife, this evening. I’d love to hear more of your ideas on these topics in the comments for this post as well as the posts of my notes.

March 2nd, 2008
Categories: Politics, Tech . Author: Will Johnston

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