So maybe I was wrong. Maybe not all elected officials are jokingly dismissive of the impact technology can have on their constituents. Today, hanging out with the FastCompany.tv crew as Robert Scoble, his son Patrick, his producer Rocky, and Warren Communications’ Andrew Feinberg, I heard three very different elected officials speak with similar enthusiasm for and knowledge of technology: Senator Tom Coburn, Congressman Tim Ryan, and Congressman John Culberson.

My note-taking capabilities were somewhat hindered during two of those interviews (thank goodness the video will be up and/or is up soon), but I did have my Moleskine notebook and mechanical pencil handy for Senator Coburn.

Three-quarters of what Senator Coburn’s office hears from his constituents in Oklahoma comes from email and blogs. “Technology,” said Senator Coburn, “sets us free and brings transparency to politics.”

For example, Americans want to know about government waste because it has a direct impact on them. Only 11% of Americans have confidence in Congress, said Senator Coburn. Putting information about spending online will bring pressure on elected officials more inclined to play above the table.

Do what you are doing [as voters online] to make us better and more transparent.

In elected office, Senator Coburn said at the beginning of the interview, “motivations are pure, but the management style is out of the 1950s.”

Scoble asked Senator Coburn about the issue of brain drain in science and technology. Senator Coburn discussed a four-tiered process to encourage innovation, education, and research and development:

1. Create a better corporate tax system (Senator Coburn’s words were “create a corporate tax system that’s not the second highest in the world).
2. Create a research and development tax credit.
3. Make higher education rewarding (my note: especially in science, technology, and engineering).
4. Don’t harm the technology system we have now.

Elected officials “should get out of the way, so companies can reinvest in R&D,” said Senator Coburn.

Some of those same points – especially the emphasis on technology as the medium of transparency echoed throughout the interviews today.

Thoughts on this?

It looks like a lot of people are unhappy with their communications with Congress, according to a new report by the Congressional Management Foundation called Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement.

• 92% of Internet users who contact Congress through email, web forms, etc. want a response.
• Only 63% recall receiving a response.
• Almost half (46%) were dissatisfied with the response.
• More than half (64%) say the response did not address their concerns and that the response was too political biased.

It gets (a little) worse: only 39% of those who contacted Congress (and 36% of those who had not contacted Congress) thought the information they received from their Senators and Representatives was trustworthy.

More than half said they did not think their Members cared about what they had to say (55%) or were interested in what they had to say (62%).

That’s a lot of disgruntled voters, but there is a silver lining, according to Kathy Goldschmidt and Leslie Ochreiter, authors of the study. Despite their dissatisfaction, voters want their Senators and Representatives to update them on their activities and the policy issues they are addressing in Washington. As Goldschmidt and Ochreiter reveal, almost half of Americans contacted a U.S. Senator of Representative in the past five years (44%), providing elected officials with an opportunity to create more positive moments with constituents who communicate with their offices – if they use the technology effectively.

This is where Communicating with Congress transitions from being just a research study into a handbook. Goldschmidt and Ochreiter spend half of the publication reviewing the implications their research has on Congress and suggestions tactics to help Congressional offices better communicate with constituents – and help the advocacy community better communicate with Congress.

One recommendation asks Congressional offices to “reconsider the tone of your responses”:

many [Congressional offices] use their responses solely as opportunities to talk up the Senator or Representative and explain all the actions and votes he or she has taken on the issue. These messages often sound like press releases or marketing materials. When people express their views and opinions, responses which “sell” the Member may not be the best approach, as it amounts to an exchange of opinion without a meeting of the minds. Congressional offices may want to consider how to craft response with the primary goal of acknowledging constituents’ key concerns and a secondary goal of conveying the Member’s accomplishments.

This may go some (but perhaps not all) of the way toward turning potential dissatisfied constituents into satisfied constituents.

While I focus on satisfaction in this post, some of the Goldschmidt and Ochreiter’s most interesting findings look at the role advocacy play in citizen communications with Congress. You can find a copy on the Congressional Management Foundation website.

Right now, I’m watching the President of the Utah State Senate on my desktop.

Nope, it’s not a live stream of C-SPAN coverage. It’s not even footage on the Utah State Senate’s YouTube Channel (though there is that, too). There’s also a blog and a text message application and a podcast.

I’m watching Senate President John Valentine’s office on a live webcam. I can see what he’s doing and – most importantly – with whom he is meeting. So can you. Explorer users only (sorry, Mac and Firefox users) can go to http://senatesite.com/senatesight.html.

It feels intimate, open, and exciting – three words not always associated with the online communications of an elected officials. This afternoon, I talked with the creator of the SENATEcam, Ric Cantrell, the Chief Deputy of the Utah State Senate. Cantrell says the web cam “Serves to demystify the halls of power.” As he explains it, somewhere in Utah, an elementary student might access the web cam as part of a school project and realize, looking into the Senate President’s office that “this is what I want to do when I grow up.”

Why do I like it? Instead of talking about what he does all day, Senate President Valentine is showing it. He’s walking the democratic walk, not just talking the democratic talk.

Of course, there is the little voice inside me – the one who sat through several course on the philosophy of science. “But the web cam is just like a microscope,” says the little voice “and when you put things beneath a microscope – when you observe thing s—the way they behave starts to change.” But that little voice gets quieter and quieter the more I play with SENATEcam. A louder voice emerges, and it’s saying “FTW!!1!” Translation: “Cool!”

This post is guest-blogged by Bryce Cullinane, a graduating senior at SUNY Stony Brook.

I had the opportunity to meet with the acting Surgeon General today, it just so happens that he graduated from my university, SUNY Stony Brook. In his lecture he talked about child obesity and alcohol in college. It was a good lecture, but it was his demonstration of a TV ad that rattled me.

He played a spot showing NFL football players walking into the home of middle-age school boys, scolding them for their inactivity and encouraging them get outside and “P-L-A-Y, Play!” The sense of brilliance with which the Surgeon General bestowed upon the ad was shocking. It was like the southwest passage had just been discovered before our eyes.

After the lecture I asked him what he thought about the role that not only TV, but the internet held for educating the public. He told me that “it holds amazing potential.” Prodded further, he could only name “Facebook,” as an example. I asked him if his communication’s office was working on developing internet tools and strategy, and to this I got a frank, “no, but it is a really good idea.”

For a man whose duty it is to “protect and advance the health of the Nation through educating the public” I am a little concerned that using TV ads are considered cutting edge, and that developing internet strategy is a “really good idea.” These should be old news. Granted, the Department of Health and Human Services website does have useful information, but “flashy media” and interactive tools are almost non-existent.

I walked back to my dorm this afternoon a little skeptical. With internet resources like WebMD and newspaper health-blogs, will government health agencies become outpaced and out-legitimized by internet-savvy organizations? Or will they be able to cure their own digital diseases in time? Hold on to your stethoscope.

It’s 2008. We call this the digital era. Yet, in the United States we seem to lack political leaders with a vision for technology, much less an interest in the ways technology can make all levels of government services more efficient, effective, and accessible to regular voters.

Yes, indeed, the rumblings are starting to get a little louder – snuggled, as they currently are, within our niche community of tech-savvy politicos and politics-friendly techies. Is a technology transformation upon us?

For some, the transformation begins when elected officials use technology to listen. There’s a word – listening. In the middle of an election season that has seen a glut of staged conversations, online and offline. Andrew Feinberg rants about some of these so-called listening exercises today at Capitol Valley. There’s a difference between talker at voters and listening to them.

Talkers get headlines. Listeners get things done.

Like fixing potholes and handling case work, increasing the efficiency and efficacy of government programs. A year ago, IPDI published Constituent Relationship Management: The New Little Black Book of Politics, which looks how political campaigns and elected office can use online and offline feedback loops to run case management and constituent communications. Many elected officials and political candidates already use database platforms to help this process.

The next step? Government institutions that employ tech-enabled feedback loops to deliver better goods and services.

In their Politico column, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry write about some of the ways in which foreign citizens and governments are using technology to listen and act, including e-petitions in the United Kingdom and the government of New Zealand’s wiki for a new Policing Act. As Rasiej and Sifry put it, you can use the Internet to file your taxes, but you can’t use it to make suggestions on how your tax dollars ought to be spent:

Imagine then, that the next time you file your taxes online, your government asks for your feedback on how those tax dollars are being spent. Or it takes your suggestions on how to make a law more understandable. Or it helps you find groups near you that are doing things that benefit your community. It may sound mundane, but today in America, it would be the equivalent of a revolution. How much longer do we have to wait to bridge yet another digital divide?

What about tech policy?

At the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Robert D. Atkinson writes,

we need a debate in America that focuses on the most important issues like to get fast broadband networks to all Americans; how to use IT to transform our health care system, transportation system, education system, and government; and how to encourage all organizations to become digital, thereby driving productivity and income growth and a better quality of life.

Atkinson thinks that better private-public partnerships can help create an environment of “digital transformation.”

Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller blogs about the successful efforts of blogger and member of the California Democratic Party platform committee, Dante Atkins, to get Net Neutrality in the party platform:

California Democrats, in order to promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered access to all information on the Internet, support policies to preserve an open, neutral and interconnected Internet. California Democrats strongly agree with recent rulings by the Federal Election Commission that political communications, including blogging, which take place independent of a political party, committee or candidate, receive a media exemption from campaign finance regulations. California Democrats further reaffirm their support of the right to free speech as expressed in the First Amendment, including the right to critique any elected official or comment on any and all public policy, whether during war or peace, without fear of reprisal.

 Perhaps it is time that we — voters that we are — begin to expect more from our elected officials and encourage digital leadership on our blogs as well as in our voting booths.

Recently, I’ve taken a turn to looking into what was written about the so-called “Internet candidates” of the 2000 election. On the right, we had John McCain, who managed to pull up an astonishing $3 million after winning the New Hampshire primary through the use of….get this…pop-up ads! On the left, we had Senator Bill Bradley, who was criticized by Silicon Valley leaders for spending more time on real estate taxes during a two-decade Senate tenure than on the promotion of high tech issues. (Strikingly, Senator Bradley became the first Presidential candidate to raise a million bucks on the Web without putting so much as a donation link on his Web site’s sidebar, choosing instead to hide a donation hyperlink in a short paragraph encouraging voters to help out.)

The New York Times reported in February of 2000 about the McCain phenomena:

Several bits of evidence suggest that Mr. McCain’s success is of a different order than anything seen in many years. His presence on the ballot is driving voter turnout, starting in New Hampshire and sweeping through South Carolina and Michigan, where twice the normal number of voters went to the polls. He pulls big crowds that clearly adore him. Their excitement undercuts the conventional wisdom about citizen apathy, as does the explosion of Internet fund-raising that has brought him $3 million in the space of a few weeks.

In Washington, Republican leaders are assuring each other that Mr. McCain’s appeal is personal rather than based on issues like campaign finance reform and using the budget surplus to save Social Security and Medicare.

Similar sentiments have commented about the successful Web candidates today: Barack Obama and Ron Paul. As a piece of food for thought, I have considered the possibility that it may not be a campaign’s savvy use of the Internet that makes an “iCandidate” but an intrinsic value within that candidate him or herself. The campaign can guide and nudge, but beating overwhelming support out of the Internet will be a nugatory exercise sans a message with appeal to voters familiar to nooks and crannies of the World Wide Web.

Barack Obama’s forensic ability and “change” message bequeathed him a wide swath of followers who were (generally) younger and therefore less likely to be concerned with online giving. Ron Paul’s idiosyncratic message allowed support for his candidacy to thrive on Internet institutions such as Digg or YouTube because the truly tech-savvy have always been more likely to the beat of the libertarian drum (witness the need for overflow rooms at Google headquarters in California when Congressman Paul visited…there was no such need for more rooms when the more establishment types walked into Mountain View).

Perhaps its the man or the message that yields Internet attention, and not a stronger Web-based campaign tactic. Those who try to apply the Ron Paul example of diffusing most power to supporters with little to no supervision from the campaign in 2012 will probably be disappointed to find that they will not garner $35 million in contributions.

Granted, I began this blog post solely as an excuse to highlight the fine work of Todd Domke in the Boston Globe today. A nice sarcastic piece at each of the Presidential contenders (although I do have a personal vested interest in hoping Mike Huckabee goes somewhere beyond Wheel of Fortune).

This did spark a little thought about the wild and wacky failed prognostications of the past election cycle. John Edwards’ firewall in Iowa, Chris Dodd(!) as the possible breakout candidate, Rudy Giuliani’s frontrunner status…this has essentially proven just how bad we all are at this game of punditry. And we’ve been no better when it comes to technology.

The January 1, 2000 edition of Newsweek, for instance, talked up the future of e-books, suggesting that by 2010 such a product would be in the midst of intense competition with paperbacks. It also gee-whizzed about folks having glasses that multi-tasked as computer screens for an arm-band keyboard/memory. These were projected as being the new office norm by 2010.

Likewise, I remember reading in 1999 about the plethora of middle-school students with laptops that was supposed to be standard by 2005. The $100 laptop notwithstanding.

So, what does this all mean? I suppose nothing more than the old adage that Web 3.0 will be completely unexpected and unlike anything we can predict…as well the politics that will emerge out of it.

IPDI’s very own financial director, Chris Brooks, who moonlights on campus as the chairman for the George Washington University College Republicans, made CNN last week. In a short three-minute video you can see here, Chris and a few other GW students managed to get their two cents in about college-age voters’ use of the Internet.

Chris, like most of us here at IPDI, is a compulsive Web surfer and admits as much in the video. While this expression of love for 24/7 access to the candidates might scare off a few Luddites (mostly because that’s all that is really left of that movement…just a few), Chris is a good example of how plugged-in young voters can enjoy greater breadth of knowledge about the candidates than our parents’ generation could through newspapers and once a night newscasts just by heading over to the dot-coms for the news networks or junkie sites like RealClearPolitics.

And I am not just saying this because Chris is the guy who fills out my paycheck…although a small blogging bonus could never hurt!

Calling Harrison Ford.

The White House is under attack. It’s time for the President to heroically start dropping terrorists with an Uzi rifle, defending the Executive Mansion for God, family and country…perhaps even bellowing “Get out of my house!” before strangling the last Al Qaeda villain to death with his bare hands.

Well, maybe not quite like that.

According to a post from the geeks over at bigmouthmedia, the White House may soon disappear from the search results preferred to the info-hungry public by our good friends at Google. Thanks to a technical solution devised by the White House to insure that it stays hale and healthy in search engine rankings, the robots.txt file is quite close to passing the 100kb limit, at which point Google quits reading the site.

As a result, it is now theoretically possible that, as the White House Web site grows and expands (as it, no doubt will, albiet at a slower pace that the deficit or size of government) under the next Administration…certain new pages added to the White House’s online parking space may no longer emerge on our search results.

Perhaps, aside from the inevitable promises for a middle-class tax cut coming from all corners in the 2008 election, it might be time for a candidate to take the hard pledge to cut down the size of their Web site.

Last week at Steven Clift’s eGov discussion, someone asked, “after the 2008 election, will the new White House have a blog?”

Most everyone said yes.

I sat silently thinking, “Well, no. Not a real blog. Not a blog in the sense that people post things without first obtaining dozens of final approvals. Not a blog with comments (hey, that wouldn’t be too terribly different from ours). Not a blog with interesting, substantial posts.”

No, I thought. There will not be a blog. Not in 2009 and not for some time after. That’s just the way the presidency works.

I obviously skew toward the cynical, which leaves plenty of room for pleasant surprises.

It hasn’t been a secret that over the course of the past few days, administration staffers have posted trip notes about President Bush’s trip to the Middle East.

It’s not a blog exactly – a point that others have most likely pointed out – but it is a start. It certainly looks well produced. Cynical me found the journal-style posts Dana Perino, Bill McGurn and others very interesting, akin to reading about someone’s travel adventures. Sure, they appeared to be sprinkled here and there with talking points, but at this point, the intrigue factor is hitting me higher than the cynical factor.

Is this a frank discussion about the Bush administration’s foreign policy? No. And frankly, I don’t think it is intended to be just that, even though I think just that would be an incredible exercise. I look forward to the day when online voters and an administration can dialogue about policy – online or offline. Particularly online.

Is it a very interesting look at what it’s like to travel with the President in the Middle East? Definitely. A geek like me was hooked at “We ate dinner [on the flight] while watching the New Hampshire primary returns come in.”

So what is this good for? On one level, putting some nice faces and good stories on the administration can’t hurt. Gee, I thought while reading through the notes, policy differences aside, what a fun group of people to travel with.

One another level, let’s hope this is another step in the ladder of an administration – any administration – using the Internet to reach out to voters and chronicle the politics of, well, politics.

Another step is Ask the White House.

Higher up on the ladder?

Both of these tools, while interesting, give the administration another chance to speak. In the future, however, perhaps we will start to see tools that encourage another part of conversation: active listening.