Yesterday we hosted Steven Clift for a discussion about eGov. Yes, we held a discussion about eGov amid all the sex and rock-n-roll that is the presidential primary season, when (oddly enough) the actual process of leading may at times get lost in a fog of stump speeches, debate bickering, and negative ads.
In the United States, we’ve become incredibly effective at raising money online – for political candidates, for big, fancy non profits, for issues groups. We’re also good at generating a tremendous amount of noise online.
Perhaps part of the problem results from a lack of executive-level vision about using technology in public leadership. When I talk to leaders about using the Internet, for example, to increase government transparency and build public spaces online, I am more often than not told “you should talk to my webmaster. S/he handles this for me.” Or, “You should talk to my online consultants.” As if every major technology decision trickles hap-hazardly from a few rungs lower on the hierarchy up to the top. As if technology and technology-powered public involvement are too trivial (or overlooked or tedious or technical) to receive a place in the organization’s vision.
Clift thinks that a disconnect occurs between what people want and what politicians want. In a digital age, says Clift, voters expect two-way communications. We want to talk, and we want politicians to hear us before talking back. Politicians want one-way communication.
Where do we go from here, as the excitement of this week becomes that awkward lull between the primaries and the conventions? Clift has a top-five list of things we can do to make digital leadership an important part of the democratic process:
Build public life online.
Get candidates to make public promises about how they will use the Internet in office.
Contribute time and money to public spaces online.
Request a new government vision for technology and require more information services online.
Demand truly public spaces online, built from the local level up.
Ari Schwartz from the Center for Democracy & Technology has a good metaphor for this. Public parks, he said yesterday, are a precedent. Americans already value the preservation of public spaces in the form of parks. Preserving public spaces online, however, will require building public demand and pressure over time.
Building public spaces is one of the many things Clift does daily. Check out http://e-democracy.org.
We’ll cover the topic at a plenary panel Schwartz is chairing at the Politics Online Conference and a breakout panel Clift will speak on.
Amid all the excitement around Iowa and the upcoming New Hampshire Primaries, we want to step back, take a breath, and look at what happens when all the excitement is over and Election Day is yesterday’s headline.
In 2007, we saw (to some degree) that politicians are, in fact, interested in obscure-sounding things like “interactivity” and “online communications channels” and “technology-infused conversation” – especially when reaching people online increases fundraising dollars and votes (and who can blame them, really?).
Then what? Do we expect our elected officials to chuck their techno-powered promises of creating conversations and communicating at the podium after their acceptance speeches? What responsibilities do elected officials have to continue using technology in a democratic way? What about the issue of access?
I am inclined to think that the role of digital leadership should receive increased emphasis over the course of the next few years. How does one lead, govern, and create policy in an Internet era?
Steve Clift has a few things to say about what technology-powered politics should look like after the confetti drops:
Information access, considered the safe starting point for government accountability online now mostly presents the public a daunting needle in a huge haystack. This system is so complicated that the valuable and substantive information that government produces is often ignored in the increasingly interactive public lives of active citizens. . The lack of real and effective online access to governance will substantially increase cynicism about and distrust in government among a public that demands a more participatory representative democracy.
We’ll continue the conversation during a plenary discussion at our 2008 Politics Online Conference, chaired by Ari Schwartz (Center for Democracy and Technology) and featuring Ellen Miller (Sunlight Foundation), Tom Steinberg (mySociety.org) and former congressman Rick White (Wood Bay Group). Details at http://polc.ipdi.org.
Alexander and Caveh, two of the creators of www.Straight2theCandidates.com visited IPDI Labs this week. They have developed a platform that allows many-to-one communications. It is sort of an inverse blog. We all know that a blog works by one person, or group, posting on it, then many people can read it. Their system allows many people to post questions, then other people can vote those questions up or down so that the most popular questions make it to the top of list. Whose list you might wonder? They originally developed it for communications with politicians, but it has many applications. A company, a famous actor, or a musician could all use this system to communicate with the masses. One nice feature is that anyone who voted on a question that gets answered automatically receives the answer.
In case that’s hard to follow, here’s an example:
Let’s say that Senator John Doe is using their platform. I want to ask John a question about his position on stem cell research. I go to his straight2who site and look over the questions that other people asked. If no one has asked my question, I submit a new question. But, if my question already exists, I vote for that question. If enough people vote for the question, it moves up the list. If the question makes it into the top 3 or so questions, John Doe will answer it. His answers will appear on the site as well as get emailed around to those people who voted on the question.
Alex and I had time for a little Q&A:
IPDI: How did you come up with this idea?
Alexander: As students we had another idea, but couldn’t receive a government grant. We wrote to and emailed the Chancellor, but because the Chancellor receives so much communication, all we received were automatic responses. She later started to talk directly to the citizens using videopodcasts on her website. One of the episodes was about announcing grants for innovative technologies. Sitting in front of the laptop Caveh wanted to jump into the monitor to tell her we are there, but there was no way to do that. And because we already knew that sending email resulted in automatic answers we just decided to set up the back channel to her. The result of hard time, working and sleeping in the office: a brand new way for everyone to communicate faster with politicians.
IPDI: How willing have politicians been to cooperate?
Alexander: The site has just started so it’s difficult to say at this point.
They did show us a few sites that have been setup for German politicians, and they informed us that the Chancellor answers the top three questions on her site every week. She usually responds within three or four days which is apparently unheard of in Germany. They said that it normally takes a few weeks to receive responses.
IPDI: If you could interview one candidate for the site, any candidate, who would it be and why?
Alexander: I have to stay neutral. Laughter
IPDI: There is no one candidate that you really want?
Caveh: The candidate who is the best for the United States and the world.
IPDI: Technologically, what was the hardest obstacle to overcome?
Alexander: We used Ruby on Rails, but not everyone knew the language. Having everyone learn and understand Ruby on Rails was one of the most difficult parts.
IPDI: What new technology on the horizon are you excited about?
Alexander: The spread of video and video applications on the Internet. It started with plain text, then color text, then sound, and now video technology is getting popular. Many people said there wouldn’t be enough bandwidth, but its spreading quickly.
The site was nice to see in action. It has some other nice features such as the ability to make a video questions (CNN/YouTube anyone?) or to embed video that is hosted somewhere else. People are allowed to comment on the questions so that discussion can be person-to-person as well as person-to-politician. Of course they have a group on Facebook, and they said their software would integrate with the Facebook platform. I hope their platform gains popularity here as well so we can see easier interaction between politicians and the masses.
Yesterday, MTV and MySpace announced a plan to hold a series of live, interactive townhall-style discussions with the 2008 Presidential candidates. Viewers can submit questions by multiple platforms – instant messaging, text messaging, email, and candidates answer live, while viewers vote on their answers through online polls.
Interesting. Refreshing even.
Less refreshing, however, is the amount of mostly condescending coverage over the course of the past day contending that an audience of young voters will have nothing better to ask the candidates than “boxers of briefs.”
We went to Google News and searched for the term “boxers or briefs.” The search engine gave us 64 stories from publications like the New York Times, Wired, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington, Forbes, Politico, Variety, BusinessWeek and more.
Many of those publications predict that the question “boxers or briefs” is about as deep as they expect the young American voters who will engage in these forums to be.
At what point does a question from the 1990s become irrelevant and insulting?
Perhaps we crossed that point yesterday.
We predict that the young voters who engage in MTV and MySpace’s forums will not be as vapid as the media suggests. Young Voter Strategies (a program hosted, like IPDI, by GW’s Graduate School of Political Management), believes that young voters are engaged, informed, and enormous (over 41 million strong) and will be a tremendous force in elections.
By allowing viewers to use many platforms to post their questions – and by tapping into the millions of young voters engaged in politics – these forums have the ability to be more revealing than anything we’ve seen all summer.
Another batch of videos from the 2007 Politics Online Conference. The first is our panel, “Total Constituent Impact: eCommunications in Elected Office.” Speakers on the panel included Steve Dwyer - Technology Director, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Jonathan Levy - Legislative Assistant, Congressman Rahm Emanuel, Pepper Pennington - Press Secretary, Congressman Tom Feeney, Stuart Shapiro - President, iConstituent, and Alex Treadway - Director of Digital Media, National Journal Group, Inc. The panelists discuss using integrated, multiplatform communications, such as eTownhall meetings, newsletters, SMS, and email, in elected office.
The next video is Video A La Carte. Online, Mobile and On-Demand: What works and why. This panel features Bill Buck - President & COO, Cherry Tree Mobile, James Kotecki - Political Commentator, Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network, Jason Rosenberg - Strategy Architect, EchoDitto and Adrienne Skinner - VP of Online Strategic Sales, Comcast
Our second batch of video from the Politics Online Conference — this is one of our planery panels: So You Want to Build a Web Team: What You Need to Know Before You Begin. The panel features Jerome Armstrong - Forward Together PAC, Chuck DeFeo - Vice President and General Manager, Townhall.com and Salem News/Talk Online, Patrick Ruffini - Adviser for New Media Strategy, Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Presidential Exploratory Committee, Joe Trippi - Trippi & Associates and moderated by Chuck Todd - Editor-in-Chief, The Hotline and recently Political Director at NBC News.
Once again, our bloggers have chimed in on the panel:
ONLINE CAMPAIGNING and PUBLIC RELATIONS
“How to Build a Web Team” covered recruiting and integrating the web outreach staff to reaping new online opportunities to speak directly to voters. This panel followed a conversational, informal format which yielded a fair amount of consensus on the needs and opportunities - aside from debating whether which party had the most bloggers.
PANELISTS:
- Jerome Armstrong, Forward Together PAC, founder MyDD.com
- Joe Trippi, Trippi & Associates, JoeTrippi.com, Howard Dean campaign
- Chuck DeFeo,Townhall.com and Salem News/Talk Online
- Patrick Ruffini, Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Presidential Exploratory Committee
Moderator - Chuck Todd,The Hotline
-Recruitment: Online organizers should have offline organizing experience, eg local campaigns, fundraising,
communications outreach, to best fulfill the campaign goals.
-Integration: online campaigners should be involved all aspects of campaign. Online organizers need to talk to
communications, finance, fundraising, and other key campaign departments. On some level, there is a tendency
to think of web outreach as the “other” and those who can unleash the “magic bottle.”
-Senior-level Buy-in: Campaign managers and the candidate need to support and buy-into web campaigning.
Now, most campaigns have internet teams, but campaign managers restrict their freedom to utilize their skills
and creativity. The campaign needs to elevate the web crew with the other departments; they are not just
service entities.
More Venues for Campaign-produced Media
Campaigns need to be ready to respond to anti-candidate YouTube and other video viral campaigns quickly. They need to flood these portals with their own, pro-candidate, anti-opponent messages in the event of another “Macaca moment.” Presidential candidate, Gov. Mit Romey (R-MA) confronted anti-videos by posting an interview with a blogger onto YouTube.
Candidates are using online video portals to send out a variety of their own media. Like all video footage, much political ad material was left on the cutting room floor. Candidates now can post videos and essentially have ‘built-in’ focus groups. Trippi noted that an unnamed campaign has started to hire their own “journalists” to disseminate their own message which the other panels condoned as serving as a new form of press releases and avoiding journalists’ pesky questions. Trippi claimed such content could be considered “news” and posted on Google News.
R&D in Online Campaiging
There was divergence on when to conduct online research and development. Chuck DeFeo felt R&D was inimical to the fast-paced, stressful campaign cycle. Republicans do it before general elections and focus on with online venues that already attract an audience, as opposed to starting or going to new online venues.
Conversely, Jerome Armstrong had Mark Warner, who has a technology background, go from blogging to the virtual world Second Life. “The political types did not like” - yet this is where an early-adopter can benefit from getting their first. Warner continued to check in himself and saw that other Linden people were still there even after the election.
Predictions for Technology in Politics
Moderator Chuck Todd asked the panelists for their predictions of online politics.
Jerome Armstrong - The new technology will carry the candidate who can be the online video version of Walter Cronkite. [Let’s hope it will be a woman this time.]
Joe Trippi - One candidate will hit the jack pot with small donations, whereby “5,000 women will give more than the 100 the big donors.”
Chuck DeFeo – We keep waiting for that 1960 TV moment for when the internet has arrived…it will be a series of moments, especially as broadband penetration brings more people into the process.
Pat Ruffini – We need to learn how to address unmet needs. Mobile can be the next frontier; how do we bring it into people’s daily lives?
NBC’s Political Director, Chuck Todd, was also interviewed by OnlineMaven.
In our August newsletter, we detailed various methods of town hall meetings, from the physical to the teleconference to the Web chat. Today, town halls went one step further: virtual reality.
Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia and a potential candidate for president in 2008, entered Second Life today, an online virtual world that allows users to interact with one another using chat-like functions.
Warner is the first political figure ever to enter and assume an indentitiy in such a community. He hosted a 30 minute question-and-answer session for dozens of Second Life residents, reporters, and bloggers.
The reaction, as you may expect, was a little skeptical. Political journos mocked, yes, but they did all seem to realize the impact of such a move.
yes, it’s easy to make fun of Ex-VA Gov. Mark Warner’s history-making foray into the world of avatars and Second Life(s)s. But think about it: there are 48 million Americans who use the blogosphere, a fraction of which — perhaps 4 million — are regular consumers of the political blogs. This new venture might be mockable, but it’s path-breakingly mockable.
His willingness to particpate in a campaign event on Second Life shows that candidates are seeking to reach voters wherever they are — online and offline, in the real and virtual worlds.
In a press release, Warner’s handlers said, “Social technologies can be great tools for political change, and virtual worlds like Second Life might be the next tool for engaging people in the real world democratic process. We want to use Second Life to continue the conversation about the direction of our country.”
It was a bold step. Warner’s willingness to support the online world is a step ahead. Yes, the event was a little too unorganized, as many things are in the virtual world. But holding an online town hall as a virtual avatar was a unique and innovative step, that embraces the growing world of online video gamers and shows an interesting development of campaigning in the future.
Some say that the most effective way for an elected official to engage with his constituents is to host a town-hall meeting, inviting the voters to an open forum to discuss the issues that matter most to them.
Politicians have used the town hall meeting for years, since the beginning of American democracy. But, as Americans become busier and more active, garnering a successful turnout for a forum is becoming increasingly difficult.
Voter Solutions, a company that markets political-enhanced technology to campaigns and candidates, provides advanced political teleconferencing for incumbents and challengers to host virtual town-hall meetings through the comfort of one’s own telephone. The technology is best suited for anyone who wants to reach a large audience at any given time via the telephone. (more…)
In our August newsletter, we detailed various methods of town hall meetings, from the physical to the teleconference to the Web chat. Today, town halls went one step further: virtual reality.