Personal Democracy Forum 2008
Note by Robin Barrett:
We need to make broadband a higher priority. It suffering from benign neglect! It has to be done in conjunction with private industry. These challenges shouldn't mean we give up. It means we have to keep trying.
Internet still needs to stay neutral. Broadband is a solution to a lot of issues; education, healthcare. The benefits of broadband are less tangible benefits, but bonafide benefits. But private investors don't benefit directly.
Need to be accessible, affordable, truly open, and fast. We need to hold the feet of the government on fire to make this happen.
Steve Clift
Draft legislation should be shared with the public before it is released. We need a democracy.gov to help us navigate democracy from the bottom up.
Compares various systems of democratizing government in different countries.
Clift is offering $100 for evidence of a state employee whose job is to help citizens interact with government online.
Why doesn't the government encourage more interactivity on online? Where is the democracy in this?
Cliff "everything will be online unless the law says otherwise." Small applause.
Clift says Estonia is kicking our ass in the arena of democratic participation online.
Representative democracy is fundamentally local geography. But the interactivity and agenda setting is more national. We need our national candidates to make commitments toward e-democracy. After the election is done, you have to slip in legislative amendments within 6 months.
Steve Clift: "making noise and making money" is where the US excels at e-politics.
Or meetings should be publically recorded. We need to invest in e-democracy tools in government. E notification. Provide citizen timely access to communications. Google alerts? Geography is essential.
A version of public hearings online. Allow people to submit their own testimony with a rating system to bring up the better testimonies to the top.
We need more than blogs and surveys. Paperwork reduction. More project like open house project with sunlight foundation. Do electronic barn raisings. Why do we have to allow on scrappers rather than the data going out in xml.
Millions of people are fundamentally interactive online. Government must meet us and incorporate us online. Listen to us and engage us online. This will fundamentally make democracy work better.
Sheila - gov't web master
usa.gov the official government portal. Has rss feeds, mobile, live chat. Personalize the information from government. 24,000 websites with some over 1 million pages each. The effort was to put up as much the government has to offer. How to manage it is a challenge.
What do people want?
Get passport, apply for business loan, find affordable housing, reduce energy cost, get a government job for example. There is a real cost to not being able to get these things done. You lose trust, and also productivity. This is a real cost to our society and economy when these investments are so difficult to manage.
So they want to focus on the core tasks of the customers and make it easier. Many government organizations are trying to make it customer centric such as IRS.gov.
IRS.gov is moving away from an organization centric model to a citizen centric model.
Webcontent.gov has data on how to do this, without wasting time.
Engage citizens in dialogs to improve customer services. Get rid of dead pages. Deliver same answer via multiple channels. Ensure access to undeserved communities.
Web as strategic asset. Focus on communications. The web shouldn't be funded as a technology project. It's about the words.
Internet still needs to stay neutral. Broadband is a solution to a lot of issues; education, healthcare. The benefits of broadband are less tangible benefits, but bonafide benefits. But private investors don't benefit directly.
Need to be accessible, affordable, truly open, and fast. We need to hold the feet of the government on fire to make this happen.
Steve Clift
Draft legislation should be shared with the public before it is released. We need a democracy.gov to help us navigate democracy from the bottom up.
Compares various systems of democratizing government in different countries.
Clift is offering $100 for evidence of a state employee whose job is to help citizens interact with government online.
Why doesn't the government encourage more interactivity on online? Where is the democracy in this?
Cliff "everything will be online unless the law says otherwise." Small applause.
Clift says Estonia is kicking our ass in the arena of democratic participation online.
Representative democracy is fundamentally local geography. But the interactivity and agenda setting is more national. We need our national candidates to make commitments toward e-democracy. After the election is done, you have to slip in legislative amendments within 6 months.
Steve Clift: "making noise and making money" is where the US excels at e-politics.
Or meetings should be publically recorded. We need to invest in e-democracy tools in government. E notification. Provide citizen timely access to communications. Google alerts? Geography is essential.
A version of public hearings online. Allow people to submit their own testimony with a rating system to bring up the better testimonies to the top.
We need more than blogs and surveys. Paperwork reduction. More project like open house project with sunlight foundation. Do electronic barn raisings. Why do we have to allow on scrappers rather than the data going out in xml.
Millions of people are fundamentally interactive online. Government must meet us and incorporate us online. Listen to us and engage us online. This will fundamentally make democracy work better.
Sheila - gov't web master
usa.gov the official government portal. Has rss feeds, mobile, live chat. Personalize the information from government. 24,000 websites with some over 1 million pages each. The effort was to put up as much the government has to offer. How to manage it is a challenge.
What do people want?
Get passport, apply for business loan, find affordable housing, reduce energy cost, get a government job for example. There is a real cost to not being able to get these things done. You lose trust, and also productivity. This is a real cost to our society and economy when these investments are so difficult to manage.
So they want to focus on the core tasks of the customers and make it easier. Many government organizations are trying to make it customer centric such as IRS.gov.
IRS.gov is moving away from an organization centric model to a citizen centric model.
Webcontent.gov has data on how to do this, without wasting time.
Engage citizens in dialogs to improve customer services. Get rid of dead pages. Deliver same answer via multiple channels. Ensure access to undeserved communities.
Web as strategic asset. Focus on communications. The web shouldn't be funded as a technology project. It's about the words.
