Government Communications, Electronic Collaboration, Electronic Democracy, em
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Wed/Thurs. June 24/25, 2009
Today’s Zinger:
Opinion is experience, bias and passion packaged as advice.
The Morning Briefing:
Have you ever been on a website that asks you to vote? An example: "Is there life on Mars?" or "Should the New England Patriots bench Tom Brady given how well his replacement played?". Every time I see one of these voting opportunities I always ask myself, "Who's voting on this stuff and what do they really know about the topic?" Aren't there people more qualified than me to make these judgments? Aren't there scientists or coaches paid to make these calls? Then you get the more serious questions like "should President Obama order the boarding of the North Korean ship suspected of transporting arms, which is a violation of the United Nations Agreement?" How about, "Should President Obama side with the protesters in Iran and call for the government to resign or hold new elections?" I don't know about you, but there are very few people's opinion that I would listen to and far fewer that I would trust to make these decisions.
We The People…Those words are used in our country to represent the power of the majority in a democratically elected government. Our founding fathers recognized the importance of the will of the people and the voice of the people. After eight years of the Bush administration, where many people felt that the presidency was shrouded in secrecy and the voice of the people was not being heard, candidate Obama promised a more open and inclusive government.
The Discussion:
Since 2003, the government has provided an electronic forum to review government data (www.data.gov) and proposed regulations (www.regulations.gov). The user of these sites can leave their thoughts, opinions and recommendations concerning the data and proposed legislation. As President, Barack Obama has engaged technology in a new way to reach the people. E-mail seems so 90’s in an age of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and blogging. Technology has created a non-stop open forum to the people and from the people to the White House.
The Obama administration has taken democracy to the next level, electronic collaboration. The administration has set up a website to allow citizens to post messages regarding issues that are of the most concern to them. The top 10 issues submitted are then summarized and ordinary citizens use electronic collaboration to develop a draft to be used for the final rules. If you are not familiar with electronic collaboration, it is like holding a meeting where anyone can come to the meeting and participate, whether you know anything about the topic or not. At the meeting there is a single word processor/typewriter that everyone uses to develop the proposal. Each person can add whatever they feel is appropriate and any person can edit any other person’s thoughts and additions to the document. This is the ultimate management by committee.
The most well known example of electronic collaboration is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com). Anyone can start a topic and populate the topic with their thoughts. Anyone else can add to or edit what currently exists. The notion is that the collective knowledge is better than what any one person can do independently or what a committee of educated and experienced people can do together.
If you have used Wikipedia you know that you must be very careful with the “facts” contained on the site. Many people are wrong in what they believe to be true, but that doesn't stop them from "contributing". Special interests shade the truth to influence the discussion and the information can be quite spotty in its coverage. Wikipedia is a form of a democratic information database.
Democracy is a very messy process. Democracy is not about citizens voting on each decision. Democracy is not about citizens co-creating legislation. Democracy is about electing officials to represent the will of the majority. The elected officials take input from citizens then use their best judgment and advise from experts to legislate and regulate. Our representatives do not have to vote the way the electorate may think is the most appropriate. Hopefully, elected officials have more information than its citizens. Hopefully, the elected officials are balancing a broad set of issues rather than the special interests that certain citizens are obsessed with. Hopefully, our elected officials have more knowledge and experience to draw on in formatting the best decision for the country and the majority.
Listening to its citizens is important in any democracy, but the public should be focused on electing the candidate with the right experience, the right message, the right values, and the right work ethic to get things done. A democracy runs the risk of the public thinking that their specific thoughts and opinions must be incorporated in legislation or the elected official is a failure. Twitter, Facebook and other social communities have given people new access to the government to influence policy that they never had before. This is powerful and represents an improvement in how our government interacts with its citizens. Electronic collaboration to design government rules gives too many people with passion over a topic greater power in incorporating their opinion, regardless of how well informed or misinformed they may be, in government regulation.
The Conclusion:
Electronic collaboration techniques may let people feel like they have a greater voice in legislation than they should have. We should be focusing on sponsoring the best candidates and electing the right people to begin with. That is what a democracy is about. I really don’t want special interests and people with little or no experience or education working on rules. This could end up looking like an electronic food fight where everyone's opinion is thrown into the mix. Clearly, elections have consequences but every citizen's opinion should not.
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