If one of the key findings of the US 2008 campaigns is the boost of bottom-up participation, the question is if it is going to continue and what kind of impact it will have. Are we going to see a crowdsourcing approach to citizen government relations? From Campaign 2.0 to White House 2.0? New hope for eParticipation?
"The way we interact with Government is about to change, and the shape of that change is up to us. The Internet is not just a way to raise money or mobilize supporters. It's a way to shrink the distance between people and politicians." David Colarusso quoted from techPresident
"Just as the Internet has revolutionized commerce and campaigns, it will revolutionize the way elected officials and citizens interact, creating new channels of communication". Ray Campbell, eCitizen's president quoted from techPresident
Two projects "with complimentary efforts that seek to crowd-source the process of putting pressing questions before the President-elect and identifying the top priorities of the public" just started:
whitehouse2.org
Bigdialog.org
A broader perspective on citizen government relations gets mentioned by Daniel Engber in his highly recommended article "Dear Mr President". A short summarize of his wish-list for the next president:
- use the "swarm intelligence" or "wisdom of the crowd"
- open up the data -> "shift of public documents into a searchable and structured database" (XML...)
I strongly endorse these projects and suggestions and I am fascinated by the spirit and energy, but I experienced (including my involvement in consulting the government) that government progress in Germany has been slow - same in UK as Tom Steinberg recently admitted - but thanks for being optimistic and refueling me with hope.
Update: Recommended reading: Rebooting America
Update 5.11.2008:
Since I am not the only one who is thrilled by the sucess of Obama`s campaign, over at techPresident they published two more interessting articles (1, 2) about the possible transition towards Presidential Politics 2.0.
My dear german readers, over at heise one of the leading german ePolitics experts Dr Bieber published another highly recommended article about this topic.
Last but not least worth reading is this "off the record" blog entry.
Update 6.11.2008: The new Obama transition site Change.gov is being built by Blue State Digital. Not quite ready though, but amazing how fast and well prepared they act.
