I decided the followup to VirginiaDem's diary was an appropriate time to launch my new blog on the intersection of politics and new media, Political Tubes. Please stop on by if you're interested.
I've been a bit conflicted in the battle that has raged of late in the netroots as to whether and how much we should criticize the Obama campaign for it's perceived lurch towards the center the past few weeks. I came across this post by VirginiaDem today reminding us that despite any perceived slight to the progressive community from the Obama campaign, he will be a very progressive President nonetheless.
However, I noticed that he left out any mention of the transformational potential of Barack Obama's technology proposals and what they mean for progressives in his otherwise excellent overview of the progressive potential of an Obama Presidency.
For starters, progressives value their web freedoms, including open network neutrality and a lack of censorship. I think it's safe to say we'll be able to trust an Obama administration significantly more with our internet freedoms than a McCain administration.
But further than that, Barack Obama's technology initiatives, while ideologically neutral in theory, have the potential to radically change the way we interact with our government, and thus could become an enormous gift to progressives that will keep on giving long after he leaves office.
Leglislation that has Already Passed
Barack has already given progressives a great tool towards government accountability in the Google the Government bill that he championed.
It's a good-government measure designed to give journalists and average citizens access to budget secrets Washington insiders now try to hide, like that notorious "earmark" done late at night authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars for a bridge to a virtually uninhabited island up in Alaska, the so-called Bridge to Nowhere.
Clearly, this is a tool that will be a strong asset to progressive investigative journalists and freelance bloggers looking for answers.
Technology Initiatives in the Executive
Senator Obama has promised sweeping changes in the way the executive branch uses technology to interact with the citizenry. My favorite aspect of this is his insistence that the web is used by government agencies and more specifically, by appointed department heads and cabinet level staff, to inform and communicate with the public on a regular basis. The tech policy bullet points significant to this section are:
- Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities. Greater access to environmental data, for example, will help citizens learn about pollution in their communities, provide information about local conditions back to government and empower people to protect themselves.
- Establishing pilot programs to open up government decision-making and involve the public in the work of agencies, not simply by soliciting opinions, but by tapping into the vast and distributed expertise of the American citizenry to help government make more informed decisions.
- Requiring his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can watch a live feed on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. He will ensure that these proceedings are archived for all Americans to review, discuss and respond. He will require his appointees to employ all the technological tools available to allow citizens not just to observe, but also to participate and be heard in these meetings.
- Restoring the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available, scientifically-valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials.
- Lifting the veil from secret deals in Washington with a web site, a search engine, and other web tools that enable citizens easily to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials.
- Giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any non-emergency legislation.
- Bringing democracy and policy deliberations directly to the people by requiring his Cabinet officials to have periodic national online town hall meetings to answer questions and discuss issues before their agencies.
- Employing technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networking tools, to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision-making.
I was originally planning on quoting only excerpts from this section, but upon review I don't think there's a single bullet point there that isn't worth taking a deeper look at. Read that list. Read it again. Look for the call words that should shout out to progressives and the netroots in particular. Blogs, wikis, and social networking tools. Online town hall meetings. Live feeds. Universally acceptable formats. These are the tools that will revolutionize our government, make it more responsive, and expand our voice in the eyes of our government.
Issue Specific Technology Initiatives
I'd also like to touch upon the way Obama's technology initiatives stand to further progressive goals on specific issues, particularly energy and healthcare, but those are both posts in and of themselves that will be discussed in detail at a later time. If you're interested in reading them for yourself in the meantime, I encourage you to begin here.
Cross-posted at Political Tubes - Obama's Progressive Tech Policy.