White House 2.0
This week, I was fortunate to moderate a panel called White House 2.0 at the Politics Online Conference in Washington this week. The panel asked the question — If Web 2.0 technology has pervaded the campaigns this year, how will the technology be used to govern in the future? Panelists had a diversity of views — Tom Steinberg of My Society demonstrated that this has already been done to widespread approval in the UK with No. 10 Downing Street’s popular petition Web site; Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation suggested that there was so much that could be done in the name of accountability because the Bush Administration has done so little; Former Rep. Rick White said that elected officials really don’t run on technology issues and that is part of the reason that they are slower to use them; and Former White House Internet and E-Communciations Director for the Bush Administration, David Almacy, who now works for Waggner Edstrom, regaled us with tales of how difficult it actually is to get anything accomplished on the whitehouse.gov Web site. Ideas such as a US petition site and a Wiki budget site were raised as well.
Andrew Feinberg took nice photos and political consultant David All got David Almacy’s ideas on what the next president should do up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.
