Putting Citizens at the Center of Politics
In a recent blog post, Peter Levine makes an interesting point about the importance of the “core principle of an administration.” He points out that:
“the most important question about presidential candidates is not what kind of people they seem to be or what they promise to do if elected, but rather how they view the relationship between individuals and the government.”
He goes on to say:
“Obama’s core idea is that citizens are at the center of politics. Not private individuals, not the government, not politicians, but people working together in public, on public matters.”
My professional interest in the relationship between individuals and government is largely tied to the role of technology in putting citizens “at the center of politics.” Wondering what Obama might have said during the campaign about the role of technology to engage citizens, I did a quick internet search that turned up an interesting article from almost a year ago, “Obama’s Plan for Open-Source Democracy.” The article references an interesting position paper from the Obama campaign on “Technology and Innovation.”
I was most intrigued by section two of the paper, “Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy.” In this section of the paper, the campaign promises that Obama will integrate citizens into the actual business of government, by (among other things):
“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.”
“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.”
“Giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any non-emergency legislation.”
“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.”
And my favorite:
“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.”
This is all very exciting for me and I look forward to seeing how this plays out in reality. While some of it is fairly benign stuff, the promise to allow the public to comment on legislation at the White House website, is very specific and significant, as is the notion that cabinet officials would be REQUIRED to have periodic national town hall meetings.
We know that none of this is as easy to impliment as it sounds on paper, but I also think that this is all possible and if done correctly will go a long ways towards putting citizens at the center of politics.
