New White House Initiatives Take A Big Step Towards Participatory Gov't

from the good-news dept

I'll admit that I was pretty hard on the new Obama administration when, early on there were news articles playing up how the administration was using its large social network of connections for "participatory gov't," but the details suggested they were really just using the people to sell policies, not give actual input on policies. While it was still early, there was enough talk about how sending out emails to people on a mailing list and begging them to talk up the new budget was somehow "participatory gov't," to make me worried that that was as far as the new administration would go. Thankfully, that's not the case. While it still remains to be seen how far this will go in actually creating and driving policy, the White House has rolled out some new efforts on the web that really do appear to be trying to enable more participation and transparency. While I don't see it yet, the Whitehouse.gov site will apparently "become a repository for citizen suggestions and discussion regarding new open-government policies." And, more importantly, Data.gov has launched, and the administration is working to get various gov't agencies to open up as much data as possible. These are both big steps forward. There's always more that can be done, but it's good to see that sending out emails to supporters wasn't what the administration was really thinking about when it promised "participatory" government.
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Filed Under: data.gov, government, obama, openness, participation, participatory government, transparency, whitehouse.gov


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  • identicon
    Anonymous12, 22 May 2009 @ 3:55pm

    And, more importantly, Data.gov has launched, and the administration is working to get various gov't agencies to open up as much data as possible...

    Except court ordered photo releases. Those deserve to be locked away for ever right? LOL....

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 23 May 2009 @ 8:09pm

    Brought to you by an administration built upon broken promises...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pete Moss, 25 May 2009 @ 3:10am

    How does the ability to look at trivial government data translate to participatory government?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Flake, 25 May 2009 @ 4:59pm

    information age

    gives birth to ....

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Ryan, 26 May 2009 @ 9:31am

    So...the White House has still done jack shit except to make more promises for future features. At some point are you actually going to wait for an effective implementation before you get excited about it?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2009 @ 9:31am

    The problem is that for many things, he says one thing and does another.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    another mike, 26 May 2009 @ 1:19pm

    government of the people

    Are you sure you want your government to operate like a Fark forum? Will legislation be passed by Digg rating? Actually that might improve things (so it'll never happen) but think about how cool that might be. Congress-critters post their bills online to collect comments and the ones that get dugg onto the front page get passed.
    Having successful businessmen like Drew Curtis and Kevin Rose running things might work out really well.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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