Barack Obama: President v2.0

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS 
by Marc Muszynski

By the time the sun sets tomorrow, America's destiny will be lovingly cradled in the arms of Barack Obama. Many of us will watch his historic inauguration streaming live from CNN.com, or later on YouTube. The president himself may even send a grateful Facebook update to all the "fans" of his Facebook page. But how does all of this new technology help us stay in touch with our leaders? And how does the new administration plan to use the Internet going forward?

Web 2.0 has been one of the hottest buzzwords of the past couple of years. Wikipedia (a Web 2.0 site itself) defines the phenomenon at 11:51 a.m. today as "the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies."

Three words in that definition pop out at me as being relevant to politics and the Internet: sharing, communication and collaboration. These ideas are essential to the survival of democracy in any technological age. The new administration has been looking to the Internet for help.

Sharing and Communication

The Obama Administration has a variety of tools to pass information directly to the people for free (after the cost of a computer): WhiteHouse.gov, Change.gov, MyBarackObama.com and USA.gov, to name a few. These are the most basic Internet tools at Obama's disposal, and will most likely be used for press releases and official policy statements.

Aside from his basic Web sites, Obama has a presence on the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace, which any users can follow to get occasional updates on what Barack is up to. Both sites are replete with photos, videos, and blog posts.

Barack even has a Twitter account, which he uses every couple of days. If he's smart, he'll check out how other sites are using twitter to hold Internet conferences and get feedback.

There are also some great organizations working to promote government transparency, such as the Sunlight Foundation, which will help keep the new president honest.

Collaboration

This is where the real revolution starts, and the Obama transition team has built some glitzy new resources to collect citizen feedback.

Citizen's Briefing Book is a page on Change.gov that allows anyone to post and vote on suggestions. The highest rated suggestions will go into a briefing book for the president. Questions from the site have already made it into Obama's interviews and press conferences, but we are still waiting to see if any action will be taken on such citizen requests. To use it yourself, just go to the site and watch the instructional video at the top.

Change.org (not ot be confused with Change.gov) is a nonprofit that Obama doesn't control, but one he should watch. They function similar to the Citizen's Briefing Book, but Change.org also helps motivated individuals connect with nonprofits that fit their interest.

For some other excellent presidential resources check out the Top 10 Online Tools to Connect With the Obama Administration.

I am not surprised that the Obama team puts such stock in technology. After all, his Internet fundraising campaign was responsible for over half their fundraising during the campaign.

But there is a downside to all the technobabble going on around the White House. John McCain outed himself as computer illiterate during the campaign, prompting my father to say, "Well, good. He shouldn't be wasting all that time online anyway." And Obama has already been grilled on his Blackberry addiction.

In the few short months since the collaborative sites have been open, they've been flooded with ideas, both good and bad; and I doubt anyone is under the impression the president himself will be sitting in front of the Oval Office computer reading through them all. So that means more staff, more taxpayer resources and more time, three things the government is already short on.

Despite the cons, I think this unprecedented access to our President will prove a boon to the American people, as long as both parties stay honest and stay connected.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Check out these sites and let us here at BuzzFlash know what you think. How many hours a day do you think the president should spend online?

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