Over the past few months I’ve become more and more impressed with the videos on the White House YouTube channel. The President’s Weekly Address is almost a stalemate of my weekends. His explanations of Healthcare reform or assessments of the economy are both engaging and informative.

There is currently well over 400 videos on the White House YouTube channel. These collectively have amassed over 2.2 million views. The channel has 80,400 subscribers, with viewers coming from many different countries depending on the topic e.g. the President’s Message to the Iranian People was ‘most popular’ in Iran.

While the number of viewers has been decreasing over the past few months, it still remains the most viewed political channel on YouTube and far more popular that similar international initiatives from the UK or EU.

The five most viewed White House videos have amassed nearly 5 million YouTube hits. These videos include:

1. President Barack Obama’s Inaugural address – 1,281,063 views
2. 1/24/09: Your Weekly Address – 1,163,256 views
3. Lower Quality Version: President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt – 614,761 views
4. The President’s Message to the Iranian People – 612,576 views
5. President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt – 586,653 views

It’s not so much the formal speeches or policy announcements that are what attracts me to the White House videos; Rather it’s the informal behind-the-scenes clips that are most interesting. These provide an insight into the White House and the President, not normally seen on TV news bulletins. They – along with the other new media activities from the White House – provide greater transparency on the activities of the institution, and serve as a platform upon which to build greater trust with the American public.

I’ve embedded my five favourite videos below. They’re all short clips, but I hope demonstrate a side of President Obama and the Administration not often seen through traditional media.

Behind-the-scenes

The video below is the first in a series of “Inside the White House” videos that will be appearing on WhiteHouse.gov. It shows the President reading letters from ordinary citizens. He reads 10 letters from the Public every day and the video provides a behind-the-scenes look at the process of how those letters make it to his desk. It also provides short interviews with White House staff involved in the distribution of thousands of letters, faxes, and e-mails that are received each day.

Mike Kelleher (Director, Office of Correspondence) describes how they get 65,000 paper letters, 100,000 e-mails and 1,000 faxes each week. This is combined with 2,500 – 3,500 calls per day, and highlights what a huge task it is to distill this into 10 letters each day.

Other behind-the-scenes videos provide an insight into the President’s day-to-day interactions and other less newsworthy activites at the White House. These include:

• White House interns reflecting on their experiences
• The White House Easter Egg Roll
• The President chatting to Willie Mays, grilling with Bobby Flay or taping the audio for Disney’s Hall of Presidents or the Colbert Report

Obama’s personality

It’s rare that TV news bulletins or newspaper articles delve into the personality of President Obama, or provide an insight into how he interacts with people. I think the video below demonstrates how at ease he is conversing with others and taking an interest in what they do.

Some of his personality is reflected in other videos including the dunking of Senior Advisors, playing basketball with the Lady Huskies, reading to children and working with the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. The sight of the President having fun and enjoying himself is something not often seen in press conferences or his Weekly Addresses.

Setting the facts straight

The current debate on Healthcare reform has provoked fiercely passionate arguments on both sides. Unfortunately, the facts of the proposed reforms have often been held hostage to inaccurate portrayals of proposed legislation. The video below refutes many of the scare tactics employed by those against reform.

The White House has sought to defend its position through a series of videos to the American public. The Reality Check videos debunk many of the myths and propaganda surrounding Health Care reform. Allegations of ‘Death Panels’ and the rationing of Healthcare are all dismissed in this series of interviews with those involved in Health care policy. Often the videos are a response to questions from anxious citizens attending health care town hall meetings across the country. It’s important the White House refutes these allegations and explains in simple language the facts of proposed reforms.

Foreign Visits

The montage below highlights the excitement and enthusiasm expressed by the people of Ghana during the President’s tour. It is narrated by extracts of the President’s speech interspersed with African music. Overall, it’s a really nice clip of what looks like a colourful and welcoming reception in Accra.

Overlaying extracts from speeches with travel clips is evident in other videos such as the inaugural Whistle Stop Train Tour or the President’s visit to Canada.

Plain taking

The video below sets out succulently the benefits of the new Credit Card bill of rights. What I like about this video is the language Mr. Goolsbee uses. When referring to credit card contracts he describes the frustrations of many Americans: “I’ve a PHD in economics, but I can bearly read these things’’. He outlines some of the activities of these companies as ‘evil genius’. This kind of plain talking is refreshing and demonstrates how in tune the White House is to the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Other videos include Peter Orszag describing the benefits he gets from reading blogs and the rational for setting up the OMB blog. He explains how he wants the blog to clarify misconceptions and confusion surrounding the activities of the Office of Management and Budget.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) held a panel discussion in Washington last week on the use of Web 2.0 technology by the Obama administration. The panel was chaired by Peter Swire (Senior Fellow at CAP, and former counsel to the Change.gov New Media Team). He led an interesting discussion with Tim O’Reilly (Founder of O’Reilly media), Alec Ross (Senior Advisor at the State Department on Innovation), and Faiz Shakir (Research director at Center for American Progress), on Web 2.0 initiatives at the State Department and the issues in its future use throughout the Federal Government. 

At the outset Peter mentions three papers on the CAP website in relation to the Federal Government’s use of Web 2.0. These are:

1) It’s Not the Campaign Any More – This memo documents the different approaches to Web 2.0 by the White House, and the challenges they face. It discusses the contrast between the new and fun things that could be done on the Obama campaign, versus the limitations imposed within the Federal Government. The primary reasons that things are more difficult in the White House include:

• Scale: The Obama campaign had to cope with motivated groups of over 10 million individuals, while the White House has to cope with, and respond to the concerns of over 300 million Americans. This makes it difficult to respond to and manage individual comments. The White House Open for Questions initiative generated over 103,978 questions from 92,937 people in just a few days. This provides an idea of the scale of comments and questions the administration needs to deal with. Given the New Media team at the White House consists of just 8 – 10 people, it’s not feasible for them to interact or engage with so many individuals. Crowdsourcing initiatives such as the use of Google moderator (for Open for Questions) and IdeaScale (for Open Government brainstorming) suggest the administration is attempting to use the wisdom of crowds to filter comments and suggestions. Other organisations e.g. OMBWatch, are also providing analysis of comments, potentially helping the administration to deal with large quantities of feedback. 
• The Clearance process:  Responses to questions need to be “cleared” with all of the relevant agencies, before they can be posted on blogs, twitter or social networking sites. Peter describes an analogy of where an incorrect response to an North Korea question, could result in missiles being launched. While it’s a rather extreme example, the comments and answers posted from the White House could be construed as official government policy or opinion. In terms of foreign relations even seemingly inconsequential comments could have major diplomatic ramifications, and so everything needs to be vetted and analysed before posting. 
• Limits on Government authorizing actions: The White House needs to be careful not to endorse or authorize others to act on its behalf. While the campaign may have been able to take a lackadaisical approach to endorsing individuals or events, things are more nuanced and difficult in the White House. There could be charges of favoritism or politicization if the White House endorses individuals or organisations. The White House has to project an appearance of fairness and objectivity when discussing outside entities e.g. websites or platforms, and as such often says very little in response to it’s use of different technologies. 

2) Six New Media Challenges: Legal and Policy Considerations for Federal Use of Web 2.0 Technology

3) How to Buy Free Software: Procuring Web 2.0 Technology for the Federal Government

Panel discussion

The first part of the discussion focuses on Diplomacy 2.0 and the State Department’s efforts to engage and interact with an online audience to further its mission. Such initiatives include twitter, blogs, youtube and facebook.  An interactive travel map is available to track Secretary Clinton’s travels, while initiatives such as Ask the Secretary have  allowed the public to submit questions directly to the Secretary of State. The initiatives outlined by Alec Ross (including the SWAT campaign), provide a good indication of how social media is being utilized within the department. 

The second part of the discussion focused on the issues facing the adoption of Web 2.0 within government. These include privacy concerns, access for those with disabilities, commercial endorsement and advertising, terms of service agreements, regulations and security concerns. These are highlighted in Peter Swire’s paper on New Media Challenges, and overlap with many of the barriers to social media adoption outlined by the federal Web Managers council last year.

While the issues won’t all be solved overnight, it’s enlightening to see departments and agencies within the federal government taking risks in this area. The rollout of Web 2.0 across government requires risk and the acceptance that while mistakes maybe made, the greater risk is to not embrace these new forms of social software.

Tim O’Reilly talked about Government as a platform, in which users can easily access and mash-up government services to allow for a more transparent, open and participatory form of public interaction. Recent initiatives such as Data.gov, Open Government Initiative, The National Dialogue etc. all serve to highlight how far the administration is embracing the tenets behind Open government. While this movement is only at the beginning, the prevalence of discussions like this, recent barcamps and the upcoming Gov2.0 summit, serve to ensure the lexicon of Web 2.0 increases throughout the federal government.

If the video above is a bit too long there’s a 5-minute Youtube video in which Peter surmises Web 2.0 specific issues in relation to the federal government. There’s also a 23-minute audio interview with Swire available at Science Progress.

Us Now – a film on the power of mass collaboration, the internet and government – is now freely available online to stream or download. The film investigates the use of crowdsourcing, and other forms of citizen participation, to change the nature and role of government.

It follows the fate of football team owned and run by its fans; a “bank” in which lenders loan to each other in a peer to peer fashion; and an online network that encourages members to open their homes to strangers. The film documents how:

transparency, self-selection, open participation — are coming closer and closer to the mainstream of our social and political lives.