Designing Obama from mas / menos on Vimeo.

The success of the Obama campaign can party be put down to the millions of small donations from supporters. In this vein, Scott Thomas, the Design Director of the campaign, is soliciting contributions for the release of a book documenting the design effort.

The book is a reflection on how Barack Obama used ‘art and design to bring together the American people—capturing their voices in a visual way.’

Thomas is using Kickstarter as a platform to fundraise for the production of the book – what he calls a “Obama-like fundraising model.” More than 930 people have backed the effort with over $60,000 already pledged. The goal is to reach $65,000 by 5th November. Once this happens the book will go to the printers and should be available around the New Year. The finished product is set to come in an 360-pages of hard-bound art and commentary, with a copy being sent to all the backers.

For an idea of what the book might contain see Scott Thomas’ talk below about the campaign. In it he describes how the 2008 campaign marked the first time that branding and design played a pivotal role in a presidential bid.

Scott Thomas: Designing the Obama Campaign from 99% on Vimeo

For more on the campaign check out:

• Learning from Obama
• The Barack Obama strategy
• Obama Social Media toolkit
• Jascha Franklin-Hodge on my.barackobama.com at Web 2.0 Expo

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.

On Thursday, President Obama conducted his first online town hall meeting at the White House. The event was the product of a ‘new experiment’ on WhiteHouse.gov called Open for Questions. This allowed citizens to ask questions, which where then ranked and voted upon by an online community.

The WhiteHouse described the experiment as:

the President’s latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans from around the country a direct line to the Administration…This experiment is about encouraging transparency and accountability, so ask the President exactly what it is you want to know – but let others do the same.

The experiment was similar to that which the Obama team employed on its transition website. The second round of change.gov’s Open for Questions closed in January with 103,512 people submitting 76,031 questions and casting 4,713,083 votes.

The WhiteHouse.gov experiment was even more successful than that on change.gov. After only a couple of days 92,937 people had submitted 104,006 questions and cast 3,603,668 votes. Some 64,000 people tuned into the live webcast which the WhiteHouse Blog celebrated as having:

an amazing feel of something that had never been done before, and something we should be trying to do more of.

My Question

I posted a question on Tuesday night, primarily to experience the Google Moderator platform, and also to summarise some of the views already posted to the Health Care Reform section of the site. As I was primarily testing the site functionality I simply entered my name as ‘richard’. I didn’t think much about it until I went back to vote on some questions on Wednesday night. By that time my question had garnered a couple of thousand votes. I still did not expect it to be posed to the President though, as the site had received thousands of questions and millions of votes.

On Thursday morning I visited the site again – primarily to see what time the live event was being held. I decided to check up on the Open for Question area, and was surprised to find it was the most popular Health Care Reform question. It was one of the top ranked questions from the experiment with nearly 6,500 votes. As such, it was put to President Obama during the town hall meeting (video above 25:41 – 32:04).

President Obama gave a detailed answer which explained the legacy of the American Health care system, and how he would like to see it reformed. His response included some of the points below (taken from official transcript):

…Now is the time to reform the health care system — not four years from now, not eight years from now, not 20 years from now.  Now.

the reason that I think it is so important is that the high costs of health care are a huge drag on our economy.  It’s a drag on our families.

Now, the question is, if you’re going to fix it, why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?  I actually want a universal health care system; that is our goal.  I think we should be able to provide health insurance to every American that they can afford and that provides them high quality.

The problem is, is that we have what’s called a legacy, a set of institutions that aren’t that easily transformed.

And so what evolved in America was an employer-based system.  It may not be the best system if we were designing it from scratch.  But that’s what everybody is accustomed to.  That’s what everybody is used to.  It works for a lot of Americans.  And so I don’t think the best way to fix our health care system is to suddenly completely scrap what everybody is accustomed to and the vast majority of people already have.  Rather, what I think we should do is to build on the system that we have and fill some of these gaps.

And I’m looking to Congress to work with me to find that optimal system.  I made some proposals during the campaign about how we can lower costs through information technologies; how we can lower costs through reforms in how we reimburse doctors so that they’re not getting paid just for the number of operations they’re doing, but for whether they’re quality outcomes; investing in prevention so that kids with asthma aren’t going to the emergency room, but they’re getting regular checkups.

And my expectation is, is that I will have a health care bill to sign this year.  That’s what we’re going to be fighting for.  That’s what we’re going to be striving for.

This seemed to have been a well received response with 50% of viewers rating the question as answered on a live blog of the event. Following that response he even answered a question about marijuana legalization: “I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow the economy.” This reflected the nature of the event i.e. a good humored and friendly meeting with questions posed on all aspects of civic life.

Expanding the experiment

This experiment epitomized the administration’s goal of creating a more participatory government. This event could be used as a template for other departments and agencies to create their own town hall meetings, in which the public is given the opportunity to post questions and vote on those considered most pertinent and reflective of public opinion.

Wired gave the experiment a thumbs up noting:

Overall, Team Obama deserves high marks. Opening a free-flowing site where people can submit questions is a risk. It might backfire, but it might also help point the way toward a very interesting new way for the president to communicate with the country.

From a personal perspective, the experiment was really exciting! There is a real thrill in knowing your question might be put to the most powerful man in the world. It was not so much the answer to the question that was rewarding, but rather the fact that it was answered at all. The possibility to directly question the President, through experiments such as Open for Questions and Ask the President, has the effect of empowering people to interact and engage with the executive branch of government.

Using web 2.0 tools to facilitate this communication, represents a great leap forward in creating a more social government. The transparent and collaborative nature of these tools, exemplify how interaction between citizens and the government should be conducted. Rolling out these new platforms for debate throughout federal/state and local government will be one of the key roles of the Federal CIO. The lessons the WhiteHouse is learning from the use of such tools, will provide a good example for how other areas of government can be made more participatory. What’s clear is that a more social government is coming…and from experience it feels good.

I watched this debate a few weeks ago, but only manged to make some notes recently. The discussion was organized by the New American Foundation and took place at Google on 9th January. The tag-line was Can Obama Use Technology to Transform Government?

It’s a thought provoking debate with contributions from  Nicholas Thompson (mod), Craig Newmark, Mindy Finn, Ellen Miller, and Sascha Meinrath. The debate has been discussed on various blogs, and I’ve listed some of the discussion points below.

Federal Web Managers Council

The debate refers to two reports – from the Federal Web Managers Council – that are important in the context of the current regulatory/cultural difficulties in harnessing the web’s potential throughout government agencies. The reports include:

1) Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government (PDF) – This focuses on initiatives needed to make online government data and processes more user friendly. The initiatives include:

• Establishing Web Communications as a core government business function
• Helping the public complete common government tasks efficiently
• Cleaning up the clutter so people can find what they need online
• Engaging the public in a dialogue to improve our customer service
• Ensuring the public gets the same answer whether they use the web, phone, email, pint, or visit in-person
• Ensure underserved populations can access critical information online

The report concludes with vision of how the Administration can benefit from using the web:

By harnessing the collaborative nature of the web, the new Administration has the potential to engage the public like never before.  The web can foster better communication and allow people to participate in improving the operations of their government.

2) Barriers and Solutions to Implementing Social Media in Government (PDF) – This details the barriers to the use of social media in government. These include:

• Cultural issues and lack of a strategy for using these new tools
• Employee access to online tools
• Terms of service
• Advertising
• Procurement
• Privacy
• Persistent Cookies
• Surveys
• Access for people with disabilities
• Administrative requirements during rulemaking

Solutions are proposed to the issues above and the report also highlights good examples of Web 2.0 and Social Media already in Government.

Government 2.0

Gaurav Mishra (blogging about the debate) outlines five different levels of government 2.0, where level 5 is the most radical:

Level 1. Allowing government employees and elected officials at all levels to access and use social media tools like blogs, wikis and social networks to connect with their constituents.

Level 2. The strategic use of social media tools like blogs, wikis and social networks by government agencies to achieve their objectives and solicit citizen feedback to improve their processes.

Level 3. A participatory platform that engages citizens in policy debates and voluntary service at all levels of the government.

Level 4. Open availability of all non-sensitive and non-personal government data so that citizens can use it and third parties can build web 2.0 mashups on top of it.

Level 5. Crowd-sourcing the government, party by institutionalizing a process that directly uses the aforementioned participatory platform as an important input into government functions, including policy formation.

He outlines how Level 1 and level 2 government 2.0 initiatives are already happening e.g. social media initiatives by US government agencies (PDF), active and archived US government blogs, and US government agencies and employees on Twitter.

Levels 4 & 5, however, are not in widespread use through government. While there are initiatives e.g. Peer to Patent, that exemplify a Level 5 crowd-sourcing approach, these are isolated instances which are not generally representative of the government websphere.

The internet changes expectations

Ellen Miller identified 3 principles for the Obama Administration to abide by:

• Transparency is government’s responsibility – government should be open by default and not as a response to Freedom of Information or public lobbying. In the first 100 days of the administration there should be an executive order on the use of social media/software to engage and communicate with the public
• Public means online – the internet is the only medium in which information can truly be in the public sphere
• Data and presentation matter – the contextualization of data and it’s visualization are critical to enabling easy understanding of patterns and trends e.g. see stimulus bill

Notwithstanding these principles, however, Craig and Mindy noted some obstacles in using the internet as a medium for public discourse. These include issues with trolls, and how they can manipulate voting mechanisms and introduce inflammatory rhetoric into discussions. Also, it often tends to be the loud and opinionated comments that direct the course of conversations, while the moderate and fact-based opinions are neglected. There is also a issue over how representative the participants in online discussions are, and how their views are weighted. There is a great potential for pressure groups to become involved in online conversations with the effect that their views can drown out minority opinions. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it can provide a context in which people are afraid to express opinions that go against the prevailing orthodoxy within a discussion.

Scrutinizing the stimulus

Ellen Miller highlights how government should engage opinions on the economic stimulus package. It’s important when the stimulus document is posted online and in a fashion that allows for easy annotation. A PDF document is not an appropriate medium in which to place texts requiring feedback.

The http://readthestimulus.org/ site is an excellent example of how the text of the stimulus bill can be brought to life through user comments and discussions. The UK’s recently released Power of Information Taskforce report (beta) is structured in a similar way allowing for easy commenting and conversations.

Regulation

An interesting example of how laws can prevent good things happening online was discussed. The text of a Presidential speech as put on the White House website with a link to the Red Cross. However, the White House staff were told to remove this external link as it could be thought they were sponsoring the organization.

Also, it was noted that Youtube videos could not be embedded on government sites in California because of the American disabilities act and a terms of service law mean content has to be in text and video form at the same time.

Ellen Miller also noted how members of Congress had been unable to use social media in any form until recently. Needless to say lots of members used these media outlets illegally and so the Democrats decided to revisit the rule. They came out with a new rule which they thought tried to loosen the restrictions. Republicans, however, thought the Democrats were trying to nail the restrictions in place. In the end the Sunlight Foundation launched a Let our Congress Tweet campaign gathering several thousand followers within 48 hours. A few weeks later the rule was reversed and now members of congress can use social media sites such as Twitter and Youtube.

The demand to change the rules came from the public through the use of social media. The public wants to hear from elected representatives on twitter, and there is now a fascinating list of Members of Congress on Twitter at Tweetcongress and MPs on Twitter at Tweetminister.

Progress

The points outlined in the discussion – along with the concerns raised by the Federal Web Managers Council – may paint a bleak picture for social media and web2.0 services throughout government. This is not the case, however, and there are many successful online participatory platforms managed by the government e.g. usa.gov, whitehouse.gov, grants.gov etc. There is also a good variety of examples of agencies using online content and social media to achieve goals.

The level of government 2.0 that needs to be embraced is that requiring transparency, trust and openness i.e. Levels 4 and 5 outlined above. Social media platforms can be used to facilitate these levels of government 2.0, however, much more important is the change in mindset required to accept the consequences of such changes. We’ve seen from President Obama tentative steps to embrace this new paradigm e.g. with recovery.gov, however, we’re still awaiting an example of where online citizen involvement changes policy or proposed legislation. There have been a few hiccups already, but as long as the objectives in the Memorandum on Open Government is embraced the public can look forward to greater online recognition and involvement sooner rather than later.

This week has seen some great examples of transparency in the Government arena, both in the US and the UK. The first, and arguably most high profile event, surrounded the new Obama Administration, and its aim to be the most transparent in the history of the United States.

This laudable aim forms part of President Obama’s vision of a more open, engaged and transparent Federal government, where the default position for information is public and online.

“For a long time now there’s been too much secrecy in this city…Transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” President Obama

Policy beta outlines how President Obama issued a memo re-introducing the presumption of openness that was mandated during the Clinton administration:

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.

President Obama also pledged to hold himself:

“to a new standard of openness. Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.”

Along with this President Obama asked agencies to use tools that make the government transparent, collaborative, and transparent. These tools can be wikis, government databases, blogs etc. but the overriding principle is the open and free access to public information in order to create a more dynamic and active participatory democracy.

President Obama’s Memorandum on Transparency outlines how Government should be transparent, participatory and collaborative. To foster collaboration, however, their must be a transparent environment amenable to participation and discussion. The memorandum states:

Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

An example of this kind of collaboration can be seen with Fedspending.org and USASpending.gov. OMBWatch provided their technology to the Federal Government to create USASpending.gov quickly and at a lower cost than would otherwise have been possible. Such collaboration has the potential to reduce costs and allow for innovations and ideas to quickly become reality. The Federal Government should make greater use of expertise from the private/non-profit sector to jointly develop transparent platforms for civic engagement. This memorandum should allow collaboration of this kind to flourish and become easier throughout the course of this Administration.

Transparency resources

The are many organizations facilitating transparency in civic life. The Sunshine Review blog highlights some of the online resources which can be considered as models for transforming how the public consumes Government related information. The sites highlighted include:

• Pork Page! – Contains many online resources dealing with pork barrel politics
• The Votes sites -  MichiganVotes.org,  PennsylvaniaVotes.org and others provide an easy interface to check on legislation, elected officials, issues, voting records and more.
• Sunshine on Schools – Contains budget data for North Dakota’s K-12 schools
• SchoolBoardTransparency.org – provides insight into on Pennsylvania’s school board-union contract negotiations.
• County spending – Transparency in County spending, examples include  Collin County, Texas and DuPage County, Illinois.
• Center for Fiscal Accountability website – Contains information on the  latest transparency news
• OMBWatch – Contains a list of federal transparency recommendations – from Organisations and Individuals – to implement in his first 100 days in office.
• ReadTheStimulus.org – As the site suggests, “$850 Billion, 334 pages, and counting… somebody needs to read it!”. The site allows people to comment on various paragraphs in the bill, thus allowing for a debate on very specific details of the text.
• Citizens Against Government Waste – provides details on national and state ‘pork-barrel- spending.
• SunshineReview.org – “collects and shares information about government transparency, openness and accountability at the state and local level.’

Additional transparency sites include:

• Fedspending.org – created by OMBwatch to provide information on federal contracts/grants. The Federal government version is at USAspending.gov.
• Sunlight Foundation – aims to use the ” power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens.” It facilitates and supports many projects including Earmark Watch and Public Markup.

Transparency initiatives

There are obviously lots other transparency initiatives ongoing at a more local level, but a prominent case emerged this week in the UK regarding MP expenses. The Government had planned to exempt MPs’ expenses details from the UK Freedom of Information Act. This provoked organizations such as mySociety to launch campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to overturn the plan.

In the end, the vote was cancelled by the government with the effect that plans to issue 1.2m receipts for MPs’ expenses over the past three years are likely to go ahead within weeks.

Tom Steinberg wrote on the mySociety blog about how the cancellation of the vote on MPs’ expenses was:

a huge victory not just for transparency, it’s a bellwether for a change in the way politics works.

The transparency movement, both in the United States and the UK, highlights the public demand for accountability in how taxpayers’ money is being spent. Whether it relates to Government bailouts or MP expenses, non-profits and others are actively using social software tools, and the crowdsourcing potential of the Internet to promote civic engagement and public debate. The web is opening up our democracy through increasing society’s exceptions on the openness and accountability of elected officials.

Trust the people

Governments around the world need to acknowledge that Trust is what allows them exist, and for digital natives this must be exemplified by online access to contextual information relating to decision making. Concealing information creates an impression of mistrust and breeds suspicion. Placing information such as voting records, expenses, gifts received and meeting details in public domain, allows the public more context in which to judge the motivations and decisions of elected officials.

The public domain is online, any any transparency initiatives must use this as the default medium in which to present information. It’s not just acceptable, however, to place documents online in PDF or propriety formats. Rather transparency means online in an open and accessible format, allowing for data to be easily searched and queried e.g. xml. Easy and accessible access to information, allows for a more informed and educated civic debate contributing to the health of every democracy.