When President Obama took office in January, he brought with him the promise of transparency. Translated in the digital age, this means the ability for citizens to gain easy access to federal information online, and to communicate with their nation's leaders in ways unprecedented.
The president and his tech-savvy minions have caught some flak for not quite upholding that promise. But the problems the government faces when trying to effectively use the Web are daunting and go far past simply getting the guy in office who might be interested in leveraging the technology.
Speaking at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Andrew McLaughlin, head of global public policy and government affairs at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), detailed some of these problems. McLaughlin spent three months in Washington as a member of the Obama/Biden transition team and described his experience as "the story of a Bay Area nerd who goes to Washington and encounters some rather surprising obstacles."
Terms of Service: Unlike the rest of us, the government actually reads the TOS agreements on the various consumer sites of the Web-o-sphere. In fact, not reading these "line by line" (unlike those spending bills in Congress) could result in some real trouble. For example, McLaughlin pointed out that the feds can't agree to indemnity clauses that most sites have in their terms saying that the user is liable for damages. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran into trouble here when trying to use Second Life for rehabilitation purposes, because Linden Lab assigns "unlimited liability" to the end user.
Apart from indemnity clauses, TOSs often publish legal jurisdiction which says that the contract will be governed by a particular state's laws. "The federal government is not subject to state law. It's only subject to federal law," says McLaughlin. "For these reasons even just signing up for free online service is harder than you might think."
Federal Law: That whole United States Code thing can tend to get in the way for our elected officials trying to get hip with the Web 2.0 squares. McLaughlin pointed to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which states that the disabled must have access to and use of federal information comparable to that available to the non-disabled. In that sense, asks McLaughlin, "Can the government sign a contract with a Web service that is not Section 508-compliant?"
Management Statutes: While the idea of making all records electronic seems like an easy solution to various problems, for the federal government it's painstaking. McLaughlin pointed to the Presidential Records Act which requires all documentary records and materials to be kept. "This requires that everything be kept in paper," he says. "No lie -- government Web masters have to sit and print snapshots of their Websites on a regular basis. Do a blog post, gotta print it. It becomes a real headache when you have a Website that takes comments."
Endorsements: There's an understanding that the president is not to endorse any commercial services. Therefore, when the president embeds a YouTube video on his site, is he endorsing YouTube? This seems silly when considering YouTube as a media outlet, like, say The New York Times. But the White House Counsel takes this issue seriously.
Apart from overcoming these obstacles by revising federal laws and regulations -- no mean feat -- in order to achieve any real change, says McLaughlin, it all comes down to culture.
"I thought we could wipe away this stuff on Day 1 with an executive order or two. That's not the case. The way we're going to get a better government is to change the culture, and that's hard to do. It's a laborious process."
It's humorous that you state "While am not saying there is something wrong with being older" and then go on the tell us why being older is bad. So let me tell what is wrong with being younger in relation to understanding technology. I in 51 and have beein in IT since 1983. I was around when TCP/IP was first developed, help build the infrastucture of the internet as a member of the IT world and now you think because you know how to use your mouse to twitter your buddies that you have an appreciation and understanding of the complexities both technical and legal of this issue.
Yes, I realize there are Congressmen that don't understand the implications of Web 2.0 or even 1.0 in regards to government. But this ignorance is not generational.
Many people think that the next digital age will be web3.0 !! But no it won't be :-) , i'll tell you what would be the name of the next digital age !! they said it will be web 3.0 because it's actually web 2.0 that's not how things working on .
I'll reveal it on my digital book to be released very soon .
It's fear, and the fact that the majority of the decision makers for these types of things in Washington are people who barely understand the technology.
If you look at the Senate, 90% of the Senate of the US is over the age of 50, and 50% of those people are past the traditional "age of retirement" in the US at 65.
While am not saying there is something wrong with being older, there are certain traits that are very common in the older members of our society here in the United States. Fear of technology, ignorance of technology, habits engrained in their everyday lives, and an attitude of tradition.
There is a vast difference between saving a hand written letter versus something like a comment on a message board or the content of a website, but the older generations still think like they did even just 30 years ago where they had to have the physical copy in front of them for everything.
I also think they fear technology because they think that documents will be changed or altered instead of keeping a historical record of the "truth".
"If you can't touch it, it's not real"
Tapes, CDs, floppies, HDD, flash or any other number of storage device technologies are the papyrus of today's society.
Hi Nicole...you are right, one more step forward for 508 compliance. As you would expect, we are getting more traction now that a software solution actually exists. For those interested we are doing a 508 seminar April 21st at 2. All details on our website....www.feedroom.com/page/events
It's pretty obvious at this point that virtually every records retention mandate out there needs to be brought up to speed with today's society and technology...
The Paper Industry lobbyists won't be happy, but isn't it time that all of this information both electronic and otherwise be stored in a electronic medium??
I think the "culture" of the public at large was ready for this shift for some time, but it's the "political culture" with it's "CYA Mentality" that wants to harbor this insanity...
Whether or not the new Admin can overcome this obstacle remains to be seen.
"US bureaucracy is holding us back" may be an understatement. Sometimes I think it would be easier to return a half-eaten hotdog than to cut through bureaucratic red tape.
At least this info can shed some light on the situation to the people constantly crying "where's the transparency?"
I am reminded of a story about people deciding to cut out the bureaucratic middleman. Unfortunately, such measures won't quite work in this situation.
Well I think it's the need for both. Like McLaughlin said, it becomes a pain when you're dealing with something like message board comments. They also have to keep records of things on third-party Websites. Think about having to make a printout of every Facebook status update or Tweet for the sake of shipping off to a presidential library. The hope is that eventually they'll get to a point where they're enabling electronic storage of electronic records.
I was just reading on our sister site Contentinople that online video management firm The FeedRoom is providing the Obama admin with a video player that will make his video 508-compliant. Small steps, but it's nice to see some progress being made.
According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. is third in the world in terms of overall technology "network readiness." It has great R&D, great technology, and -- comparatively speaking -- an economy that supports technology. Where the U.S. falls down is in the amount of red tape that exists at the government level, and between the government and business.
This post makes it clear that government agencies in the U.S. are snarled in their own paperwork to a sometimes alarming extent.
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At the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit here in Nashville, I'm hearing many stories about how businesses have adapted their IT strategies in response to this rapidly changing, pressurized, data-driven commercial world.
Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
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More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
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A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
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Elizabeth Pizzinato, SVP of marketing and communications at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, calls content marketing "the new black" and explains how her brand engages its target audience.
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The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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