A few more steps towards a “Wiki-Presidency”

A month ago, on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, we looked at the apparent dawn of the “Wiki Presidency” which highlighted some of the wiki and wiki-like initiatives that then candidate Barack Obama had enacted in his campaign.

In the intervening month, now President-elect Obama hasn’t disappointed. Over the Thanksgiving week, Obama’s transition team launched http://change.gov/ as an opportunity for presenting policy discussion and providing a forum in the name of openness and transparency for the public to see policy in action and leave comments for the team.

Members of the blog-o-sphere have had a chance to sound-off, and it seems to be working already. On his “Change Congress” blog, Jim Brown suggested on Nov. 29 that the Change.gov would best serve the people by adopting a Creative Commons license to show that the new administration has a clear sense of transparency and openness in government. Several days later, Change.gov responded by doing just that.

Also upon the launch, Allison Fine on techpresident.com and her own social media blog noted that the website was more blog post than wiki, and outlined three things the transition team (and new administration) should do to focus the conversations on Change.gov in order to bring about real impact. Among her thoughts were – 1. A pledge to listening; 2. Local and live discussions to support the online discussions; 3. More opportunity for engagement with the community being able to ask facilitated questions.

While Fine’s suggestions weren’t responded to directly, its important to note that yesterday Change.gov launched a new section “Your Seat at the Table” which allows a new level of transparency – showing meetings that the Obama-Biden transition team is making, allowing the public to track the meetings, view documents provided to the transition team and leave comments.

This radial level of openness and transparency marks a complete turnaround from other administrations and we all hope these values continue. It might be asking a lot to – as Tim O’Reilly requests – put change.gov under revision control (like a wiki) right now, but we do think such a day might be coming soon where we can see a wiki-based White House website as called for by NiemanWatchdog.org.

In the meantime, it’s important to note that change doesn’t happen overnight and there will be bumps in the road, but the earnestness that the transition team and Change.gov has shown in just a few weeks is encouraging.

Tagged as: presidency, Social media, technology, wiki