posted by Ross Wallen

February 06, 2009

Elected officials have dual objectives - being an effective representative and fostering a healthy democracy by encouraging citizen engagement. One of the best ways to accomplish those objectives is to promote an open and transparent government that expects citizens to hold elected officials accountable.

President Obama takes these notions to heart and articulates his ideas in recent memos. In one memo, focused on the Freedom of Information Act, Obama states, "a democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." He goes further in another recent memo, saying government should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative; to reach that end, government "should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public."

The last point is essential because technology has a unique ability to present information in a way that promotes engagement and activism. With technology transforming both the amount of information we receive and how we consume it, it is important that government embrace the change and harness technology to improve our democracy. Below are a few examples of the current use of technology by government agencies.

The State Department has an official blog and a twitter account (@Dipnote) and the Transportation and Security Administration, of all things, has a blog as well.
The ubiquitous YouTube has only recently been approved for members of congress and President Obama releases a weekly address (1/31/09) on the White House account of the video service vimeo.
Twitter, a lesser known but terribly active online platform, is a microblogging/social networking service that you can use to connect and communicate with other users, including President Obama (mostly inactive since the campaign), NASA, or the Women's Health office . You can go to TweetCongress to see if your members of Congress use Twitter.

So it seems that the information currently available to citizens will only increase if transparency and open government through technology is truly embraced. Transparency being the government's obligation, accountability is left to us, the citizens. That is where citizen engagement gives way to citizen activism. While the above examples highlight the use of technology by the government, nonprofits have a head start on the new administration. And many of their websites demonstrate that fact by the ability of users to interact in a conversation rather than the one-way communication that is typical of government (even in their adventures in new media above).

The Sunlight Foundation is a nonprofit that utilizes technology to change how "government works (and vice versa, how people work with their government)" by shining light on the "interplay of money, lobbying, influence and government." Some of their projects are featured more in-depth below but they have grantees like OpenSecrets, which allows you to see the influence of money on elections and public policy, and a frequently updated blog for those interested in keeping the light on government activities. In the end there are too many useful websites to list here, but we have profiled a few of the best ones below.

OpenCongress - Has information on bills, latest votes, representatives, and industry donations. The most comprehensive of all the websites detailed here and perhaps the most active as well.

Watchdog.net - Compiles various information about elected representatives. Allows you to search geographically or by legislator name, so that you can compare money raised, bills sponsored, earmarks, and other information to other legislators across the country. Watchdog also allows you to start and sign petitions as well as to easily contact your representative.

OpenCRS is a website by Center for Democracy & Technology that allows you to view research reports produced by the taxpayer-funded Congressional Research Service. They do not get every report released but do an excellent job compiling available ones from various resources.

Capitol Words - Takes all the words spoken in Congress and puts them in a word cloud or allows you to see the most and least talkative members. A practical use could be to search for a phrase that occurs in legislation that you are advocating for, i.e. "children" if you were advocating for SCHIP.