May 2008 Archives

A Marc Amblinder essay (HisSpace) in The Atlantic examines the promise and pitfalls of trying to parlay online campaigning into online governing. Amblinger's thesis: Barack Obama is likely to do it because he can but leaves open the question of whether he should.

Obama clearly intends to use the Web, if he is elected president, to transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning. Notably, he has spoken of conducting "online fireside chats" as president. And when one imagines how Obama's political army, presumably intact, might be mobilized to lobby for major legislation with just a few keystrokes, it becomes possible, for a moment at least, to imagine that he might change the political culture of Washington simply by overwhelming it.

This promise of transformation hinges on meaningful transparency.

What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog--also with comments--would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.

As an aside, that would radically redefine the role of CTO (not that the world of three-letter acronyms needed anymore confusion). The challenge here is a not just to appear to be a participatory democracy but to actually be one.

If Obama wins, and if he can harness the Web as a unifying force once the voting is done, he could be a powerful president indeed--the kind that might even deliver on some of the audacious promises that Obama the candidate has made. But the Web, like the politics it seeks to transform, is unruly and fickle. The online networks that have turbocharged Obama's candidacy could end up hemming him in, and even stalling his agenda, as president.

Obama and the Internet have both been described by their proponents as transformational with the ability to make good on the forty year promise of open government. It is at moments like these that half measures will disappoint at a devastating scale because words such as transformation and transparency should never be seen in the same sentence as the vaguely French sounding modifier faux.

Take a good look at a slacker video produced and posted by the California tax man. Indeed, the California Franchise Tax Board is among a growing number of public agenies that have been experimenting in public with engaging the public on the its terms. Exhibit A: YouTube videos. They are not your father's public service announcements because they are not intended to run on your father's medium of choice - television. Instead, they have a young, hip and urban sensibility more typical of viral videos that are now common on the Internet. And yes, the critics have had their say on why agencies should stay away from YouTube. This from the Christian Science Monitor:

"The state's YouTube videos vary in usefulness," says Jack Pitney a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. "The public service announcements are slick but unhelpful. Who goes on YouTube to seek propaganda from a state agency? Just because you can go on YouTube, doesn't mean that you should."

Propaganda? A harsh assessment for what remains well within the tradition of PSAs - public health, public safety and, in the present case, filing taxes. It is surely hyperbolic to lump propaganda and PSAs together in same virtual bucket. The audience can figure it out even if certain college professors cannot. And that may be what ultimately matters. This YouTube experimentation by public agencies should not be judged by its production values (although a sophisticated audience is discerning on this front) or even the use of a video platform that comes without cost to the taxpayer rather than building their own (although that should be applauded).

This slacker video matters because it reflects an appreciation of irony, the defining characteristic of the demographic cohort that is coming of age at a time when YouTube is outdrawing the old tube. Public institutions continue to fight the fight for relevancy in these times -- and some are helping themselves by taking a calculated risk to act more like the people they serve.

Public Information Officers have a tough job. Consider how hard one or more federal PIOs had to work to squueze lemonade from a bucket full of lemons. The White House uses the stop light metaphor common to scorecard programs everywhere - green is go or good, yellow is slow or mediocre, and red is stop or just plain bad, bad, bad. Here's the brave face put on the most recent report:

In the President's Management Agenda Scorecard for the second quarter of FY 2008, nearly 50% of agency "status" scores were green, and more than 75% of "progress" scores were green. The Department of Labor, the Social Security Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, continue to be the only three agencies to receive green scores for both "status" and "progress" in all five of the governmentwide initiatives: human capital, competitive sourcing, financial performance, e-gov and performance improvement.

Put slightly less charitably, (a) more than half of all federal agencies have a worrisome status of yellow or red; and , (b) only 3 of 26 -- 12% -- of federal agencies had their act together and were still moving forward on this handful of priorities. Singling out a vertical or two, 20 agencies were making green-level progress on e-government but 17 are digging out of a hole (14 yellow, 3 red) on the status measure. Ironically, the reddest of the red status belonged to the Department of Commerce -- an interesting spot to end up for a department the name of which shares a root word with "e-commerce." Apparently, not much to show for the last 13 years of playing in the Internet sandbox. On the competitive procurement watch, more than two-thirds (69%) of agencies were mired in red and yellow lights. Some 58% were making progress on this front, which may be akin to being lost but making good time.

It is just not easy building new data centers in Washington state, whether you are the world's dominant and hometown software company or the state government itself. Ground breaking on a new state data center was scheduled for this spring in Olympia, WA -- the first domino in a capitol campus renovation that includes an accompanying office complex to headquater the Department of Information Services (DIS), the Washington State Patrol and other state agencies, which would make room for a new Heritage Center near the Legislative building and Temple of Justice.

The Olympian (May 23, 2008) reports in a front page story above the fold that the first first domino won't budge just yet. The price tag on data center complex spiked $110 million from $260 Million to $370 Million, thanks to the rising costs of construction material plus the unforeseen need to mitigate the effects of increased traffic on the neighborhood. (The original $186 Million estimate for the Heritage Center has also bulged to $221 Million.)

What's more, State Treasurer Michael Murphy is concerned about the use of lease-purchase financing for the DIS complex, telling the Olympian, "This project will be the most expansive project on the capitol campus ... yet it is being financed in a way that makes it excempt form public works laws." The project marks DIS' debut as a general contractor, a role it sought in order to create a showcase for technologically advanced and sustainable workspaces.

In an unrelated development, DIS can commiserate with Microsoft and Yahoo, both of which have also suspended plans to build huge data centers in the state. The companies' multi-facility campuses signaled their commitment to enterprise-level utility computing. The viability of the SaaS-ready data centers required economical access to electricity, broadband access and a tax break. The town of Quincy, WA is prepared to make long term commitments to supplying cheap power thanks to the nearby Columbia River.

But the blog Data Center Knowledge reported that, earlier this year, "the state ruled that data centers were no longer covered by a state sales tax break for manufacturing enterprises.... Gov. Chris Gregoire requested an exemption in Senate Bill 6666, which would restore the exemption for data centers." The legislative session ended without action on the bill. Without the exemption, a 7.9 percent tax would be due on data center construction and equipment. Some things simply do not pencil out.

The June 2, 2008 edition of Newsweek updates the deepening public sector revenue recession and provides a useful point of comparison. Citing revised data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the magazine tallies $42 Billion deficit across 29 states for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 (projected). Compare that with the actual numbers from the bone crushing revenue recession that began in FY 2001 and crested in FY 2004. The big number, attributed to the National Association of State Budget Officers, totaled $84 Billion. NASBO's Scott Pattison worries "We haven't seen the worst yet," suggesting the current circumstance could come to rival the fiscal hardships at the beginning of the decade.  During the earlier troubles, there was a compelling argument about the use of digital technologies to permanently change the cost structure of service delivery because the fiscal problems are structural and merit a structural response.  It appears we have a second chance to get it right.

I met WIRED's Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson at the Conference on California's Future (itself a rebranding exercise of the first order by the annual gathering previously known as the Government Technology Conference (GTC) in Sacramento). I moderated a panel featuring he and California Secretary of State Debra Bowen following Anderson's opening keynote that he gave with an oft-repeated caveat that he may not have anything to say to a government audience.

Oh sure, there was the latent value of government's 'long tail' (his last book) or delivering services for 'free' (his next book). But he really needed only one story: A penetratingly painful tale that illustrated the public sector's half finished self service project that was once popularized as e-government before everything "e" became passe. Mr. Anderson it seems made the mistake of driving through Truckee, CA at above the posted speed with predictable results. The local police efficiently issued a speeding ticket. The difficulty came in paying for it.

The official Truckee site (www.townoftruckee.com) instructed him to call a toll free number. What followed was a reminder of why the Internet matters. There were self addressed, stamped envelopes to be mailed, a check book to be found, and a form letter that itself needed to be edited by hand. "I want to like my government," quipped Anderson, "but some of you aren't helping." During the conversation that followed, the author and editor suggested that government set aside its Web 2.0 ambitions in favor of getting the Web 1.0 basics right.