Recently in Demography Category

There is not a public official alive that likes to be at the bottom of a 50-state ranking, especially on close-to-home issues such as education, poverty and economic development.  Even seemingly arcane rankings of readiness for the Year 2000 date field roll-over or maturity in delivering government services online can raise the ire of people associated with states in the back half of the pack.

What is worse is when there is really no honor in being in the top half of states on measures of open records laws; whistle blower laws; campaign finance laws; open meetings laws; and conflict of interest laws.  That is the story that quickly emerges in reviewing state standings on the newly released second edition BGA-Alper Integrity Index that gauges the relative strength of state laws on transparency, accountability and limits in government.  The index was created by a non-partisan waste-busting watchdog group -- the Better Government Association -- that has been holding public agencies to account since 1923.

The serial, templatized press releases for the top ranked states indicate that they are to be congratulated for their ranking, even though the best of them only merits a letter grade of "D" on the BGA assessment.  It is not a terrific report card, with many states performing well on one or more measures and sucking channel water on the others.  Here are the rankings in order (with imbedded links to the cookie cutter press releases on each state):

1. New Jersey
2. Rhode Island
3. Hawaii
4. Washington
5. Louisiana
6. Nebraska
7. Texas
8. Arkansas
9. Maryland
10. Colorado
11. Arizona
12. Illinois
13. West Virginia
14. Connecticut
15. Minnesota
16. Florida
17. Wisconsin
18. Kansas
19. California
20. Massachusetts
21. Oklahoma
22. Missouri
23. North Carolina
24. Michigan
25. Pennsylvania
26. Iowa
27. Georgia
28. Kentucky
29. Indiana
30. South Carolina
31. Ohio
32. Oregon
33. Maine
34. North Dakota
35. Nevada
36. New York
37. Utah
38. Virginia
39. Mississippi
40. Alaska
41. New Hampshire
42. New Mexico
43. Delaware
44. Idaho
45. Wyoming
46. Montana
47. Tennessee
48. Alabama
49. Vermont
50. South Dakota

According to the BGA rankings, South Dakota owes its last place finish to earning only a third of the available points -- ranking 49th in open records laws, 46th in both whistle blower and open meetings laws, 34th in campaign finance laws and 27th in conflict of interest laws.  BGA Executive Director Jay Stewart concludes, "If you look at the percentage score, South Dakota received 32%, the equivalent of a F letter grade, hardly a cause for celebration."

In defense of South Dakota particularly, and all states to a certain degree, the BGA index lacks context or more than a single dimension.  Sure it looks at five areas of law but it gives no consideration to how states of performing under those laws.  Clearly, BGA sees South Dakota's open records laws as the second weakest in the land but the state's Open SD portal is apparently much better than the underlying law, providing a single spot on the Internet where South Dakotans can see how their governments are spending money.

If there is to be a third edition of the BGA-Alper Integrity Index, it would be fascinating to see an assessment of how well - or how poorly - states are executing against the underlying laws.

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.