by Paul Johnston
London-based ex-civil servant now working for Cisco as head of the European public sector team within IBSG, Cisco's global strategic consulting arm. Launched and helped shape this site after wri... More about Paul Johnston
Who should run the U.S.?
Here's another interesting one from the techno-democrats - I don't mean President Obama's team but rather those who like the idea of marrying technology and direct democracy. This time it is in the US and it looks like a good platform - http://whitehouse2.org/ I still think, however, that it is going in the wrong direction - the point is to transform our democracy, not to pretend it does not already exist! In my view the value of this kind of thing is that it increases pressure on governments to do vastly more of this themselves which would be great. One of the things that struck me about the site was how some proposals seemed to have almost overwhelming support - are desparate-for-votes politicians really turning a blind eye on great proposals that everyone wants? Or could it be that the devil lurkes in some of the detail?
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Comments
"the point is to transform our democracy, not to pretend it does not already exist!"
Could you elaborate on that a bit more? I sure hope it doesn't pretend the democracy doesn't already exist! I believe the big challenge this year is in getting people within government, elected officials, their staffers, and other government employees involved in the White House 2 style of transparent governance. There are actual laws and regulations preventing them from engaging at this point, although this will likely change in the coming months under Obama's leadership.
Anyway, definitely want to hear your ideas, and I'm working hard to figure this out.
Jim Gilliam
founder, White House 2
posted about 1 year ago
Jim - my apologies for letting my rhetoric run away with me and for going over the top! I think you have created a great site and I do think it will contribute towards transparent governance, which like you I really support. I also think you have managed to generate an impressive level of intelligent debate on your site. I suppose what I was reacting against the vague implication that if only democracy was run directly by thousands of people on the internet, all our problems would be over. I think this dramatically underestimates the genuine difficulty and complexity of the decisions that policymakers face.
Overall, I think it is probably a good thing that decisions get made through a complex, drawn-out process involving the media, the political parties, lobby groups, the apparatus of government and the courts. For me, policymaking is about society negotiating its way to a (temporary) solution rather than simply being a matter of making the right (or most popular) decision. So I do not think it would be better if we could cut through all of that with a simple form of internet-based direct democracy. I do, however, strongly support transparent governance (and citizen empowerment), but I see that as being about making the whole democratic mess we have more transparent and easier for citizens to influence rather than getting rid of it and starting again. (And again I am not really suggesting that this is what you want to do.)
I suspect there may not be a huge amount of difference between us. It is possible (or even likely) that we disagree on exactly where to draw the balance between direct and representative democracy, but I think that this disagreement will be largely academic until we have almost reached utopia and even with President Obama I fear that is still some way off. In the meantime hats off to your site which I certainly hope will encourage people to get involved and encourage elected representatives and public sector organisations to open up their decision-making and make it easier for citizens to get involved.
updated about 1 year ago, posted about 1 year ago
We actually totally agree. I don't for a second think that White House 2 should replace the government or the media. That seems obvious, I'd have to be nuts to think the media would shut down and everyone in Washington would stay home in their PJ's clicking endorse or oppose.
What I want is for the policy makers to get involved with White House 2 and interact with citizens. Some of the best innovation has happened when non-domain experts got involved. People who are very smart in say radio engineering, who get cancer, and then figure out a radically new way to administer chemotherapy.
I want to connect these people to government and leverage that potential. And I want the media to be able to report on what the people actually want, rather than what they think they want. That's why I'm so focused on the ranking and the list aspect of the priorities. A bunch of industries are based around lists - Hollywood has the box office charts, TV has the Nielsens, college basketball has the AP/USA Today polls, etc. I'm trying to make that definitive list for politics that everyone can obsess about and report on.
I'm very interested in critical feedback, because I'm really trying to figure out how to make this work best. I follow your blog, so please post your thoughts and ideas, or you can email me, my address is on the site.
posted about 1 year ago
As Cisco colleague Peter Gruettern put it in another thread on this site, technology+compassion+human wisdom. It's a compelling cocktail.
I think we're all agreed that a kind of simplistic techno-democracy is not what we're seeking. Rather, the consistent thread is about the need to make 'the system' more responsive, although we're not always clear about whether that means politics, the bureaucracy, the regulatory process or some combination of al of those, and more.
I think we should be focusing on three things. One is improving the quality of conversations that go into the business of making policy and taking the decisions that affect our lives in common. Jim has a great line in his last comment - "some of the best innovation has happened when non-domain experts got involved." Exactly. The second is about improving the quality and accountability of the decisions themselves. And the third is the toughest but the most interesting piece - to explore whether any of these new developments offer an oportunity to 'do' at least some parts of government or governing differently.
The first two are really about making the current set up work better. The third is about seeing if there is a better set up, at least in some areas. Governments not doing some things they used to do, governments doing some things they don't do...oportunities to think again about the way we've set things up.
The final observation I'd make which always underlines these debates about 'e-democracy' as we used to call it is the question of judgement. The inescapable point is that good policy is often a question of doing things that nobody wants and which create short-term hardship, disruption and even hardship (think introduction of a GST or VAT or even a decision to go to war...). Responsiveness and engagement are all very well, and they are very necessary, but at the end of the day good policy is about "society negotiating its way to a (temporary) solution rather than simply being a matter of making the right (or most popular) decision" as Paul puts it. In the end, it's about judgement and discernment which is sometimes going to look very unresponsive or even contrary, when judged against the standards of what people want or the prevailing mood of a community.
posted about 1 year ago