Dragging Congress to 2.0

A few times this year bloggers got the wild hair to start talking about the potential we have to bring more people to our government by making Congress more 2.0 friendly.

It started way back in March, when Matt Stoller at Open Left went off about Franking Rules. Franking Rules are Congressional regulations that limit what members of Congress can do in outreach to their constituents. Sometimes too much outreach from a Congressional office can be seen as "campaigning" and the Franking Rules protect taxpayers from essentially paying for campaigns and creating an unfair advantage for incumbents. Since I heard about them, I've not stopped thinking about their implications. Well, in reality I had been thinking about it before that back when Obama's campaign announced that it would make the Chief Technology Officer a cabinet position.

The problem in Congress is that our Franking Rules were last updated back in 1998 before google, before mapquest and google earth, before DailyKos, before an age when people actually had access to information and their Representatives literally at their fingertips. Thus they are out of step with where we are today, not to mention the potential for the future, and it continues to grow by leaps and bounds too quickly.

While I’ll agree that Congress's use of technology is better than they it used to be, there is still a huge lack of availability for our members to use technology to create cheaper, more connected, and more transparent relationships with their constituents.

Franking Rules state that unless you're in the leadership you can't use anything outside the House/Senate firewall. So, YouTube is technically not ok (even though most members are pushing the envelope), no Facebook, or Myspace... nothing…

The great potential of these tools was the issue de jour on NPR's Talk of the Nation with Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics last week.

Legislative wiki pages like PublicMarkup where members can post their bills and have people comment about them and what they would change, e-townhalls on Facebook, live blogging on myspace, creating what is basically a virtual townhall the way Second Life does but within the "public spaces" Danah Boyd talks about or what Sen. Dick Durbin is working on. All with the end goal of taking the government to where people are online, and not forcing constituents to come to a Congressional website and submit a form letter that is replied to in a hard copy letter form 3 months later.

Tapscott addresses the impact of citizen-powered democracy empowered by new technology, resembling the people powered campaign we see with Barack Obama. Carrying that wave into government can give us the collective power we deserve, and further give young people potential to write and advocate for legislation all in the online spaces they’ve become comfortable with.

In his new book Growing up Digital Tapscott discusses the inappropriate nature of the way we've operated for the past several years with these kinds of politics, campaigns, and policies. He alludes that it may be a factor in the jump we’ve see with young people participating more as the net grows and more campaigns begin to use it. Ease of access has bridged the gap between the cynical and the idealistic to impact actual change.

"Kids want to interact, they want to engage, they want to be involved. They don't want to be passive recipients like their boomer parents were. Watching television for 24 hours a week," Tapscott says.

A drawback he says we face is the idea of the electronic mob. Don’t you hate where there is potential to change the world with the click of a mouse?

Tapscott continues to talk about the amazing work that both Canada and Great Brittan are doing to utilize these new technologies. In Canada they have a three day conversation called Canada Jams all on the web where people talk about the issues that matter to them. In the UK, the Prime Minister has started using Twitter as a means of communicating to people about what is going on. This combined with the Downing Street Flickr Page and you’ve got unprecedented access to what’s going on with your leaders. In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick has one of the most innovative campaign websites that captures where I hope we’re headed. It’s called a Community Web Site, where people can connect with each other to enact change through online collective action. Unfortunately, Gov. Patrick pays to run this “community service” out of his own campaign warchest, because … again, our laws are out of step with technological development.

The problem is that most Hill staffers don't know what the Internet is and the Franking Rules prevent those who do from using it properly. I kid, but only partly. A whole generation of young people run the daily offices of our members of Congress. Young people under 35 are the ones who are the staffers on the Hill, in Governor’s offices, running campaigns, and they sure have their own facebook pages. Then how is it possible that we aren’t seeing member’s use this same technology to do outreach? How many of them think about doing constituent services through it? And the ones that do, how many really have enough time to take on that kind of workload? One member went so far as to ask how they couldn’t sell that to tax payers, someone who just answers emails??

Take the concept beyond just transparency and connectivity and you have the very idea of 2.0 itself. Seeing a fried who is a Congressional Campaign Manager scratch his head when I was trying to explain that blogging isn’t about exposure but about conversations was step one for me. The 2.0 concept goes beyond design and marketing. In my mind, and in Here Comes Everybody, it is the idea of moving beyond the passive media to share, collaborate, and eventually collective act together on issues or for causes.

In the end, the barriers seem to be Franking Rules, but at the same time, there is a real disconnect between explaining to older more senior members, or less informed members, why these tools are useful. I know there is a huge movement a foot to bring these laws up to date. And I know there is a considerable amount of outreach from The Speaker’s office done through her new media team. But I think sitting members down and beating it into their heads that this not only needs to be utilized more, it needs to be a focal point of connecting citizens to their government and government to its citizens. Everyone should have a Deval Patrick Community Web Site that can engage constituents in a deeper more meaningful way.

What are some other ways we could use technology to open government, or create collective actions?

Also at Kos, please recommend