gov 2.0

Shameless self promotion - one of the candidates I'm working with spoke marvelously about the ability for government to contribute to young people.

Lt. Governor Jari Askins remarked at the Gov 2.0 Conference in Oklahoma City that its interesting that most schools tell students to turn off their cell phones and smart phones and that we still teach them with a text book. She says that with a 2.0 government we can go beyond the text book and show them what government is like using the websites they hang out on or by making government more accessible online.

You can see the rest of the speech here.

• After helping to orchestrate a DDOS attack on Iranian state media, Matthew Burton ponders the ethics of weaponizing the social web.
• Peter Levine announces that on July 24th, Tufts University will sponsor a conference to assess the Obama Administration's civic engagement agenda.
• Bozeman, MT is now requiring that city job applicants submit their social network usernames and logins to comply with background checks. WTF?
• We all know young people vote. WireTap wonders if they can advocate and mobilize?
• The White House wants your ideas on how technology can increase participation in government.
• Has the Iranian elections opened a generational fissure?
• Win or lose, Bloomberg News wonders if the Iranian protests are the beginnings of a movement that will outlast Ahmadinejad.
• US News thinks Republicans still have a chance with the youth vote.
• Writing for The Hill, Markos Moulitsas sees an "empathy gap" standing in the way of that chance.

My computer seems to be cooperating once more. Let's hope it holds up. Here's a quick dump of all the tabs that have collected in my browser since I left for Berkeley (the panel was great, btw - you can read a rundown here. We will have video in a week or two):

• In Newsweek, Ben Adler looks at Obama's first 100 days and finds that the President has kept many promises to young voters.
• At Tech President, Micah Sifry posts Putting Citizens First - a white paper on transforming online government.
• Over at Tech Pres sister blog PDF, Sifry has an interview with Vivek Kundra and Macon Phillips on changing online government.
• Steven Benen says that the Obama Admin wants to accomplish student lending reform via the reconciliation process.
• Matt Bai doesn't understand the value of Twitter.
• Jose Antonio Vargas writes at The Washington Post that the online lessons - and staffers - of the Obama campaign are creeping into some of this year's down-ballot campaigns.
• Nancy Scola notes that the White House videos are starting to attract more eyeballs.
• NTEN has a new report on how nonprofits are using social media.