People-Powered Government
by Matt Stoller, Mon Feb 12, 2007 at 03:02:06 AM EST
I'll be talking up transparency increasingly over the next few months because of a project I'm working on called The Open House Project. It's sponsored by the excellent Sunlight Foundation, and endorsed by Speaker Pelosi. This is an area which, for a variety of reasons, the conservative movement and the new progressive movement share an alignment of interest. It's Crashing the Gate and people-powered, only it's government instead of politics.
Here's what the Open House Project is doing, and how you can help.
The rules of the House of Representatives haven't really been reconsidered in any fundamental way since 1995. Let's take a couple of examples - member web sites and mass emails are still governed by franking rules that were largely designed to handle offline correspondence. As a result, it's difficult to integrate things like comments and youtube into a member or committee web page. It's even difficult to link from a member websites to outside sites. Imagine that - a representative of the people has a hard time engaging in the vibrant public conversation going on all over the internet because of traditions inherited from a time before the internet was a mass medium. Another example is that committee transcripts of hearings are required to be collected according to a rule established in 1946, but not required to be published. Since there was no internet in 1946, where would the House publish committee transcripts? This means that public committee hearings, which should be accessible to the millions on the web in a taggable and bloggable format, are hidden. Public officials should be salivating at the opportunity to distribute their content on the web, but they often don't know that a whole new world is out there.
In other words, since 1995, there's been a tremendous change in our communications environment, mostly notably the mass spread of the internet, the development of web 2.0, and the emergence of tens of millions of citizens into a newly energized public sphere. With the takeover of Congress by the Democrats, there's an opportunity to reconceptualize how the House and its members relate to the public. Speaker Pelosi knows this, and is encouraging the public to come up with ideas.
The Open House Project is meant to jumpstart a discussion on this topic. It's a working group made up of right-wingers, left-wingers, and nonpartisan open government advocates whose goal is to take suggestions, work through them, and come up with recommendations for Speaker Pelosi and other members of Congress on what is possible and, most importantly, easyto get done with the way that the House currently operates.
The operating principle of the Open House Project is known as Paving the Cowpaths. We're trying to find the least intrusive ways to open up the House, the low-hanging fruit where the internet and Congressional procedures come together. The potential of this project lies in the possibility of experts and citizens from all fields to come together and identify areas where Congress can open up and allows all of us to have more information and access.
If you'd like to help, come to the Open House Project and add a suggestion. If you're a Hill staffer, you can suggest changes confidentially here. Our Google group is here.
I'm going to be writing updates on the Open House Project. We're already discovering how government functions and the different hurdles and opportunities in creating a very webby people-powered government.
Disclosure: I consult for the Sunlight Foundation on this project.
Tags: open house project (all tags)
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