POTUS Now “Open for Questions”
Editor’s note: Please welcome our newest contributor, Nick Troiano. Nick attends Georgetown University in Washington.
A “new experiment” on WhiteHouse.gov called Open for Questions launched Tuesday evening. The new feature allows citizens to ask the President questions, ranked and moderated by an online community. A press release stated that this platform was “the President’s latest effort to … give Americans from around the country a direct line to the Administration.”
If this sounds familiar, it is. During the transition, the Obama team employed at least two different services on its transition Web site, Google Moderator being the more familiar, to gather feedback from the public in a community forum. When the second round of a similarly formatted “Open for Questions” closed on Change.gov in early January, over 100,000 people submitted over 70,000 questions and cast close to 5,000,000 votes.
The system is simple to use. Users create an account with limited personal information that remains hidden in the forum and, without any additional e-mail verification steps, are permitted to ask questions and rank others. Under each subtopic, users are prompted with a featured question to vote on. Each question has a “yes” and “no” record, with the most poplar floating to the top of each category.
“So, America what do you want to know about the economy?” asked President Obama in an introductory YouTube video. “Just go to WhiteHouse.gov and ask me.”
The current “round” on the economy will last from March 24-26. The President will then answer the most popular questions in an “online town hall” that will be streamed on the site. It is unclear how often these will occur.
Unlike similar exercises in online citizen participation (such as on Change.org), no unique URL is provided for each question. This mitigates concerns of mob-rule in the forum. But it does not eliminate it. Take for instance how on Change.gov, relatively fringe issues such as marijuana legalization were included in the top five rated ideas. In addition, questions of practicality (how do tens of millions of people use such a simple system effectively?) and of representation (what about those who do not have access to the Internet) will persist. As for the legitimacy of this experiment, that will depend on how exactly the administration goes about selecting questions, as no specific criteria exists.
In sum, this sort of online deliberation and discussion is one of the greatest promises of Web 2.0 and social government. The President continues a historic trend of using technology to go straight to the people. Open for Questions, if utilized regularly and fairly, will prove to be a giant step forward for a White House that has, to date, fell short of online expectations.
