Obama’s CIO Proclaims Era of “ A New Digital Public Square”
Aneesh Chopra was named this week as the nominee for “Chief Technology Officer” (CTO) of the United States, according to reports in the Wall St. Journal and other news wires, following the previous appointment of Vivek Kundra as CIO. In a radio address on Saturday, President Obama said: “Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities — from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure.” The Journal article goes on to say that the CTO position will not be Cabinet level, but listed as “associate director for technology under the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy office.”1
Aneesh Chopra is currently serving in the Cabinet in the state of Virginia as Secretary of Technology, where he also worked with Vivek Kundra, who was named the US “Chief Information Officer” (CIO) earlier this year. According to Wikipedia, Kundra was “Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology in Governor Tim Kaine‘s cabinet”.2
What in real terms either will do in their newly appointed positions is unclear, but Obama described the broad goals of the positions as: ““Aneesh and Jeffrey [Zients, the newly appointed chief innovation officer] will work closely with our chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, who is responsible for setting technology policy across the government, and using technology to improve security, ensure transparency, and lower costs.”
Many people are hoping Obama will use the social networking tools that empowered his campaign in a manner that will increase openness, communication, real time decision making, and policy creation in Washington. Kundra has received a lot of attention and credit for his work in building e-governance and digital democracy tools on cloud platforms. He has recently released a statement on his website, “Apps for Democracy” that is titled “Building the Digital Public Square” .
“In ancient Athens—the model for the democracy envisioned by the framers of our Constitution–citizens met, face to face, in the agora—the public square–to conduct business, debate civic issues, and drive the decisions of government. Gone are the days of daily meetings at the agora. Today, citizens know government as red tape, long lines, and cold, distant bureaucracies. The reins of government have slipped from ‘we the people’ to inaccessible government officials.”
“The District of Columbia, however, is at the forefront of a new era of governance, one in which technological advances now allow people from around the world unfettered access to their government. Through these advances, constituents can hold their government accountable from the privacy of their own homes. The District of Columbia is bringing people closer to government through collaborative technologies like wikis, data feeds, videos and dashboards. We’re throwing open DC’s warehouse of public data so that everyone—constituents, policymakers, and businesses—can meet in a new digital public square.”3
Kundra has done some very interesting things as CTO of the District of Columbia, working in public and private partnerships to leverage government database information to provide services to the community. For example:
“The Knight Foundation, a non-governmental organization, transformed District data into an online community news forum at EveryBlock.com. Here, visitors can plug in their zip code and find and exchange information about everything of interest in their neighborhoods—local businesses and reviews, real estate listings, crimes, road construction, city service requests, community meetings, and more. A private entrepreneur has assembled law enforcement data from the District and across the country into an online database, called ‘CrimeReports.’ Visitors can get crime data and maps by address, zip, code, and type of crime and sign up for personalized crime alerts.”
The summary suggests that Obama is preparing to implement these changes at the Federal level:
“These are truly grassroots ventures. The democratization of government data has revealed an enormous appetite for civic participation. We are ushering in a new age of participatory democracy, one in which citizens are in the driver’s seat when they interact with government. Accessibility has never been greater, and this is just the beginning…”
“Today, building the digital public square is not just appealing, it is imperative for every government, whether municipal, state, or national. We live in the information age. Nearly 1.5 billion people have access to the Internet—and they are using it in every way. There is a worldwide digital market for goods and services. For example, Amazon.com, founded just over a decade ago, now handles about 56 million transactions a year, and Ebay, founded at about the same time, now has over 275 million registered users. There are a growing number of global social and artistic networks. Facebook alone, founded just four years ago, now has over 60 million active users, and YouTube, a year younger, hosted 3 billion video views in a single month this year. We responded to these new communications trends by expanding DC Government’s presence onto Facebook and posting job listings and bid solicitations on YouTube under the ‘DC Government’ channel. Leveraging consumer technology in this way allows us to reach wider audiences at no cost to taxpayers.”4
- http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/18/tech-industry-cheers-as-obama-taps-aneesh-chopra-for-cto/?mod=yahoo_hs [↩]
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra [↩]
- http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/building-the-digital-public-square/ [↩]
- Read the whole article at: http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/building-the-digital-public-square/ [↩]
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RT @webdevnews:New blog post: Obama’s CIO Proclaims Era of “ A New Digital Public Square” http://tinyurl.com/ct42wc #alia