New White House Blog Published First Post
Great post on Politics 2.0 by Bill Ives
I have written about the Obama campaign a number of times see for example, Update from the Obama Answer Center – Web 2.0 and US Elections. I wrote in this post, “that it will be great if the US government adopts these practices to better connect with citizens. Perhaps lessons learned during the campaign on such issues as effective web practices to increase citizen engagement can be adopted by the government. There is great potential here. I think it is demonstrates some of the ways the new web can be used to increase engagement and the innovation evidenced by this campaign.”
I was pleased to see that the first blog post, Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov, went up on the new White blog even before the official oath of office and there is a Director of New Media for the White House, Macon Phillips who wrote the post. He said that the initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:
“Communication — This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates…
Transparency — The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning…
Participation — Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that…” There is a link to a form for providing input.
Macon said that they would put up the video and the full text of President Obama’s Inaugural Address. I look forward to hearing more. Blogs have come a long way since 2004. I hope that this is the case for our government in both parties as some of the principles of the new web of transparency and participation appear to be adopted by the new administration. See Rob Patterson’s post for more, Post-inauguration thoughts about social media. He said, “The Obama administration is going to do for social media what Teddy Roosevelt did for the Press and FDR did for radio but more so.” It will be interesting to see what happens.
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