A few months ago, right after the elections, I started working on a blog post opining on all the opportunities the Obama administration had using new technology for a more participatory government. I quickly shelved it, though, because it seemed like everyone else was doing the exact same thing. But now that we're in the first week of his presidency, it's kind of interesting to take a look and see what's actually in the works.

Stuff the government is doing.

1. Change.gov / Whitehouse.gov

   Just contrasting the design of the White House's website on the first day of Bush's first term with the first day of Obama's is telling. Granted, there's 8 years difference here as well, and the results from the Jan 19th vs Jan 20th weren't that far apart, but it's an awesome starting point that suggests the platform is going to be a priority moving forward. I can't wait to see how this evolves.

2. Change.gov open government

   Change.gov allowed people to ask questions, suggest ideas and vote on other people's suggestions. Sort of a Digg for Government. They've taken it down now, but I hope they bring it back in some form or another.

3. The whitehouse now has a blog.

   Aside from the fluff graphics at the top, the most discoverable piece of content is the White House blog.
   That's awesome, but could be better if we had more of a sense of who the bloggers were. I'm sure now it's a bunch of different people, but eventually, could there be a more defined "blog secretary" position? The press secretaries have always had a lot of personal presence in the past, seems even more appropriate in a medium that's been based on two-way communications from the start.

   Also, they should turn on comments. Sure, they'll get tons of spam / trolls / etc. but jeez, figure out a way. You're the White House, you have the resources. Comments and dialogue are what blogs are all about.

   Kinda goes without saying that it would be interesting if Obama was doing some of the blogging. But having worked for a company with a blog-happy CEO in the past, I'm pretty sure there's other things I'd rather the President be spending his time with. On the other hand, if he wanted to dust off that Twitter account...

4. White House has a YouTube page

   The weekly radio address has moved to YouTube, making it more discoverable, more linkable, and more discussable. This is a great move. I'm psyched to see they didn't try to get special treatment and turn the comments off. Even if they are filled with a bunch of troll-ish comments, having an open channel to the world attached directly to the executive communications is amazing. I hope they're looking at it as a first step. You can always refine ways of having the dialog, just getting it started is the important thing.

5. Politicians are starting to use social media for more than a re-election campaign

   Arnold Schwarzenegger

   Here's some more.
   http://twitter.com/politicians/friends

Stuff other people are doing:

1. New York Times Congress API
   The NY Times recently came out with an API to expose information about Congressional activties. There are similar aggregators of this kind of information, but none from such a high-visibility source. From their blog:

   The initial release exposes four types of data: a list of members for a given Congress and chamber, details of a specific roll-call vote, biographical and role information about a specific member of Congress, and a member’s most recent positions on roll-call votes.

   I get giddy when I think of all the wonderful combinations that could be made with something like this. For example, someone could quickly whip up a "twitter for congress" app that shows an at-a-glance view of your representatives, their votes, who they're statistically similar to, etc.

2. http://opengov.bluwiki.com/

   Open forum for people discussing how an open government should work, from a technical perspective. (I *think* the idea started from this comment thread on reddit.com, but I could be wrong about that.)
   http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7gidj/who_else_thinks_that_a...

   They talk about some interesting stuff. RSS feeds for everything, all legislation placed into a version-control system so all modifications are tracked and accessible.

   Unfortunately, there's not much there beyond the front page, and it doesn't look like there's much momentum behind the project.

I'm sure there's a lot more that I haven't found. It's exciting to see where things a heading.