Wiki White House

President Barack Obama ran for office with the most wired presidential campaign in history, so it makes sense that his administration would carry all that technological savvy with it into Washington. But now that they’ve arrived, a major question facing the administration is whether the tools that worked so well during the campaign can also work in the nation’s capitol, where online activity is dictated by everything from regulations issued before the internet was born to inherent negative attitudes about data and information sharing from government bureaucrats.

Wired Magazine and the New America Foundation hosted “Wiki White House” at Google’s Washington, DC headquarters in January to discuss ways to move government toward greater openness via the Web and other tools. The panelists included Mindy Finn, Director of E-Strategy for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign; Sascha Meinrath, Research Director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation; Craigslist founder Craig Newmark; and Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation. The conversation was moderated by Nicholas Thompson, a Fellow at the New America Foundation and Senior Editor for Wired.

Not surprisingly, each speaker had very specific suggestions for the Obama administration, including the addition of a cabinet level CTO/CIO to advocate for sharing of government data with the public and foster change in attitudes among bureaucrats unfamiliar with or even scared of social media, data sharing, and technology in general. Newmark’s biggest suggestion? Making sure Obama got to keep his Blackberry.

Even before taking office, Obama’s transition team began looking at social media practices of government agencies. An audience member representing the Federal Web Managers Council shared that every agency got a list of questions from the incoming administration asking whether it allowed employees to access social media sites, and if not, why not. That same day, the Department of Housing and Urban Development unblocked access to Facebook.

Panelists also put responsibility on the public to get involved, and not leave the business of engaging in an online dialogue with the government to the loud angry few, or trolls as Newmark called them. “We need a new kind of civic engagement online. People need to become smart about one topic, and get involved online,” he said.

The discussion was about much more than who can use Facebook at work. There is also a world of data that the government uses to guide its work, and much of that is held in vast government agencies, when crowdsourcing research using such information could be a faster, cheaper, and more open solution.

Barely into his presidency, Obama is clearly moving to make good on the pledge of openness. According to the new version of the Presidential website, “WhiteHouse.gov will be a central part of President Obama’s pledge to make his the most transparent and accountable administration in American history.” On his first full day in office, President Obama issued guidelines for government agencies outlining their duty to err on the side of openness about their actions.

Meinrath put it bluntly: “The Obama administration has an unprecedented opportunity for disappointment,” precisely because expectations are so high and so much of the public has been energized and active during his campaign and inauguration. The key will be guiding the energy that the public devoted to getting Obama elected into opportunities that now allow them to support the administration using the same tools.

You can watch the full discussion here: