A friend and ex-colleague has just started in a new role building a team to run social media for the Obama administration. One of their most interesting initiatives is to ask the community to contribute questions to an online town hall in the US tomorrow. So far, 41,306 people have asked 42,126 questions and cast 1,556,109 votes on which questions Obama should answer. Nice work in a country where you almost have to bribe people to vote.
Wow. Has Obama succeeded in building an online political dialogue with the US electorate that will last beyond the current economic crisis? I hope so. We should all be watching and learning from what works and what doesn’t. This could be the world’s biggest e-government taking its first baby steps.
The Republican party must realise how so much of the Obama groundswell and fund-raising came from online engagement, so how will it be planning to respond in time for the next Federal election? Will they be able to mount an online community engagement of their own sooner than that? Is there room in one democracy for two standalone online community engagements or should the Obama administration welcome the Republican party into one single e-government community?
Meanwhile it will be fascinating to observe how the Obama administration’s social media team manage with a running start, building a platform using mostly off-the-shelf social media tools, how they cope with the sheer volume of interaction with the electorate while giving each citizen the feeling that their opinion is valued and treated with respect.
