While the Obama Transition Team has made it a priority to provide constituents with the ability to offer their ideas and feedback on issues that are important to them, this communication is usually only one way, and certainly doesn't provide individuals with the opportunity to seek feedback and input from other interested parties.
Obviously, the Obama Transition Team hasn't enabled these features because it would be a nightmare to manage.
However, these voids create opportunities for creative people to roll out their own projects that include features that simply wouldn't work for the transition team website.
In particular, ObamaCTO.org has done an awesome job creating a forum for Americans interested in technology policy and the prospect of the first White House Chief Technology Officer.
This site was created by FrontSeat.org, and is powered by UserVoice, a robust, easily-integration program that allows users to vote on submissions.
For this site, each submission is a user-generated suggestion for which tech policy issue should be a priority for the Obama Administration. As of 11/21/2008, the five suggestions with the highest vote totals are as follows:
- Ensure the Internet is widely accessible & network neutral
- Ensure our privacy and repeal the patriot act.
- Repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA)
- Open Government Data (APIs, XML, RSS)
- Kick Start Research and Innovation in Energy
The most popular (no surprise, net neutrality) has already received over 11,000 votes. Since UserVoice enables you to allocate up to three votes per item, this means that at least 3,666 individuals have voted on this item since it was posted nine days ago.
Will the Obama Administration visit this site? Who knows. But at minimum, it provides an opportunity to at least try and have your voice heard regarding tech policy.
