Political Thoughts Archive

What is a guy to say when his own President suggests that children take responsibility for their own lives and future? I mean, REALLY! - take responsibility? Where are we living now - in America? Pluh-leeze!

You can read the entire speech here (thanks Jesse!). A few excerpts:

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

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I have been watching the coverage of the passing of “The Lion” and thought of the two times I met the man.

Back in 2003, where I had joined the Kerry Campaign, we were in the DC office working away - and with the Dean Campaign having waves of good press and momentum, our office felt somewhat like a dead man walking. When JK brought on Mary-Beth Cahill, the office had an almost “game-over” feel - and suddenly, we were brought into the main conference room for a “meeting”.

As we were milling about in the room, suddenly - this enormous personality walked in with two dogs. I had never met Senator Kennedy before - and from television and other appearances, I assumed him to be a tall man like JK. This man was jovial, enthusiastic and here to raise our spirits.

He gave one of his patented “Kennedy speeches” which was designed to lift our spirits. And, truthfully, it did.

It is a shame to see a man with his legacy of service pass - but it is an honor to his memory that we commit to his work and carry on - beyond the short time he was with us on the earth.

A friend of mine from Genius Rocket sent this to me this morning, and I thought it was quite funny in its informative sarcasm:

Reading the articles these past 12 hours and wanted to say, I have to agree with many of the people’s opinions extolling the selection of Aneesh Chopra as the new CTO of the Obama Administration including Tim O’Reilly and Alan Davidson. To quote Tim:

“Aneesh Chopra is a rock star. He’s a brilliant, thoughtful change-maker. He knows technology, he knows government, and he knows how to put the two together to solve real problems. We couldn’t do better. “

I, myself, have also been knee-deep in various Government 2.0 projects in recent weeks, and must admit in the wisdom of having someone who understands both technology and government bureaucracy.

In one of my engagements, I met with a number of CIOs, deputy CIOs and other members of the technology community of a large Northeastern state, and I was encouraged by the restrained frustration they felt in wanting to do new things, but were concerned about the bureaucracy that they all felt might hamstring their progress. My most poignant story came from one of the project managers who described their outreach program for helping citizens with insurance issues, and when we discussed the idea of “crowdsourcing“, he rightly introduced me to the legal issues that a state government might face with information coming from a government source that may or may not be correct.

In the Government 2.0 Camp event in DC last month, there were some incredible people from the IRS that have really stretched the horizon working on building a community that will expand the reach of services, but always have to be cognizant of the constraints of the law and mission of their organization.

And at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this month, Andrew McLaughlin described the issues that the government faces when attempting to address the need for transparency while maintaining the safety and security of the nation.

In all cases, the need for an understanding of the bureaucratic lay-of-the-land is paramount in the largest business organization on the planet. While he may not have a technical background (his degrees are in public policy), I wish him nothing but the best in resolving the many issues he has to face.

Chief Performance Officer

One thing that may be overlooked in most stories is the announcement of Jeffrey Zients as Chief Performance Officer - a role which I have become intimately familiar with over the past five years. When you place a CIO with a CTO, the CIO’s role is often to deal with the budgetary issues of the organization, changing policies that govern the business practices within an organization. The CTO (in a startup) usually focuses on new technologies and is supposed to be familiar with the issues that can make or break a product direction - in the case of government, the goal is to understand the issues that will shape the public policies that can affect the infrastructure of the nation as a whole.

But the role of CTO and CIO rarely has any performance metrics on them - aside from revenue and costs - how to make money (grow the GDP) or to save money (reduce the costs within the organization). In the case of a CIO of such a large organization, someone must take the lead in understanding other secondary and tertiary benefits for optimization in the long run. TO this, I am happy to see someone had the forethought to consider this role.

Best of luck to the team.

This morning I watched This Week on ABC as I always do on Sunday mornings, and while I was getting annoyed at the standard back-and-forth about the Repug point-of-view (”We love tax cuts, let the free market sort it out. And Dems never saw a program they did not like.”) and the Democratic point-of-view (”Tax cuts do not fund roads. Tax cuts do not put firemen to work. Tax cuts are bad.”), what really blew my mind was what seemed to be a complete lack of understanding of what the world of technology actually is. And then, Rep. Barney Frank did something that blew my mind, as if transparency being requested was going to hurt the bedrock of democracy.

In the last few minutes of the segment, Eric begins to discuss placing information about the spending “on websites” - and that, if the government was able to track where the money was spent, that the arguments of who was right or wrong would be clarified by seeing what happens with the spending.

In the midst of Eric making this remark, Sen. Jim DeMint, [R-SC] says “You’re assuming we can track this money…” and Rep. Barney Frank [D-MA] suggested that Congress was going to put all of the spending on the web (I assume by the fact that the HR-1 requires these actions to be visible through their Transparency provisions at www.recovery.gov and the Inspector General appointment). But what stuck in my craw was this exchange (transcript from ABCNews):
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Sorry, but after posting my video - friends pointed out lots of articles on how “antiquated” the White House tech was when moving in.

• Washington Post - Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
• Gawker - Technology’s White House of Horrors
• ZDNet - Obama staff: White House in tech ‘dark ages’
• MacWorld - Obama administration frustrated by old White House PCs
• LA Times - Obama staff has low-tech move-in day at White House

Sorry folks - but if you think the Obama Administration had no clue about the tech/software issues before they walked in - you must not be one of those “tech-savvy” people Owen Thomas talks about who live within “the Manhattan media bubble and Silicon Valley’s startup cube farms”.

Whenever I walk into an office - one of the first things I notice are the computers and the software that is on the screens. It is very easy to notice if someone is on a Mac or a PC - and you can see whether or not the bullpen is running LCDs versus CRTs.

Sorry - but the tempest is not worthy of the sniggering - the truth is, the Obama Admin is going to renovate the technology and the solutions within. Third day started today - it takes corporates (and startups) a little time to allocate budget and get systems/solutions installed.

Give the White House a break. If I walked into a company with tools designed for the 20th Century and was trying to connect to people within the 21st networked Century, I might need a little time to rearchitect the solutions.

[EDITOR NOTE: I have both PCs (IBM and Dell) and Macs (Powerbook G4 and a new MacBook Pro) and bang on in Linux (Red Hat and Ubuntu)]

Image via Futurenow/Robert Gorell

On the 13th of January, I was asked to speak with CNN International about how could the Obama Administration effectively use technology to increase transparency. The video is from CNNi: World News Europe with Becky Anderson.

Great quote sent to me from Yan Ivnitskiy:

“Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

I love this particular paragraph - reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena“:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

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As I am banging away at another project, I overheard some people saying one of those phrases you always here when people are talking about “new” technologies (at the Social Media Monday Meetup):

You know, all of us here are twittering - but my Mom is not twittering, and mainstream are not twittering. We can not assume that everyone will be twittering any time soon, but it will happen.

What I love about this statement is at the end of the 2004 Election, when I was taking some downtime - I remember listening to everyone in the media industry discussing the new technologies of “podcasting” and “RSS feeds” - something that had been practiced in the 2004 Election.

Four years later, the “podcasting” meme has been subsumed with YouTube (has anyone looked/listened to any audio podcasts in a while?) and RSS feeds are still a technical term for adding blogs and other websites to your feed reader, personalized Yahoo! or google page (or Netvibes/PageFlakes). But, who would have discussed twitter and “tweeting” - even though the idea of texting was still a small phenomena done by the Europeans and Japanese.

Today, the threads of what may happen are being discussed in various arenas - check out these concepts:

• Mix and Mashable Services - with Open APIs Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, OpenID and such - along with the Data Portability Project and the effort of groups like the Sunlight Foundation - along with simple development platforms like Ruby on Rails and/or django - coupled with cloud computing - what apps will be available?
• Making Voice/Video Easier - I thought the VoIP apps would be a bigger part of this years Presidential Election, but I am betting that with the increasing commodization of minutes and bits (think of all of the VoIP and packetized services), a platform in the frame of ROR/django - then things might blow up (see RecordMyCalls and Jaxtr).
• Community Organizing 3.0 - no one ever discusses the original online communities any more (e.g. prodigy, Compuserve or dial-up BBSes) which showed people how to handle chat and conversing online as a common-interest community. Even with forums, USENet, email lists, chat services (like AOL) - the most we learned was free-for-all or heavily moderated (one gatekeeper). With the expansion of the “social networks” into the greater population (I can not claim friendster or Orkut was effective in 2004 since the population was quite small in comparison to today), and with the population who has grown up with MySpace and Facebook - Community has jumped to 2.0 with the reduction of a “small” virtual space (like a forum) and has become the grand square with gossip, news, and other micro-events that are available for people to filter and deep-dive if they desire. Community 3.0 - this is a challenging concept, where technology and the crowd’s energy is captured and used for additional social benefits - meeting some need that we do not have already solved. I beleive the gradient to Community 3.0 be a combination of Data Portability, APIs and our natural curiosity of others - combined with the large, cheap computing and storage resources.

This will be another interesting ride - seeing how society and circumstances around us will impact the engagement of people to create the next chapter of Politics.

This morning, I woke to a plethora of emails suggesting that I was two Administrations behind - especially after noting that Slate had already drawn some comparisons to the Presidential Election of 2006 and the Obama Election.

So, to follow up on yesterday’s post, here is the roster of the Obama Administration compared to the Santos Administration. Again, all photos of Obama Staffers are from Nadav Kander and The West Wing (TWW) photos are either from the web in general or from IMDB.

Click more to see the photo comparisons.
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