I just learned from Leverage’s Mike Walsh that Obama will receive a briefing from the top voted ideas that were submitted by the American people each evening see Change.Force.com (a play off . This method of keeping in direct communication by ‘listening’ to the citizens leans on voting style technology similar to Dell’s Ideastorm. My colleague Josh Bernoff will be pleased, as he requested this feature a few months ago.
You’ll need to login and register (I suspect they can use IP addresses to determine point of origin within US) in order to confirm location but that’s not completely accurate. How can Obama extend this further? Make a similar site for all other nations to submit ideas for foreign policy. This doesn’t come without challenges of course, the system could be gamed, and there’s no promise he’ll make changes based on our feedback, we’ll see.
I talk to the executives of the world’s largest brands, after Obama won the election, I get a lot less push back –it’s rare I have to have discussions now about the validity of social technologies. Of course, social technologies still come with risk, but for some reason this feels really good, we’re all a bit more connected and the internet helps to bring us together.
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You can see the top submitted ideas, the first one is “Ending Marijuana Prohibition” with 81080 Points, 2719 comments, and submitted on Jan 12th, which is the earliest submittal date I can find. I just logged in and voted for ending of torture and request for bullet trains, each vote cast 10 points. If you know who the vendor is who is doing this work (platform and development) please let me know, I checked source code but didn’t see anything real obvious (Updates: a few that I know have confirmed this is Sales Force, in the comments.)
I love and support the idea-generating and voting approaches, it is a good crowd pleaser. We have a similar program at work, where it hits the wall is on the execution of top ideas. I am curious as to the transparancy around execution of the backend of this program. How will they prioritize and fund any of these ideas. It seems they need another level of crowdsourcing, that internal to the government, maybe have the house, senate, or committees further evaluate somehow?
On the surface this looks great, however, putting something up and then actually moving forward with specific actions that make a positive long term difference in the lives of ALL Americans are two different things.
Congress received calls on the original bailout from the American people at a 400 to 1 ration AGAINST it. Yet it was passed. The 2nd half of the bailout, a full 61% of the American people are against it, yet the Administration and Congress are going to release it.
So let’s take a look at the top 5 most popular:
1. Ending Marijuana Prohibition – OK the top vote getter? Seems the people voting on this are living in a different reality. This is the most pressing thing on the minds of Americans?
2. Commit to becoming the Greenest country in the world – we now know that man made global warming is a complete hoax and that billions of dollars were and are being wasted to promote something man cannot do – change the climate. We can be good conservationists and stewards but we can’t change the climate.
3. Stop using federal resources to undermine states’ medicinal marijuana laws. Another top one concerning marijuana? See my response on #1
4. Bullet Trains & Light Rail. I would actually like to see this but not with the tremendous wasteful spending that has always accompanied these projects. I lived in Houston when they started their light rail project – now 7+years later and traffic has gotten worse, more cars on the freeways. Now I live in Phoenix and we just got done spending $1.4 billion on 20 miles of light rail that has a MAX speed of 28mph. The waiting stations cost 650,000 a piece – the ones where you just sit at.
5. An end to the government sponsored abstinence education to be replaced by an introduction of age appropriate sex education – So we want the government to keep on sponsoring abortions of unborn human beings, to keep on funding Planned Parenthood so they can ‘advise’ children to cross state lines to avoid parental permission? Yet we want to use taxpayer dollars so kids can learn about STDs, how to put a condom on,etc?
In closing, this Citizen’s briefing book, which will shut down Sunday at 6pm, is really nothing more than a glorified data acquistion program of voters for the next election to raise another $650 million for a rhetoric and propaganda program.
No value will come out of this because the people that it’s going to (the new admin) don’t care.
If they did this program would,at the very least, continue for the next 4 years. Obama’s daily evening briefing stops at 6pm Sunday. Ideally it would deliver real measurable value to all Americans.
Instead, IMHO, the Citizens’ Briefing Book is just one huge blog aimed at creating a database of future donors.
Jeremiah,
Don’t feel bad. I get emails from the RNC and John McCain for the same – STILL! 😉
It seems both parties don’t get or don’t care about reality in everyday America. They don’t realize that a sleeping dragon is going to awaken come 2010 or sooner – The American people.
Alexander,
What does that have to do with Obama’s Citizen Briefing Book? Or are you blaming Bush in advance for the largest spending of taxpayers dollars in the history of the world by the new administration and congress?
~ think its childish they keep hitting reset when marijuana makes it to the top every time…..ask a 13 year old..they never card you for pot….reset…
Why do some of you doubt that America’s number one concern might actually be ending the marijuana prohibition? Most educated people are aware of the fact that alcohol and tobacco are far more dangerous, and most of you use these things on a daily basis. Ignorance is bliss, keep believing the biased, racist, negative ideals of marijuana that you’ve crammed into your moronic little brains. For you ~TaRdS~ out there, look into some scientific data.
I totally agree with Adam #36. Is it really so far fetched to believe that this is a SERIOUS concern with the American people? Ending prohibition would reduce gang violence and give an ENORMOUS boost to the economy–just like it did when alcohol prohibition was repealed years ago.
about marijuana… every arrest costs the tax payers $2,000, in my town alone there about 280 arrests per year. our government could produce over a billion dollars by taxing it. taxing growers for growing permits, stores for sales permits and building taxes, consumers charged sales tax and the initial cost to obtain a license through their doctor.
this also frees space in our prisons and allows our police forces to focus on bigger things like rapists, sex offenders, hard drug dealers, etc.
Our government is wasting money dealing with non-violent marijuana users.
I mean, they could still arrest people for possesion without a license and for having mass amounts without a sales permit.
Ponder that.
and honestly, if it were to happen across the U.S. at once, the money from everyone applying for these permits and licenses themself would give our economy a nice little jolt.
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