President Barack Obama’s
remarkable showing among
millennials (voters
18-26 years old), who
supported him by a more
than 2:1 margin, was a
direct byproduct of his
groundbreaking effort to
utilize online
communication tools to
mobilize those core
supporters. Now the
Obama administration has
an opportunity to
utilize similarly
sophisticated Web 2.0
technologies to make
America’s governing
processes more
transparent, thereby
increasing the trust of
all generations in the
federal government.
The beliefs and
behaviors of the
millennial generation
will fundamentally
reshape how government
policy is made and how
it is administered.
Millennials constantly
interact with each other
using social networks.
They tend to make
decisions based on
consensus, with
leadership focused on
forming and shaping that
consensus. Since they
have learned to search
for the answer to every
question on the
Internet, they tend not
to believe in the
authority of a few elite
experts. Instead, they
place their faith in the
wisdom that comes from
the combined opinions of
all their friends, or,
by extension, the
members of a network.
These characteristics of
America’s newest “civic”
generation will shift
the debate of the last
decade on how best to
“reinvent government” to
a debate on how to
invent new ways of
exercising our
democratic governance
ideals.
Given millennials’
values and behaviors and
the technologies they
love, the thrust of
efforts by the Obama
administration to
reshape governance in
the United States will
involve the creation of
open structures
attempting to maximize
the number who
participate in
policy-making. Dispersed
participatory
structures, such as
Google or Wikipedia, are
brands millennials think
of when asked to name
information sources they
trust. It is from these
models that millennials
will draw their
inspiration for
reshaping America’s
governing processes.
While Wikipedia’s open
structure, complete
transparency and user
participation has made
it a favorite site for
millennials, many more
traditional
opinion-makers abhor the
notion of
“decision-making by
crowds” that the site
represents. But the
rapid evolution of
online politics
engineered by the Obama
campaign provides an
inherent antidote to the
problem of unfettered
aggregation and lowest
common- denominator
outcomes mentioned by
many critics of
Wikipedia. As one of the
more famous critics,
Jaron Lanier, who coined
the term “virtual
reality” in the 1980s,
said, “The ecology of
social media is balanced
by the presence of other
applications such as
blogs and social
networking where
individuality and
cooperation are alive
and well.... By using a
mix of social media,
communities can benefit
both from the wisdom of
crowds and the wisdom of
individuals.” By
celebrating the use of
blogs and social
networks in his
administration as much
as he did in the
campaign, President
Obama can ensure the
success of a
wikigovernment approach
to governance.
The first steps in the
use of technology to
enable increased citizen
involvement in
policy-making, while
preserving the
constitutional role of
representative
legislative bodies, were
taken in the
conservative, but
techsavvy, state of Utah
almost two years ago.
Politicopia.com, a
“virtual town square”
was founded by Utah
state legislator Steve
Urquhart as a place
“where Utahans could
debate issues coming
before the legislature.”
It was used to influence
the policy decisions in
that state’s 2007
legislative session.
Technologically,
Politicopia operated in
a very “millennialist”
manner, being “based on
a user-controlled wiki
system that allows
anyone to join the
discussion. Unlike
activist groups such as
MoveOn.org, it does not
push an agenda other
than open discussion.”
Andrew Rasiej, founder
of the Personal
Democracy Forum and a
strong advocate for more
openness in government,
points out an important
difference between chat
rooms and political
wikis. “Politicopia is
more of a repository of
ideas and discussions
where issues can be
debated and information
can be added over time.”
Voters leave behind
“both a record and an
aggregation of voices to
define an issue.”
Urquhart underlined the
key to the site’s
success: “It only works
if it’s a broad pool of
people, not just techies
or one party or
another.... It has to be
bottom up. The people
have to have the tools
and ability to set the
agenda.”
The political impact of
the site did not break
down along traditional
conservative/liberal
lines. The online debate
moved the chamber in a
conservative direction
when it convinced
several key legislators
to vote for the adoption
of a school voucher
program that passed by
only one vote. But it
also pushed the
legislature toward a
liberal decision by
rejecting a proposal to
have Utah directly
challenge the Roe v.
Wade abortion ruling.
Despite its “bleeding
edge” character,
Politicopia.com was
warmly received by the
legislature. “It moved
the needle…it helped
improve the dialogue. I
think that’s what a lot
of us are yearning for
in politics these days,”
is how founder Urquhart
summed up the
experience. His
legislative colleague,
Steve Sandstrom, agreed.
“I think we’re on the
verge of something
new…it was intelligent,
thoughtful and produced
a consensus. It was
pretty neat.” The result
put Utah “at the
vanguard of the future
of American politics in
the twenty-first
century,” according to
Rasiej, “where town
halls, policy debates
and civic involvement
will happen on wikis,
blogs, videosharing and
social networking
sites.” Given the
technological
sophistication of the
Obama administration and
its desire to inject a
greater degree of
innovation in the
government’s fundamental
processes, the spread of
wiki-government from
this state legislative
pilot to the federal
executive branch is
inevitable.
Having become engaged in
unprecedented numbers in
his election, Americans,
especially millennials,
want to continue to
participate in President
Obama’s administration.
Wiki-government is the
perfect vehicle to
satisfy that desire.
