Obamonics

All eyes are on the US President-elect Barack Obama, who will assume charge
of his office on January 20, 2009. He has also set an ambitious agenda for
e-governance. Obama has very successfully used information technology IT in his
presidential campaign. For example, according to reports on www.barackobama.com
more than 280,000 people created accounts, users created over 6,500 grass-roots
volunteer groups and organized more than 13,000 off line events using the
website, and over 15,000 policy ideas were submitted through the website. The
Internet operation was looked after by ninety-five people. Obama has built a
treasure trove of database of more than 10 mn supporters.

Since change was the main plank of Obamas election campaign, the
transition site has also been named after change, set up as http://change.gov/.
More is expected from him in the field of IT and e-governance once he enters the
White House.

What then is Obamas agenda for e-governance? In a nutshell, it is open
government. He, however, has many items in his agenda but the following ten
items appear to be particularly noteworthy:

Transparent and Connected Democracy: The agenda proposes to integrate
citizens into the actual business of government by a number of measures
including Making government data available online in universally accessible
formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and
take action in their own communities, thereby lifting the veil from secret
deals in Washington with a website, a search engine, and other web tools that
enable citizens to easily track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and
lobbyist contacts with government officials.

Open Government: All available technologies and methods are proposed to be
used to open up the federal government, creating a new level of transparency to
change the way business is conducted in Washington, giving Americans the chance
to participate in government deliberations and decision making in ways that were
not possible only a few years ago. Most modern communications infrastructure
will be used to realize this vision.

Federal Chief Technology Officer: The agenda proposes to appoint the
nations first CTO to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the
right infrastructure, policies and services for the twenty-first century. The
CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an inter-agency effort,
working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the
federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share
best practices.

Openness of the Internet: Realizing the importance of the Internet as the
most open network in history, the agenda proposes to maintain the openness of
the Internet. The agenda strongly supports the principle of network neutrality
to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Users must be free
to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices. They
have a right to receive accurate and honest information about service plans.

Protection of Children: An important item on the agenda is protection of
children on the Internet. The agenda proposes to work to give parents the tools
to prevent reception of programming that they find offensive on television and
on digital media. Again, it will encourage improvements to the existing
voluntary rating system, exploiting new technologies like tagging and filtering,
so that parents can better understand what content their children will see, and
have the tools to respond. The agenda treats a sanity not censorship approach
of the Common Sense Media, a private entity, as a model.

Public Media 2.0: The agenda will encourage the creation of Public Media 2.0
the next generation of public media that will create the Sesame Street of the
Digital Age and other video and interactive programming that educates and
informs. The agenda will support the transition of existing public broadcasting
entities and help renew their founding vision in the digital world.

Right to Privacy: The agenda notes that dramatic increases in computing
power, decreases in storage costs and huge flows of information that
characterize the digital age bring enormous benefits, but also create risk of
abuse. We need sensible safeguards that protect privacy in this dynamic new
world. The agenda therefore proposes to strengthen privacy protections for the
digital age and will harness the power of technology to hold government and
business accountable for violations of personal privacy.

Next Generation Broadband: The agenda realizes the importance of broadband in
so many words: Full broadband penetration can enrich democratic discourse,
enhance competition, provide economic growth, and bring significant consumer
benefits. Moreover, improving our infrastructure will foster competitive markets
for Internet access and services that ride on that infrastructure.

Protection of Intellectual Property Rights at Home and Abroad: The agenda
recognizes the importance of intellectual property rights by stating that
intellectual property is to the digital age what physical goods were to the
industrial age and emphasizes the need to update and reform our copyright and
patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while
ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated. The agenda
proposes to protect intellectual property rights at home and abroad.

Healthcare: The agenda proposes to invest $10 bn a year over the next five
years to move the US health care system to broad adoption of standards-based
electronic health information systems, including electronic health records and
phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT and commit the
necessary federal resources to make it happen.

Many of these items are routine, mundane and incremental. Nevertheless three
items of his agenda are striking and deserve a close look.

First open government. This will be a very challenging task. The issues
here are the extent to which government will open up consistent with the
requirements of security and protection of privacy of citizens, and making
government transparent and accountable. Obama, of course, has taken up the
gauntlet when he makes a daring commitment in his agenda: (he) will use the
most current technological tools available to make government less beholden to
special interest groups and lobbyists. In a speech in Des Moines, LA, on
November 10, 2007 Obama had forcefully declared:

I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting
the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in
this race to take on lobbyistsand won. They have not funded my campaignand
they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am President.

Blueprint for Change

Obama and Bidens Plan for America declares Obama and Biden will close the
revolving door between the executive branch and K-Street lobbying shops. Their
appointees will serve the American people, not their own financial interests.
It will be quite interesting to watch as to how Obama and his team goes about it
as lobbyists are firmly entrenched in Washington, DC.

Second citizen participation in government decision-making. An integral
part of open government, it is also a very challenging area as despite living in
democratic regimes citizens have no participation in decision-making, a task
performed singularly by the legislators who, once elected, forget about the
citizens until the next election. The nearest governments have gone for citizen
participation in government decision-making is to seek citizens views on
governments specific proposals. But this is usually an eye wash as citizens
views may be taken as a mere formality without being taken into account in
decision-making, leave alone having an impact in decision-making.

Third, federal chief technology officer. This has been talked about for
quite some time. It is going to be a very challenging task for the incumbent as
co-ordination is no cakewalk. On the contrary, it is quite problematic as CTO/CIO
will protect his turf and the method of working. Quite often he is immune to
external advice. The agenda proposes to suitably legally empower him. In such a
case he will be a Super-CTO or Super CIO and his authority is likely to be
resented by agency CTO/CIO.

Here is, however, wishing Obama and his team all the best in implementing his
ambitious agenda.

DC Misra The author is IAS (Retd). Former Chairman, task Force or IT Policy for Delhi and now independent e-governance consultant