This is ridiculous. He's been president-elect for under 48 hours and Obama&39;s already reworking governing through the Web.
Case in point: Change.gov.
President-Elect Obama has spoken about creating a Chief Technology Officer position for the country, but does he need it? Can&39;t he just be our Commander-in-Chief Technology Officer?
Here&39;s what Change.gov does right:
- It turns his campaign platform into America&39;s platform.
- He makes his transition about change, not Obama.gov. Even McCain campaigned on change. It&39;s a memorable domain too.
- It welcomes user-generated content, or at least user submissions. The biggest homepage call-out is for users to share their stories.
- It stresses "you" wherever it can – note "Your Administration" above Obama and Biden on the lower left.
- The agenda&39;s prioritized – his first five stand out prominently:
- Revitalizing the economy
- Ending the war in Iraq
- Providing health care for all
- Protecting America
- Renewing American Global Leadership
- There&39;s a blog – expect continual updates.
- He promotes community service. It&39;s clear that he will be calling on Americans to take action, and he devotes a prominent spot on his navigation bar to this.
- There&39;s good search functionality up top. Here are the search results for &39;Afghanistan&39;.
- It&39;s very easy to get around, from the top navigation bar to the sitemap on the bottom. Google&39;s going to love this site (and the .gov domain will send it through the roof).
- There&39;s an email signup form up top to keep you up to date. It&39;s the only drawback I&39;ve found on the site in terms of best practices though. There are no privacy reassurances, nor can you find out how often he&39;ll be e-mailing you.
- You can apply for a job.
- You can learn way more than you ever will need to know about the transition. Unless you&39;re one of the many people so inspired by President Elect Obama that you&39;re considering running for office yourself.
Thanks to Paul McEnany for sharing this.
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Show comments Hide commentsAwesome review, David. Obama definitely is riding the whole social media/social networking wave… isn’t he? He gets it.
Are we looking at the same website? It looks more like a love letter to himself than anything else.
Does anyone seriously think your ideas are wanted? There has always been the option to call or write the White House.
The CTO thing is probably a good idea, if we don’t already have that position.
Chris,
Whether or not they utilize our ideas, they are actively asking for help and the thoughts of the American People. Moreover, using the internet and social media to change government encourages more people to get involved.
I personally love the site, and I think it will be interesting to see how far they take this in terms of utilizing it as a real too. If anyone is interested, I also blogged about this.
http://blog.thebuyergroup.com/president-elect-obama-rides-the-groundswell-to-victory
please share your thoughts. love the blog, keep it coming David!
Nicole
I can’t imagine Obama updating his own blog consistently. We’re probably going to have the first professional speechwriter/ghost writer blogging on behalf of Obama.