Technology

Fix My Street is a British effort similar to 311 in New York City and San Francisco. The deal is that you see a problem, maybe a pothole, and you can report it to local government so they can fix it.

Even better, they have an iPhone application, with more smartphones to follow. You see a problem, take a photo with your phone, and upload the report immediately. Read more...

If you're reading this, I'm going to go ahead and assume you know what the Internet is — or, at the very least, someone on your staff was savvy enough to hit CTRL-P and put this "blog post" on your desk.

Now that you're aware of the Internet, maybe you'll take the time to realize what the Internet actually is: the combination of a publishing platform with a negligible cost and the world's best information-distribution system. This should scare you.

I'm sure you pine for the good old days, when your stupid jokes, strange verbal tics and occasional retreats into racism were only a danger to you when you were in front of reporters or on television. Boy howdy, it ain't like that no more. Everyone has a camera, everyone has a microphone and anyone with an Internet connection is a reporter. Read more...

One way to see more about what congressmen do is to easily link to their voting records, financial background, even their speeches. Apture makes it very easy to do so, and just announced that The Washington Post is now using their system.

Apture just launched a feature to make the U.S. Congress more transparent across washingtonpost.com. Anywhere the name of a Congress member is mentioned across the site, readers can click to view the historical voting records (dating back to 1991), member biographies, PDFs of scanned financial disclosure documents, and the precise footage of congressmen giving speeches from the House and Senate floor — all without leaving the page. Read more...

Another step toward nerd rule?

Looks like the folks who run federal websites got the idea of more effective and honest government years ago, but didn't get heard till recently. The deal is that as a community, we're ready to seriously move ahead toward networked, grassroots democracy. That means increasing involvement from the citizenry and public servants, probably in many public/private partnerships. Read more...

Peer to Patent is Washington's first social networking initiative, using a network of volunteers to help figure out if an invention deserves to be patented. The volunteers, normally scientists and technologies, connect with patent examiners, and like Obama says, this "taps the intelligence" of the American public.

A few words about how it works:

Peertopatent.org solicits public volunteers to submit pertinent info, generally any "prior art" related to the invention. Read more...

The Chief Technology Officer for Washington, D.C., government ran an "Apps for Democracy" contest for online tools that really help people with getting help from the government and getting on with their lives. This is a crowd sourcing model that has real, useful results that can be generalized throughout the country and maybe beyond.

Normally, in real life, it would take far longer and been much more expensive to have developed these. Check out dps.dc.gov for the list. Here're a few good results from the contest. Read more...

change.gov is getting very serious about civic engagement, that is, real dialogue between government and citizenry. It's just a start, and a really good one. I feel this is the beginning of something very big. Greg Elin on his blog at Sunlight Foundation describes new features in some detail. Of particular note:

3. Call for participation. Asking people to contribute. This post is itself a response to 3,500 comments made on an earlier blog post. Read more...

Things are really changing in Washington, and Larry's one of the people leading this effort. This is a big step toward networked grassroots democracy in ways that are hard to explain unless you're in the thick of it. The "digital divide" we face here is generational.

You might perceive this as directional; there are unresolved issues, like copyright. Larry has pioneered major improvements in copyright like the Creative Commons approach at change.gov. Read more...

Hey, the folks at TechPresident.com are providing a hub for discussion regarding the changes we're seeing in American democracy.

I feel you can get an idea of how the future is being invented there.

Check out posts like:

* Debating the Future of Obama's Movement at ObamaCTO Read more...

Much talk has been made about the Obama transition, about his choices for White House staff, his picks for the Cabinet, and about the role of the Clintons.

Not much has been said about the much bigger transition that has engulfed our world. And that transition is to a brave new economic world that we are only right now beginning to grasp.

We know we are in a transition because there is so much turmoil in the world today. And that is what happens in a transition. Read more...