e Government and the Rise of Online Political Engagement
Content
e-Government
And the Rise of Online Political Engagement By EJ Odo and KC Kern May 2013
15.565 Digital Evolution: Managing Web 3.0
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management
Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3 Part I: Public Administration and the Internet ..................................................................... 5 Public Administration of Internet Infrastructure ............................................................. 5 Online Public Services .................................................................................................... 8 Transparency, Data, and Access .................................................................................... 10 Part II: Public Empowerment in Political Processes ......................................................... 13 The Arab Spring ............................................................................................................ 14 Presidential Campaigning .............................................................................................. 16 Pre-2008 .................................................................................................................... 17 Web 2.0 and the 2008 Presidential Elections ............................................................ 18 Web 3.0 and the 2012 Presidential Elections ............................................................ 19 Addressing Inequality .................................................................................................... 21 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 23
Introduction
On February 8, 1996, United States President Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was the first major piece of legislation to take into account the impact and potential of the Internet as a mainstream form of mass communication. In speaking of this, President Clinton remarked:
This law is truly revolutionary legislation that will bring the future to our doorstep… This historic legislation in my way of thinking really embodies what we ought to be about as a country and what we ought to be about in this city. It clearly enables the age of possibility in America to expand to include more Americans. It will create many, many high-wage jobs. It will provide for more information and more entertainment to virtually every American home. It embodies our best values by supporting the kind of market reforms that the Vice President mentioned, as well as the V- chip. And it brings us together, and it was passed by people coming together.1
The President’s comments went far beyond simply emphasizing the upcoming pervasiveness and ubiquity of the Internet.
This law also recognizes that with freedom comes responsibility. Any truly competitive market requires rules. This bill protects consumers against monopolies. It guarantees the diversity of voices our democracy depends upon. Perhaps most of all, it enhances the common good. Under this law, our schools, our libraries, our hospitals will receive telecommunication services at reduced cost. This simple act will move us one giant step closer to realizing a challenge I put forward in the State of the Union to connect all our classrooms and libraries to the information superhighway by the year 2000, not through a big Government program, but through a creative everunfolding partnership led by scientists and entrepreneurs, supported by business and government and communities working together.2
What was then referred to as the “information superhighway” has, in concordance with the forecasts set forth by the President at this time, become an indispensible component
1
Bill Clinton, Remarks on Signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 6. Monday, February 12, 1996). p215-218 2 Ibid.
of the processes that support business, education, science, healthcare, and government. Accordingly, government itself has been subject to the impact of information being shared in new ways and at unprecedented rates. The landscape of politics as a whole is being reshaped by the influence of the Internet and the effect of online engagement of citizens, constituents, campaigns, and governing bodies. This paper will explore selected areas in which the Internet has impacted, is currently impacting, and will continue to impact government, policy, legislation and politics on local, regional, federal, and international levels. Particular attention will be given to emerging “Web 3.0” technologies as a framework for influence on the dynamics of politics and governments of the future.
Part I: Public Administration and the Internet
Public administration is the branch of political science dealing with the implementation of public policy by civil servants in the form of public services. The internet and online technologies are relevant to public policy decisions and tactics in the contexts of (1) providing Internet connectivity as a public service, (2) offering other public services via the Internet (3) enabling transparency and accountability across the public sector.
Public Administration of Internet Infrastructure
For the Internet to be a relevant point in any discussion related to policy and governance, there must exist an underlying assumption that the internet is at least moderately available to both a substantial portion of the population and to elected officials and civil servants. This assumption, however, cannot always be made. Internet infrastructure is not unlike many other aspects of national infrastructure in that it requires large-scale planning, implementation, and maintenance, and is often subsidized if not entirely funded by taxpayer funds. The precedence of telephone networks and even earlier telegraph networks provided the starting point for infrastructure needs in the United States. Governments have historically worked in tandem with private enterprises to build public infrastructure. Telecom is no exception to this. AT&T, formally known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, dates back to the earliest days of telephony spurred by Alexander Graham Bell.3 Since then, fiber optic networks have replaced the copper wire backbone of the US telecom infrastructure, with fiber lines positions strategically
3
http://www.corp.att.com/history/
along existing railroad lines, with Union Pacific Rail Road Company’s routes used most prolifically.4 On municipal levels, fiber optic rollout initiatives have also come to prominence recently. The Google Fiber initiative brings high speed Internet to communities on state-of-the-art fiber networks promising to deliver unprecedented bandwidth. Current service is limited to Kansas City, with plans for expansion to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah.5 The city of Provo has already invested in fiber lines during a failed municipal telecom initiative known as iProvo; Google fiber will use the infrastructure already installed by the city government to deliver its service.6 One particular study examines the establishment of broadband networks in a country that had virtual nothing to build from: the western African nation of Togo.7 This research is of particular interest because, unlike nations with more complex histories of internet infrastructures, this one illuminates the issues arising from a population seeking telecommunications specifically with the internet in mind. It begins by explaining the government’s interest in such an initiative.
In the past, countries in Africa embraced and embarked on technology policy planning, often in isolation of larger development goals. This has changed in the past decade where the drive to mainstream ICTs into development priorities has pushed toward a better understanding of technology’s contributions to economic and social development.8
These contributions of technology to economic and social development are what bridges
4 5
http://www.up.com/aboutup/community/telecom/contacts/index.htm https://fiber.google.com/about/ 6 http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/17/4234258/google-fiber-is-coming-to-provo-utah 7 Ben Akoh. Supporting Multistakeholder Internet Public Policy Dialogue in a Least Developed Country: The Togo Experience. July 2012 8 Ibid, p1; emphasis added
the gap between the underlying infrastructure deployment undertaken by government, and the public benefits the government wishes to bring about. The finding of the study bring to light some critical points about the populations interests regarding a national Internet infrastructure:
• Access to speedy, affordable, quality Internet and online trust and security are fundamental, essential and priority concerns for the growth of the Internet and for development in Togo. Gaps are evident on the significance of public informal and formal education, particularly on the benefits of the Internet to sustainable development. Government is an important and key stakeholder in facilitating Internet public policy in Togo, but all stakeholders are responsible for the evolution of the Internet Internet access is important for business and education, but the existing cost negatively impacts entrepreneurial growth. Government remains a key stakeholder in the development, deployment and monitoring of broadband and mobile broadband access to all Togolese. Togolese are ready to conduct and transact business online, but cyber security and online trust issues remain major deterrents. Government should play a more active role in creating a public forum for Internet policy dialogue. The Internet can significantly facilitate education and research, and it is an important enabler for economic development. 9
• •
• • • • •
In short, the national interests of supporting a national broadband infrastructure centralize on the points of (1) facilitating business and commerce, (2) enabling widespread public discourse, (3) empower education and research, and (4) fostering an effective legal framework to support online services. Given that a sustainable Internet infrastructure is in place, governments can then begin to focus on online public services.
9
Ibid p 30-31
Online Public Services
Governments are notorious for bureaucracy, red tape, long wait-times, and substandard customer service. The prevalence the Internet offers new opportunities to both improve the quality and access of their public services and cut costs by implementing online interfaces for public services. Inasmuch as “Web 3.0” constitutes not only reading and writing, but executing via web-based tools, online public services connected with individual citizen records becomes all the more relevant. The Nebraska department of motor vehicles has championed these kinds of online services with a program called “ClickDMV,” through which citizens may process a large portion of their motor vehicle registration and licensing needs:
The DMV has emphasized online services for individuals. So far this year, 83,615 Nebraskans have used the ClickDMV driver licensing services. [ClickDMV] allows Nebraskans to renew their driver licenses, obtain duplicates, check current point totals, reinstate their driving privileges, and request a driving record. Those who live in Douglas, Lancaster, and Sarpy counties can check the wait times at all the DMV Examining Stations before leaving home. If the wait is more than 30 minutes, they can “take a number” and reserve a spot in line from home.10
It further boasts the broader objective of these types of services in the context of the State government’s mission and objectives:
Nebraska’s Department of Motor Vehicles is one more example of how our state’s egovernment efforts better serve the needs of our citizens.11
The State of Maryland has likewise harnessed the possibilities of the Internet beyond simply the DMV. In a study seeking to understand the impacts of internet on public administration, Maryland was cited as being on the forefront of prioritizing online public
10 11
Governor Dave Heineman. Governor's Weekly Column: Click DMV. October 12, 2012 Ibid
services including tax management and business operation with the intent of increasing IT investment and providing an integrated user experience.
The state of Maryland has invested for several years in providing services by internet and offers more government services online than any other state (Center for Digital Government, 2001). Along services on diversified areas, the state of Maryland allows citizens to request for the opening of businesses by internet and make possible for companies and citizens pay their taxes on line. Despite all the internet services developed in tax area, in 2001 the state of Maryland started a project that aims the provision of 80% of all state public services by internet in three years. The main focus of Maryland’s internet portal project is integrate the services and information provided by internet of all state agencies in order to optimize IT investment and provide convenient services to citizens (Center for Digital Government, 2001). According to the deputy manager of IT Department of Maryland state, the citizens don’t really have to know if one or two government agencies is involved in certain type of service, but that service is provided by the government, so the more integrated are the internet services provided by agencies, the better for the users.12
Web services offer a unique opportunity for governments to interact with citizens and corporations also. While many transactions are considered in terms of B2B, B2C, C2C, etc, the consideration of a government agency (G2B, G2C, etc) has interesting potential. The state of Oklahoma has implement such a service, in which businesses may process sales taxes via a web service. High-level instructions explain:
The Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) Implementation Guide allows for two methods of transferring reports/payments to the member/associate state. These methods are HTTP(S) POST and/or Web services (SOAP over HTTP transport). The Oklahoma Streamlined Sales Tax EFile Service provides transmitters a method of submitting reports/payments via Web services.13
Increased adoption of these services by governments will empower businesses to process
12
Moysés De Oliveira Andrade Júnior. The Impacts of Internet on the Public Administration– Citizen Relationship: a Study at Bahia’s Tax Authority 13 Oklahoma State Government. Streamlined Sales Tax Web Services Report/Payment Transfer Guide.
their taxes more effectively, reduce administrative overhead for both sides, and increase overall tax revenue. The issue that arises with the streamlining of data-rich transactions is that of visibility and transparency. Security by obscurity is compounded when the volume of data to sift through reaches unmanageably high levels. Fortunately, Internet technologies also offer the means to address this issue with elegance and precision.
Transparency, Data, and Access
In the 1913 book Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It, US Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”14 The “electric light” he prophetically refers to has staggering application to Internet technologies. Governments can now be held to a higher level of scrutiny, and their proceedings can be systematically traced with higher degree of precision. The Sunlight foundation “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike.’15 One of their products is OpenCongress, which addresses the issues of legislative obscurity by “making it easier to understand, track, and engage with the U.S. Congress. OpenCongress combines official government data with news and blog coverage, social networking, and participation tools to [give users] the real story behind what's happening in Congress.”16 While OpenCongress is a third-party
14 15
Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It, Chapter 4 http://sunlightfoundation.com/about/ 16 http://www.opencongress.org/about
product, the government itself has produced Congress.gov, a public offering aimed to “to make federal legislative information freely available to the public.”17 Mature governments recognize the increasing difficulty of stealth and obscurity in making decisions of public import. The internet not only supported the forces that brought about this change, but also provides the ability for governments to proactively publish information that can be vetted and validated by juxtaposing it with the findings those independent groups who likewise are making public data more accessible. Data protocols associated with the “Semantic Web” also acquire more opportunities for use in government and public sector situations. In the United Kingdom, data.gov.uk has been established to enable the public to become informed about the activities of the government. This is done through providing “linked data” representing an array of public services. The flagship example of the UK’s public linked data is the postcode network, described as follows:
The postcode is captured simply as text. However, enhancing the original data to link to a postcode URI means the original data has the potential to contain a lot more information. Once the URIs for each postcode is in place it is a relatively simple matter of using some simple code to follow that link, dereference the post code URI and ingest the linked data for that postcode into the triplestore. So just as humans will follow links between documents on the web to gain more context and information this simple application has followed links on the linked data web to provide more context and information. Because the postcode linked data provides a look up between postcode and region, it was possible to enrich the original data with knowledge about the ward, district and county (where applicable) for each institution. This means it is now possible to analyse research funding by local authority area as well as European region.18
The opportunities for analysis of this linked data are now offered not just to high profile
17 18
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html http://data.gov.uk/blog/what-is-linked-data
research institutes, but to the general public as well.
Using the spatial relationships in the Ordnance Survey linked data means it is possible to start doing more complex analysis. For example, a user could compare funding in one region with funding in its neighboring regions or use the containment relationships to aggregate the information up to coarser grained geographies.19
In more dramatic cases, the Internet has brought about leaks and dissemination of information that otherwise would have remained classified or otherwise inaccessible. Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks has received attention in the past years for making public military documents and other government-related information that may have had a compromising effect on national security and military operations. What makes WikiLeaks unique is the level of anonymity offered to the informants. There is nothing modern about espionage, but the Internet offers extra protection for those seeking to expose information. WikiLeaks explains:
WikiLeaks has combined high-end security technologies with journalism and ethical principles. Like other media outlets conducting investigative journalism, we accept (but do not solicit) anonymous sources of information. Unlike other outlets, we provide a high security anonymous drop box fortified by cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies. This provides maximum protection to our sources. We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the public. When information comes in, our journalists analyze the material, verify it and write a news piece about it describing its significance to society. We then publish both the news story and the original material in order to enable readers to analyze the story in the context of the original source material themselves. Our news stories are in the comfortable presentation style of Wikipedia, although the two organizations are not otherwise related. Unlike Wikipedia, random readers cannot edit our source documents.20
The availability and access to this kind of information is an unprecedented threat to unchecked information control that some governments may have at one point hoped for.
19 20
Ibid http://wikileaks.org/About.html
Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words about “a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people”21 take on new meaning. The empowerment of the people is perhaps the most notable effect of the increased use of the Internet. From the improved ability to organize, to the accelerated methods of disseminating information, the Internet’s potential for disruption and innovation have already been witnessed.
Part II: Public Empowerment in Political Processes
Given the nature of human interaction with the internet, it is important to recognize the relation between the individual empowerment that user-driven online experiences offers and citizen-centric political movements. Previous forms of mass media were often based on a central distribution model, where TV networks, radio towers, and publishers in large part controlled the content and the variety of offering available for public consumption. The Internet and “new media” offers more customization, more focus on user needs and preferences, and allows each user to define much of their own experience in media consumption. The applicability of this contrast to government is clear. Top-down, centrally controlled governments mirror the former media model, and citizen-driven democracies mirror the latter model. An overview of the correlation between Internet access and democracy across political
21
Lincoln, A. (1863). The Gettsyburg Address. In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (234-238). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP.
entities reveals scattered results, but a trend line can nonetheless be discerned:22
The impact of Internet access and usage on political matters will hereby be examined on a number of fronts. First, the influence of social media and connectivity on the recent grassroots political uprisings known as the “Arab Spring.” Second, the new onlinedriven tactics employed by the Obama campaign to micro-target potential voters. And finally, addressing the issue of socioeconomic inequality and the solutions that the Internet might have to offer.
The Arab Spring
The “Arab Spring” refers a revolutionary movement that swept across the Arab world in late 2010 and 2011. Countries affected included Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan; and to a lesser extent in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Western Sahara. In some cases, entrie
22
Davit Chokoshvili. The Role of the Internet in Democratic Transition: Case Study of the Arab Spring. p 26
regimes were deposed. In almost all instances, the revolts were virtually leaderless, and were organized and promoted through web technologies. The simultaneity of the Arab Spring’s revolts is remarkable enough to warrant asking the questions of: why now? What elements were in place now that were not previously? The answer perhaps lies in the state of technological progress and adoption in the Arab world. The Institute of National Securities Studies explains:
With respect to knowledge, the report talked about the technological backwardness of the Arab world: Internet penetration stood at less than 1 percent. The decade since then brought about a dramatic change in terms of technology: the internet, satellite stations, and the social networks brought the middle class the knowledge that there are other ways to live, and that they deserve more – more freedom, more democracy, more human rights, progress for women, employment, and release from the grip of tyrants. The Arab revolt of 2011 has been nicknamed “the Facebook revolution,” with good reason. 23
The mere existence and usage of technology among the general public seemed to be on of the deciding factors in spurring this kind of political unrest. Other commentators have underscored the game-changing impact of social media specifically:
“The Internet, mobile phones, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter made the difference this time. Using these technologies, people interested in democracy could build extensive networks, create social capital, and organize political action with a speed and on a scale never seen before. Thanks to these technologies, virtual networks materialized in the streets. Digital media became the tool that allowed social movements to reach once-unachievable goals.”24
While it may be tempting to attribute the entirety of these movements to the internet, it is important to acknowledge that online connectivity is but one factor among many.
23
Yoel Guzansky and Mark A. Heller. One Year of the Arab Spring: Global and Regional Implications. The Institute for National Security Studies. Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, “The Role of Digital Media,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 3 (2011): 35–36.
24
Although new media can plausibly shape contentious politics, they are only one among a number of important political factors. As this report demonstrates, there remain massive gaps in our knowledge about their effects at multiple levels and the interaction among those levels. The suggestions for improved research design and data in this report are not simply the methodological complaint of academics. If policymakers hope to act effectively, they need to get the causal mechanisms right or else risk wasting effort and resources on ineffective actions—or even making things worse.25
A point for further exploration might be examining these “causal mechanisms” and determining which ones are amplified in response to internet activities, and which ones bear no correlation thereto. Results from this type of study might shed further light into the question of the pervasiveness of the influence of online interactions on seemingly independent variables such as popular opinion, voter turnout, citizen engagement, and the like. In any case, the Arab Spring stands out as a unique and remarkable instance of the internet playing an important role in influencing politics and government.
Presidential Campaigning
In the political landscape of the United States, web technologies have almost become a critical tool politicians use as they seek to reach out to the mass population and sell their ideas in order to gain support and win elections. US presidential elections have traditionally been very huge undertakings with huge budgets running in the millions of dollars and with thousands of election staff. The main job of a campaign to sell the candidate has always also been a huge undertaking as well. Prior to 2000 this had been done through the traditional means of print and television media. With the advent of faster computing and the internet we began to more use of web technologies as a means of communicating with voters.
25
Sean Aday, Henry Farrell, Marc Lynch John Sides. Blogs and Bullets New Media in Contentious Politics. p 26
Internet/Web
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Fig 1: Web Technologies through the Last 4 Presidential Election Cycles
Pre-2008 Prior to the 2004 elections, the web was at its infancy stage and most of the web use was in the web 1.0 stage. The internet more closely resembled a television and you visited another site when you wanted to change the channel. It was largely static, informational and centered around a top down use of the web and its user interface. The first widespread use of web technologies was in the 2004 elections where candidate Howard Dean relied heavily on the web to energize large swath of supporters in meetups and social networks. The internet was essentially used as an information sharing tool. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook were used by people to share information and YouTube was used albeit on a smaller scale to publish content. Websites were used to raise large amounts of money for his campaign. These were essentially web 2.0 technologies that provided attributes and enablers that provided resources over and beyond what we saw in the 200 elections. Howard Dean was able to rely on people far and wide to coordinate via the internet and provide help. This web 2.0 space is typically characterized by mass collaboration like the type we just described and a mashup of different content and media. Here large numbers of people are willing to meet new people and share their thoughts and ideas with the public over the internet with new internet groups. This also facilitates engaging others in the public space and helping to
form new ideas as well over this medium. Web 2.0 and the 2008 Presidential Elections Prior to the 2008 presidential election, the Internet was more or less used as an information sharing portal. However, it all changed when Barack Obama ran his campaign and fully embraced the potential of what web 2.0 technologies could do to rally communities around his
Fig 2: Web 2.0 in action, Obama’s Campaign Website and Interactive Activity Links
ideas. Here, web 2.0 got users to play with, create and manipulate content. The useroriented and dynamic web environment gave users an opportunity to be active participants rather than passive receivers of information.
When thinking about the critical drivers for success in an election; campaigning, raising money and coordinating supporters, we can clearly see how web tools can create a compelling advantage compared to traditional methods. Obama’s campaign essentially allowed millions of ordinary voters become part of the campaign through blogs, community groups and mobile applications and this eventually proved decisive as Obama was able to not only out raise John McCain on the internet but he had millions of supporters that were willing to knock on doors and get people out on election day. Web 2.0 forever changed the way people viewed the impact of these technologies on campaigns thereby mainstreaming these ideas.
Web 3.0 and the 2012 Presidential Elections Coming off of a huge election victory in 2008, the Obama campaign continued off of where they left off looking at lessons learned and potential improvements to be made as they planned his reelection campaign for 2012. They were able to work on some of the key problems they had in 2008, most notably having too many databases. They had amassed all this information from 2008 and they sought to try and consolidate and integrate them. When this was completed, they proceeded to build on the information they already had and use that information to inform their day to day decision making. Such is the benefit of web 3.0 as it allows for the aggregation of data such that it can inform particular behaviors in people or groups which in turn let the campaign fit their messages to particular groups of people. In the case of the Obama campaign, they were able to build an enormous cache of data on individuals such that it allowed them to “become small” that is – to target and galvanize specific demographics within high-stakes regions in crucial swing states. This included making decisions as what ads what to buy how to buy those ads and on what television shows and channels. All these were done via results of the information gleaned from the data they had amassed.
Fig 3: Consolidating the Data: Lessons Learned from Past Campaigns
As a result of these big data efforts the Obama campaign was able to fit its campaign better to their constituents in a way the Romney campaign never was able to. They used
information about voters’ behaviors to build social graphs of people and groups and used this social graphs to appeal to groups using social triggers that could get them to vote. These triggers could be for example, understanding that certain constituents in an area cared a lot about clean energy and thus having to run ads in that particular area that informed those constituents’ about its programs for clean energy while in the town a couple of miles away, running a different sets of ads based on the results of their social graph. Another example of a situation in which the Obama campaign effectively used web 3.0 was in the arena of canvassing. It allowed the campaign to interact with canvassers remotely in real time by providing them with potential voters to go visit and what to expect in terms of possible sentiments and profiles. It also allowed for real time feedback on voters sentiments which was relayed back to build on that particular voter’s profile. An example of this kind of app is the one shown below.
Fig 4: The Door Knocking App: Coordinators view of canvassing status.
It provides canvassers real time view of potential voters and lets canvassers view and update profiles as they canvass and this information can be shared amongst the workers making the exercise very efficient. We witnessed the extensive use of Web.3.0 and big data in the last 2012 presidential elections and how it created a compelling competitive advantage for the Obama presidential campaign. The use of Web 3.0 technologies is here to stay in presidential elections and we expect that more and more campaigns will continue to mine data and come up with new techniques to better understand their constituents and get them to the polls to vote. It definitely will revolutionize campaign politics and reward users.
Addressing Inequality
On a global scale, poverty and inequality are still substantive issues that have yet to be resolved satisfactorily. The internet and the advent of Web 3.0 offers a glimmer of hope related to shortening the gap between poverty and the middle class. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute have noted the potential of broadband internet on poverty-stricken locales:
The potential economic impact of broadband is substantial, and broadband’s faster and more convenient access to the Internet creates social benefits including highspeed interactive uses in the K-12 classroom, distance learning, medicine, telecommuting, and adaptive technology for individuals with disabilities.26
The factors of education alone are noteworthy in the context of empowering citizens who otherwise would have no other viable recourse to pursue knowledge or acquire skills.
26
Caroline J. Tolbert Karen Mossberger. New Inequality Frontier: Broadband Internet Access. Economic Policy Institute.
Internet-fueled globalization also provides some new opportunities for upward mobility among those in the developing world. Outsourcing and freelancing platforms such as ODesk allows businesses and even individuals to hire laborers to do tasks in the information sector, such as data entry, filesystem organization, and for more skilled workers, design and engineering tasks.27 The unprecedented connectivity among those in differing socioeconomic strata offers the type of engagement that, in the long run, will contribute to reduced inequality whilst providing a stream of income to a population that otherwise would be subject solely to the limited opportunities and resoruces of their local economy. In addition, even local rural economies can begin to benefit from online technologies. Mashups and information aggregators can benefit even the smallest markets, and the increase of complete information among buys and sellers will lead to more effective transactions that ultimately benefit both parties.28 Information inequality continues to be an issue that creates inefficiencies in the market, and puts one party at an advantage or disadvantage from another. The issues associated with the inequality, and the “access” related to relevant economic information is described as follows:
The extent and the nature of the digital divide and information inequality depend on a multifaceted concept of access, where they distinguish between four kinds: “mental access”, “material access”, “skills access”, and “usage access”. While the public opinion and public policy, so far, have been strongly preoccupied with the second kind of access, lack of computers and network connections, they have observed that
27 28
https://www.odesk.com/info/about/ Paul Dimaggio and Joseph Cohen. Information Inequality and Network Externalities: A Comparative Study of the Diffusion of Television and the Internet. Princeton University.
access problems of digital technology gradually shift from the first two kinds of access to the last two kinds.29
By providing the framework, infrastructure, and incentives for the adoption and usage of the these types of tools and resources, governments and municipalities can accomplish the goals of (1) empowering citizens with knowledge and skills, (2) addressing information inequality and (3) streamlining commercial and civic process.
Conclusion
e-Government in only in its infancy. Public-sector processes and civic bureaucracy of often in the early laggards segment of adoption curves, but there is still progress. As the private sector becomes more engaged with Web 3.0 technologies to streamline commerce, customer outreach, marketing, and analytics, governments at all levels will adopt as well, in many cases taking the lead from campaign tactics that got government officials elected in the first place. The future of the Internet with regards to e-government and public policy could go a variety of directions. A briefing from the Australian Department of Communications, IT & the Arts offers the following framework for research and analysis leading to policy advice and decision-making:
• Internet architecture and standards, including structural and institutional arrangements, the domain name addressing system and the world wide web interface.
29
Furuholt, Bjørn ([email protected]) Department of Information Systems, School of Management, Agder University College, Norway Kristiansen, Stein ([email protected]) Department of Economics, School of Management, Agder University College, Norway. A Rural-urban Digital Divide? Regional Aspects of Internet Use in Tanzania.
• • • • •
The reliability of the Internet as public and private infrastructure, including the likelihood and consequences of failure. Internet-based economic and commercial developments, including new business models and distribution structures. Internet-based social developments, including enhanced information and communications access. Digital content issues including both economic and social aspects. The role of the Internet in facilitating innovation and the development of human capital.30
The overriding themes in this type of framework can be distilled into the following concepts: • • • • Priority on Infrastructure Standards compliance Effective implementation Quality content and services
Inasmuch as governments and other civic entities follow these guiding principles, countries, states, municipalities, and campaigns across the world will see increased civic engagement, higher satisfaction with civil servants, and better data to inform public policy makers.
30
NSF/OECD Workshop proceedings .Social & Economic Factors Shaping the Future of the Internet. 31 January 2007
And the Rise of Online Political Engagement By EJ Odo and KC Kern May 2013
15.565 Digital Evolution: Managing Web 3.0
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management
Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3 Part I: Public Administration and the Internet ..................................................................... 5 Public Administration of Internet Infrastructure ............................................................. 5 Online Public Services .................................................................................................... 8 Transparency, Data, and Access .................................................................................... 10 Part II: Public Empowerment in Political Processes ......................................................... 13 The Arab Spring ............................................................................................................ 14 Presidential Campaigning .............................................................................................. 16 Pre-2008 .................................................................................................................... 17 Web 2.0 and the 2008 Presidential Elections ............................................................ 18 Web 3.0 and the 2012 Presidential Elections ............................................................ 19 Addressing Inequality .................................................................................................... 21 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 23
Introduction
On February 8, 1996, United States President Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was the first major piece of legislation to take into account the impact and potential of the Internet as a mainstream form of mass communication. In speaking of this, President Clinton remarked:
This law is truly revolutionary legislation that will bring the future to our doorstep… This historic legislation in my way of thinking really embodies what we ought to be about as a country and what we ought to be about in this city. It clearly enables the age of possibility in America to expand to include more Americans. It will create many, many high-wage jobs. It will provide for more information and more entertainment to virtually every American home. It embodies our best values by supporting the kind of market reforms that the Vice President mentioned, as well as the V- chip. And it brings us together, and it was passed by people coming together.1
The President’s comments went far beyond simply emphasizing the upcoming pervasiveness and ubiquity of the Internet.
This law also recognizes that with freedom comes responsibility. Any truly competitive market requires rules. This bill protects consumers against monopolies. It guarantees the diversity of voices our democracy depends upon. Perhaps most of all, it enhances the common good. Under this law, our schools, our libraries, our hospitals will receive telecommunication services at reduced cost. This simple act will move us one giant step closer to realizing a challenge I put forward in the State of the Union to connect all our classrooms and libraries to the information superhighway by the year 2000, not through a big Government program, but through a creative everunfolding partnership led by scientists and entrepreneurs, supported by business and government and communities working together.2
What was then referred to as the “information superhighway” has, in concordance with the forecasts set forth by the President at this time, become an indispensible component
1
Bill Clinton, Remarks on Signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 6. Monday, February 12, 1996). p215-218 2 Ibid.
of the processes that support business, education, science, healthcare, and government. Accordingly, government itself has been subject to the impact of information being shared in new ways and at unprecedented rates. The landscape of politics as a whole is being reshaped by the influence of the Internet and the effect of online engagement of citizens, constituents, campaigns, and governing bodies. This paper will explore selected areas in which the Internet has impacted, is currently impacting, and will continue to impact government, policy, legislation and politics on local, regional, federal, and international levels. Particular attention will be given to emerging “Web 3.0” technologies as a framework for influence on the dynamics of politics and governments of the future.
Part I: Public Administration and the Internet
Public administration is the branch of political science dealing with the implementation of public policy by civil servants in the form of public services. The internet and online technologies are relevant to public policy decisions and tactics in the contexts of (1) providing Internet connectivity as a public service, (2) offering other public services via the Internet (3) enabling transparency and accountability across the public sector.
Public Administration of Internet Infrastructure
For the Internet to be a relevant point in any discussion related to policy and governance, there must exist an underlying assumption that the internet is at least moderately available to both a substantial portion of the population and to elected officials and civil servants. This assumption, however, cannot always be made. Internet infrastructure is not unlike many other aspects of national infrastructure in that it requires large-scale planning, implementation, and maintenance, and is often subsidized if not entirely funded by taxpayer funds. The precedence of telephone networks and even earlier telegraph networks provided the starting point for infrastructure needs in the United States. Governments have historically worked in tandem with private enterprises to build public infrastructure. Telecom is no exception to this. AT&T, formally known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, dates back to the earliest days of telephony spurred by Alexander Graham Bell.3 Since then, fiber optic networks have replaced the copper wire backbone of the US telecom infrastructure, with fiber lines positions strategically
3
http://www.corp.att.com/history/
along existing railroad lines, with Union Pacific Rail Road Company’s routes used most prolifically.4 On municipal levels, fiber optic rollout initiatives have also come to prominence recently. The Google Fiber initiative brings high speed Internet to communities on state-of-the-art fiber networks promising to deliver unprecedented bandwidth. Current service is limited to Kansas City, with plans for expansion to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah.5 The city of Provo has already invested in fiber lines during a failed municipal telecom initiative known as iProvo; Google fiber will use the infrastructure already installed by the city government to deliver its service.6 One particular study examines the establishment of broadband networks in a country that had virtual nothing to build from: the western African nation of Togo.7 This research is of particular interest because, unlike nations with more complex histories of internet infrastructures, this one illuminates the issues arising from a population seeking telecommunications specifically with the internet in mind. It begins by explaining the government’s interest in such an initiative.
In the past, countries in Africa embraced and embarked on technology policy planning, often in isolation of larger development goals. This has changed in the past decade where the drive to mainstream ICTs into development priorities has pushed toward a better understanding of technology’s contributions to economic and social development.8
These contributions of technology to economic and social development are what bridges
4 5
http://www.up.com/aboutup/community/telecom/contacts/index.htm https://fiber.google.com/about/ 6 http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/17/4234258/google-fiber-is-coming-to-provo-utah 7 Ben Akoh. Supporting Multistakeholder Internet Public Policy Dialogue in a Least Developed Country: The Togo Experience. July 2012 8 Ibid, p1; emphasis added
the gap between the underlying infrastructure deployment undertaken by government, and the public benefits the government wishes to bring about. The finding of the study bring to light some critical points about the populations interests regarding a national Internet infrastructure:
• Access to speedy, affordable, quality Internet and online trust and security are fundamental, essential and priority concerns for the growth of the Internet and for development in Togo. Gaps are evident on the significance of public informal and formal education, particularly on the benefits of the Internet to sustainable development. Government is an important and key stakeholder in facilitating Internet public policy in Togo, but all stakeholders are responsible for the evolution of the Internet Internet access is important for business and education, but the existing cost negatively impacts entrepreneurial growth. Government remains a key stakeholder in the development, deployment and monitoring of broadband and mobile broadband access to all Togolese. Togolese are ready to conduct and transact business online, but cyber security and online trust issues remain major deterrents. Government should play a more active role in creating a public forum for Internet policy dialogue. The Internet can significantly facilitate education and research, and it is an important enabler for economic development. 9
• •
• • • • •
In short, the national interests of supporting a national broadband infrastructure centralize on the points of (1) facilitating business and commerce, (2) enabling widespread public discourse, (3) empower education and research, and (4) fostering an effective legal framework to support online services. Given that a sustainable Internet infrastructure is in place, governments can then begin to focus on online public services.
9
Ibid p 30-31
Online Public Services
Governments are notorious for bureaucracy, red tape, long wait-times, and substandard customer service. The prevalence the Internet offers new opportunities to both improve the quality and access of their public services and cut costs by implementing online interfaces for public services. Inasmuch as “Web 3.0” constitutes not only reading and writing, but executing via web-based tools, online public services connected with individual citizen records becomes all the more relevant. The Nebraska department of motor vehicles has championed these kinds of online services with a program called “ClickDMV,” through which citizens may process a large portion of their motor vehicle registration and licensing needs:
The DMV has emphasized online services for individuals. So far this year, 83,615 Nebraskans have used the ClickDMV driver licensing services. [ClickDMV] allows Nebraskans to renew their driver licenses, obtain duplicates, check current point totals, reinstate their driving privileges, and request a driving record. Those who live in Douglas, Lancaster, and Sarpy counties can check the wait times at all the DMV Examining Stations before leaving home. If the wait is more than 30 minutes, they can “take a number” and reserve a spot in line from home.10
It further boasts the broader objective of these types of services in the context of the State government’s mission and objectives:
Nebraska’s Department of Motor Vehicles is one more example of how our state’s egovernment efforts better serve the needs of our citizens.11
The State of Maryland has likewise harnessed the possibilities of the Internet beyond simply the DMV. In a study seeking to understand the impacts of internet on public administration, Maryland was cited as being on the forefront of prioritizing online public
10 11
Governor Dave Heineman. Governor's Weekly Column: Click DMV. October 12, 2012 Ibid
services including tax management and business operation with the intent of increasing IT investment and providing an integrated user experience.
The state of Maryland has invested for several years in providing services by internet and offers more government services online than any other state (Center for Digital Government, 2001). Along services on diversified areas, the state of Maryland allows citizens to request for the opening of businesses by internet and make possible for companies and citizens pay their taxes on line. Despite all the internet services developed in tax area, in 2001 the state of Maryland started a project that aims the provision of 80% of all state public services by internet in three years. The main focus of Maryland’s internet portal project is integrate the services and information provided by internet of all state agencies in order to optimize IT investment and provide convenient services to citizens (Center for Digital Government, 2001). According to the deputy manager of IT Department of Maryland state, the citizens don’t really have to know if one or two government agencies is involved in certain type of service, but that service is provided by the government, so the more integrated are the internet services provided by agencies, the better for the users.12
Web services offer a unique opportunity for governments to interact with citizens and corporations also. While many transactions are considered in terms of B2B, B2C, C2C, etc, the consideration of a government agency (G2B, G2C, etc) has interesting potential. The state of Oklahoma has implement such a service, in which businesses may process sales taxes via a web service. High-level instructions explain:
The Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) Implementation Guide allows for two methods of transferring reports/payments to the member/associate state. These methods are HTTP(S) POST and/or Web services (SOAP over HTTP transport). The Oklahoma Streamlined Sales Tax EFile Service provides transmitters a method of submitting reports/payments via Web services.13
Increased adoption of these services by governments will empower businesses to process
12
Moysés De Oliveira Andrade Júnior. The Impacts of Internet on the Public Administration– Citizen Relationship: a Study at Bahia’s Tax Authority 13 Oklahoma State Government. Streamlined Sales Tax Web Services Report/Payment Transfer Guide.
their taxes more effectively, reduce administrative overhead for both sides, and increase overall tax revenue. The issue that arises with the streamlining of data-rich transactions is that of visibility and transparency. Security by obscurity is compounded when the volume of data to sift through reaches unmanageably high levels. Fortunately, Internet technologies also offer the means to address this issue with elegance and precision.
Transparency, Data, and Access
In the 1913 book Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It, US Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”14 The “electric light” he prophetically refers to has staggering application to Internet technologies. Governments can now be held to a higher level of scrutiny, and their proceedings can be systematically traced with higher degree of precision. The Sunlight foundation “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike.’15 One of their products is OpenCongress, which addresses the issues of legislative obscurity by “making it easier to understand, track, and engage with the U.S. Congress. OpenCongress combines official government data with news and blog coverage, social networking, and participation tools to [give users] the real story behind what's happening in Congress.”16 While OpenCongress is a third-party
14 15
Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It, Chapter 4 http://sunlightfoundation.com/about/ 16 http://www.opencongress.org/about
product, the government itself has produced Congress.gov, a public offering aimed to “to make federal legislative information freely available to the public.”17 Mature governments recognize the increasing difficulty of stealth and obscurity in making decisions of public import. The internet not only supported the forces that brought about this change, but also provides the ability for governments to proactively publish information that can be vetted and validated by juxtaposing it with the findings those independent groups who likewise are making public data more accessible. Data protocols associated with the “Semantic Web” also acquire more opportunities for use in government and public sector situations. In the United Kingdom, data.gov.uk has been established to enable the public to become informed about the activities of the government. This is done through providing “linked data” representing an array of public services. The flagship example of the UK’s public linked data is the postcode network, described as follows:
The postcode is captured simply as text. However, enhancing the original data to link to a postcode URI means the original data has the potential to contain a lot more information. Once the URIs for each postcode is in place it is a relatively simple matter of using some simple code to follow that link, dereference the post code URI and ingest the linked data for that postcode into the triplestore. So just as humans will follow links between documents on the web to gain more context and information this simple application has followed links on the linked data web to provide more context and information. Because the postcode linked data provides a look up between postcode and region, it was possible to enrich the original data with knowledge about the ward, district and county (where applicable) for each institution. This means it is now possible to analyse research funding by local authority area as well as European region.18
The opportunities for analysis of this linked data are now offered not just to high profile
17 18
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html http://data.gov.uk/blog/what-is-linked-data
research institutes, but to the general public as well.
Using the spatial relationships in the Ordnance Survey linked data means it is possible to start doing more complex analysis. For example, a user could compare funding in one region with funding in its neighboring regions or use the containment relationships to aggregate the information up to coarser grained geographies.19
In more dramatic cases, the Internet has brought about leaks and dissemination of information that otherwise would have remained classified or otherwise inaccessible. Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks has received attention in the past years for making public military documents and other government-related information that may have had a compromising effect on national security and military operations. What makes WikiLeaks unique is the level of anonymity offered to the informants. There is nothing modern about espionage, but the Internet offers extra protection for those seeking to expose information. WikiLeaks explains:
WikiLeaks has combined high-end security technologies with journalism and ethical principles. Like other media outlets conducting investigative journalism, we accept (but do not solicit) anonymous sources of information. Unlike other outlets, we provide a high security anonymous drop box fortified by cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies. This provides maximum protection to our sources. We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the public. When information comes in, our journalists analyze the material, verify it and write a news piece about it describing its significance to society. We then publish both the news story and the original material in order to enable readers to analyze the story in the context of the original source material themselves. Our news stories are in the comfortable presentation style of Wikipedia, although the two organizations are not otherwise related. Unlike Wikipedia, random readers cannot edit our source documents.20
The availability and access to this kind of information is an unprecedented threat to unchecked information control that some governments may have at one point hoped for.
19 20
Ibid http://wikileaks.org/About.html
Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words about “a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people”21 take on new meaning. The empowerment of the people is perhaps the most notable effect of the increased use of the Internet. From the improved ability to organize, to the accelerated methods of disseminating information, the Internet’s potential for disruption and innovation have already been witnessed.
Part II: Public Empowerment in Political Processes
Given the nature of human interaction with the internet, it is important to recognize the relation between the individual empowerment that user-driven online experiences offers and citizen-centric political movements. Previous forms of mass media were often based on a central distribution model, where TV networks, radio towers, and publishers in large part controlled the content and the variety of offering available for public consumption. The Internet and “new media” offers more customization, more focus on user needs and preferences, and allows each user to define much of their own experience in media consumption. The applicability of this contrast to government is clear. Top-down, centrally controlled governments mirror the former media model, and citizen-driven democracies mirror the latter model. An overview of the correlation between Internet access and democracy across political
21
Lincoln, A. (1863). The Gettsyburg Address. In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (234-238). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP.
entities reveals scattered results, but a trend line can nonetheless be discerned:22
The impact of Internet access and usage on political matters will hereby be examined on a number of fronts. First, the influence of social media and connectivity on the recent grassroots political uprisings known as the “Arab Spring.” Second, the new onlinedriven tactics employed by the Obama campaign to micro-target potential voters. And finally, addressing the issue of socioeconomic inequality and the solutions that the Internet might have to offer.
The Arab Spring
The “Arab Spring” refers a revolutionary movement that swept across the Arab world in late 2010 and 2011. Countries affected included Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan; and to a lesser extent in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Western Sahara. In some cases, entrie
22
Davit Chokoshvili. The Role of the Internet in Democratic Transition: Case Study of the Arab Spring. p 26
regimes were deposed. In almost all instances, the revolts were virtually leaderless, and were organized and promoted through web technologies. The simultaneity of the Arab Spring’s revolts is remarkable enough to warrant asking the questions of: why now? What elements were in place now that were not previously? The answer perhaps lies in the state of technological progress and adoption in the Arab world. The Institute of National Securities Studies explains:
With respect to knowledge, the report talked about the technological backwardness of the Arab world: Internet penetration stood at less than 1 percent. The decade since then brought about a dramatic change in terms of technology: the internet, satellite stations, and the social networks brought the middle class the knowledge that there are other ways to live, and that they deserve more – more freedom, more democracy, more human rights, progress for women, employment, and release from the grip of tyrants. The Arab revolt of 2011 has been nicknamed “the Facebook revolution,” with good reason. 23
The mere existence and usage of technology among the general public seemed to be on of the deciding factors in spurring this kind of political unrest. Other commentators have underscored the game-changing impact of social media specifically:
“The Internet, mobile phones, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter made the difference this time. Using these technologies, people interested in democracy could build extensive networks, create social capital, and organize political action with a speed and on a scale never seen before. Thanks to these technologies, virtual networks materialized in the streets. Digital media became the tool that allowed social movements to reach once-unachievable goals.”24
While it may be tempting to attribute the entirety of these movements to the internet, it is important to acknowledge that online connectivity is but one factor among many.
23
Yoel Guzansky and Mark A. Heller. One Year of the Arab Spring: Global and Regional Implications. The Institute for National Security Studies. Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, “The Role of Digital Media,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 3 (2011): 35–36.
24
Although new media can plausibly shape contentious politics, they are only one among a number of important political factors. As this report demonstrates, there remain massive gaps in our knowledge about their effects at multiple levels and the interaction among those levels. The suggestions for improved research design and data in this report are not simply the methodological complaint of academics. If policymakers hope to act effectively, they need to get the causal mechanisms right or else risk wasting effort and resources on ineffective actions—or even making things worse.25
A point for further exploration might be examining these “causal mechanisms” and determining which ones are amplified in response to internet activities, and which ones bear no correlation thereto. Results from this type of study might shed further light into the question of the pervasiveness of the influence of online interactions on seemingly independent variables such as popular opinion, voter turnout, citizen engagement, and the like. In any case, the Arab Spring stands out as a unique and remarkable instance of the internet playing an important role in influencing politics and government.
Presidential Campaigning
In the political landscape of the United States, web technologies have almost become a critical tool politicians use as they seek to reach out to the mass population and sell their ideas in order to gain support and win elections. US presidential elections have traditionally been very huge undertakings with huge budgets running in the millions of dollars and with thousands of election staff. The main job of a campaign to sell the candidate has always also been a huge undertaking as well. Prior to 2000 this had been done through the traditional means of print and television media. With the advent of faster computing and the internet we began to more use of web technologies as a means of communicating with voters.
25
Sean Aday, Henry Farrell, Marc Lynch John Sides. Blogs and Bullets New Media in Contentious Politics. p 26
Internet/Web
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Fig 1: Web Technologies through the Last 4 Presidential Election Cycles
Pre-2008 Prior to the 2004 elections, the web was at its infancy stage and most of the web use was in the web 1.0 stage. The internet more closely resembled a television and you visited another site when you wanted to change the channel. It was largely static, informational and centered around a top down use of the web and its user interface. The first widespread use of web technologies was in the 2004 elections where candidate Howard Dean relied heavily on the web to energize large swath of supporters in meetups and social networks. The internet was essentially used as an information sharing tool. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook were used by people to share information and YouTube was used albeit on a smaller scale to publish content. Websites were used to raise large amounts of money for his campaign. These were essentially web 2.0 technologies that provided attributes and enablers that provided resources over and beyond what we saw in the 200 elections. Howard Dean was able to rely on people far and wide to coordinate via the internet and provide help. This web 2.0 space is typically characterized by mass collaboration like the type we just described and a mashup of different content and media. Here large numbers of people are willing to meet new people and share their thoughts and ideas with the public over the internet with new internet groups. This also facilitates engaging others in the public space and helping to
form new ideas as well over this medium. Web 2.0 and the 2008 Presidential Elections Prior to the 2008 presidential election, the Internet was more or less used as an information sharing portal. However, it all changed when Barack Obama ran his campaign and fully embraced the potential of what web 2.0 technologies could do to rally communities around his
Fig 2: Web 2.0 in action, Obama’s Campaign Website and Interactive Activity Links
ideas. Here, web 2.0 got users to play with, create and manipulate content. The useroriented and dynamic web environment gave users an opportunity to be active participants rather than passive receivers of information.
When thinking about the critical drivers for success in an election; campaigning, raising money and coordinating supporters, we can clearly see how web tools can create a compelling advantage compared to traditional methods. Obama’s campaign essentially allowed millions of ordinary voters become part of the campaign through blogs, community groups and mobile applications and this eventually proved decisive as Obama was able to not only out raise John McCain on the internet but he had millions of supporters that were willing to knock on doors and get people out on election day. Web 2.0 forever changed the way people viewed the impact of these technologies on campaigns thereby mainstreaming these ideas.
Web 3.0 and the 2012 Presidential Elections Coming off of a huge election victory in 2008, the Obama campaign continued off of where they left off looking at lessons learned and potential improvements to be made as they planned his reelection campaign for 2012. They were able to work on some of the key problems they had in 2008, most notably having too many databases. They had amassed all this information from 2008 and they sought to try and consolidate and integrate them. When this was completed, they proceeded to build on the information they already had and use that information to inform their day to day decision making. Such is the benefit of web 3.0 as it allows for the aggregation of data such that it can inform particular behaviors in people or groups which in turn let the campaign fit their messages to particular groups of people. In the case of the Obama campaign, they were able to build an enormous cache of data on individuals such that it allowed them to “become small” that is – to target and galvanize specific demographics within high-stakes regions in crucial swing states. This included making decisions as what ads what to buy how to buy those ads and on what television shows and channels. All these were done via results of the information gleaned from the data they had amassed.
Fig 3: Consolidating the Data: Lessons Learned from Past Campaigns
As a result of these big data efforts the Obama campaign was able to fit its campaign better to their constituents in a way the Romney campaign never was able to. They used
information about voters’ behaviors to build social graphs of people and groups and used this social graphs to appeal to groups using social triggers that could get them to vote. These triggers could be for example, understanding that certain constituents in an area cared a lot about clean energy and thus having to run ads in that particular area that informed those constituents’ about its programs for clean energy while in the town a couple of miles away, running a different sets of ads based on the results of their social graph. Another example of a situation in which the Obama campaign effectively used web 3.0 was in the arena of canvassing. It allowed the campaign to interact with canvassers remotely in real time by providing them with potential voters to go visit and what to expect in terms of possible sentiments and profiles. It also allowed for real time feedback on voters sentiments which was relayed back to build on that particular voter’s profile. An example of this kind of app is the one shown below.
Fig 4: The Door Knocking App: Coordinators view of canvassing status.
It provides canvassers real time view of potential voters and lets canvassers view and update profiles as they canvass and this information can be shared amongst the workers making the exercise very efficient. We witnessed the extensive use of Web.3.0 and big data in the last 2012 presidential elections and how it created a compelling competitive advantage for the Obama presidential campaign. The use of Web 3.0 technologies is here to stay in presidential elections and we expect that more and more campaigns will continue to mine data and come up with new techniques to better understand their constituents and get them to the polls to vote. It definitely will revolutionize campaign politics and reward users.
Addressing Inequality
On a global scale, poverty and inequality are still substantive issues that have yet to be resolved satisfactorily. The internet and the advent of Web 3.0 offers a glimmer of hope related to shortening the gap between poverty and the middle class. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute have noted the potential of broadband internet on poverty-stricken locales:
The potential economic impact of broadband is substantial, and broadband’s faster and more convenient access to the Internet creates social benefits including highspeed interactive uses in the K-12 classroom, distance learning, medicine, telecommuting, and adaptive technology for individuals with disabilities.26
The factors of education alone are noteworthy in the context of empowering citizens who otherwise would have no other viable recourse to pursue knowledge or acquire skills.
26
Caroline J. Tolbert Karen Mossberger. New Inequality Frontier: Broadband Internet Access. Economic Policy Institute.
Internet-fueled globalization also provides some new opportunities for upward mobility among those in the developing world. Outsourcing and freelancing platforms such as ODesk allows businesses and even individuals to hire laborers to do tasks in the information sector, such as data entry, filesystem organization, and for more skilled workers, design and engineering tasks.27 The unprecedented connectivity among those in differing socioeconomic strata offers the type of engagement that, in the long run, will contribute to reduced inequality whilst providing a stream of income to a population that otherwise would be subject solely to the limited opportunities and resoruces of their local economy. In addition, even local rural economies can begin to benefit from online technologies. Mashups and information aggregators can benefit even the smallest markets, and the increase of complete information among buys and sellers will lead to more effective transactions that ultimately benefit both parties.28 Information inequality continues to be an issue that creates inefficiencies in the market, and puts one party at an advantage or disadvantage from another. The issues associated with the inequality, and the “access” related to relevant economic information is described as follows:
The extent and the nature of the digital divide and information inequality depend on a multifaceted concept of access, where they distinguish between four kinds: “mental access”, “material access”, “skills access”, and “usage access”. While the public opinion and public policy, so far, have been strongly preoccupied with the second kind of access, lack of computers and network connections, they have observed that
27 28
https://www.odesk.com/info/about/ Paul Dimaggio and Joseph Cohen. Information Inequality and Network Externalities: A Comparative Study of the Diffusion of Television and the Internet. Princeton University.
access problems of digital technology gradually shift from the first two kinds of access to the last two kinds.29
By providing the framework, infrastructure, and incentives for the adoption and usage of the these types of tools and resources, governments and municipalities can accomplish the goals of (1) empowering citizens with knowledge and skills, (2) addressing information inequality and (3) streamlining commercial and civic process.
Conclusion
e-Government in only in its infancy. Public-sector processes and civic bureaucracy of often in the early laggards segment of adoption curves, but there is still progress. As the private sector becomes more engaged with Web 3.0 technologies to streamline commerce, customer outreach, marketing, and analytics, governments at all levels will adopt as well, in many cases taking the lead from campaign tactics that got government officials elected in the first place. The future of the Internet with regards to e-government and public policy could go a variety of directions. A briefing from the Australian Department of Communications, IT & the Arts offers the following framework for research and analysis leading to policy advice and decision-making:
• Internet architecture and standards, including structural and institutional arrangements, the domain name addressing system and the world wide web interface.
29
Furuholt, Bjørn ([email protected]) Department of Information Systems, School of Management, Agder University College, Norway Kristiansen, Stein ([email protected]) Department of Economics, School of Management, Agder University College, Norway. A Rural-urban Digital Divide? Regional Aspects of Internet Use in Tanzania.
• • • • •
The reliability of the Internet as public and private infrastructure, including the likelihood and consequences of failure. Internet-based economic and commercial developments, including new business models and distribution structures. Internet-based social developments, including enhanced information and communications access. Digital content issues including both economic and social aspects. The role of the Internet in facilitating innovation and the development of human capital.30
The overriding themes in this type of framework can be distilled into the following concepts: • • • • Priority on Infrastructure Standards compliance Effective implementation Quality content and services
Inasmuch as governments and other civic entities follow these guiding principles, countries, states, municipalities, and campaigns across the world will see increased civic engagement, higher satisfaction with civil servants, and better data to inform public policy makers.
30
NSF/OECD Workshop proceedings .Social & Economic Factors Shaping the Future of the Internet. 31 January 2007
