Ben Buckman.net

I work at EchoDitto, an internet strategy firm founded by the net team of Howard Dean's presidential campaign, the pioneers of many open-source and online political innovations that were arguably solidified into the mainstream with this election. How to make the government and democratic institutions more collaborative, technological, open-source, and innovative are ongoing topics of discussion at work. (A small example: a pet project created by some of my colleagues recently, CrowdSourceTheCabinet.com, invites the public to nominate and discuss potential cabinet members.) It is a matter of conventional wisdom here that the political party that successfully evolves into an open-source organization will gain a lasting edge, while the party that fails to do may well disappear. (I have heard several times recently about the Whigs, once the dominant party in the U.S., that disappeared in two cycles.)

The Obama campaign clearly had the edge in this cycle, and promises to continue it into the government. While the campaign did not itself innovate anything new per se on the internet, it was able to leverage existing technologies - viral video, blogs, eCommerce, mobile, social networking - in an unprecedented and extremely effective way. Change.gov signals the first step in bringing that to the government, and Obama has talked about making policymaking a more collaborative process - suggesting, for example, a 5-day public comment period online before major legislation - and about using technology in general to make government more transparent, efficient, and modern.

I was at a fascinating off-the-record talk today by an internet strategist affiliated with the GOP. If there was one thing to take away, it was that any online edge Obama or the Democrats have today could disappear overnight. Republicans in fact had some very effective online tools this cycle. They built their online VoterVault application years before the Democrats' VoteBuilder equivalent. Their new GOP.com utilizes much of the same functionality as My.BarackObama.com. Their platform creation process (surprise to me!) involved open-source online submissions (text and video) from all over the country, which were distilled (like the DNC platform) into the final product. John McCain's 1999 campaign was an internet pioneer, but he failed to continue that with this cycle. Entrenched interests in both parties like things the old way, but new voices in both parties appreciate the important of open-source principles (beyond the internet-as-ATM concept). The speaker compared the parties to the PC-Mac commericals, the GOP being a closed-source PC and the Dems being an open-source Mac. The total RNC internet staff was miniscule compared to Obama's and starved of resources. But ultimately (in my view) it was probably the deeper strategic and philosophical incoherence of the McCain campaign and the RNC in 2008 that hurt their online potential, less so than their actual technological backwardness.

The GOP might cease to exist in four years, replaced by a libertarian party, or an evangelical
party, or something totally new. I wouldn't bet on this, though. In the technological realm alone, I would be very surprised if Republicans aren't at parity with the Democrats by 2012 at the latest. Any technological modernization that President Obama brings to government will be embraced on both sides of the aisle. Republicans like Newt Gingrich have been arguing that technology should revolutionize realms like health care for years, so it's not such a leap to politics in general. I would say the GOP will be an open-source, tech-savvy organization much sooner than it rebuilds a coherent platform. (The speaker today pointed out the the new RNC chairman's appreciation of open-source media will be decisive to the party's future.)


It's the open-source element that's key here, not the technology per se. Anyone can collect donations online, write a blog, post videos on youtube. It's how the principles of these technologies proliferate into other realms that is the real question. Congress already posts all its spending in online databases - but does it involve the public to collaborate meaningfully on legislation? The Obama campaign had millions of grassroots volunteers, but I can attest from working in NH in the campaign's final days that an awful lot of decisionmaking was overly centralized. The iPhone app made by volunteers for the Obama campaign was truly open-source - decentralized, collaborative, online, innovative. How that kind of knowledge- and power-sharing starts to change the country's political structures will be fascinating to watch.

I'm relatively new to the open-source development world, and I still don't really see where this convergence of online culture, programming methodology, and politics is going. I'm still not sure how open-source political processes can work in practice. I look forward to watching and hopefully being part of it. (To be continued...)