One way to reset the relationship of government and the public — from constant complaint — is to make it collaborative — thus constructive.
In my pollyanna way, I imagine a day when citizens could take over some tasks of government to save money and do them better. How about this as a small pilot:
Politico reports today that Rupert Murdoch wants to charge the White House $600,000 a year for access to news clips. The White House now pays $100,000 a year to a clipping service and News Corp. want to charge them for access to WSJ news in an apparent bid to make the White House deal directly with its own Factiva.
Well, to hell with that.
I have no doubt that we, the people, could do a spectacular job of curating clips — links and excerpts — for the White House (and us all). Imagine Wikiclips. Start with news data bases like Daylife (full disclosure: I’m a partner there) or GoogleNews as well as key RSS feeds (original sources and curated collections like RealClearPolitics) and canned searches and then create a very simple tool atop that to enable volunteer citizen-curators to find and highlight the important stuff. The Washington Post or New York Times or Techmeme could create the platform for the benefit of all.
There’s no reason for this task to be done at taxpayer expense. There’s no reason for the results of this work to be private; we all should see it. How could conservative Murdoch argue with saving tax dollars?
How could conservative Murdoch argue with saving tax dollars? When it means it’s not going to him!!
In the article you linked to earlier in Twitter, it mentioned that DC insiders were in a position where they could be working with WSJ reporters on article they might not be able to legally read. I think your crowdsourcing idea should be implemented, and then DC should start quietly snubbing the Journal. Let their value behind the paywall shrink like Murdoch’s geni– er, ah, worldview.
I like it. The more sources the better, the more open transparency the better.
I feel like Hans Christian Andersen already covered this with his short story called “The Emperors New Clothes”. The only difference here is that Murdoch is the weaver promising to provide our government, the emperor, a stream of information that will be perfectly curated/stitched to only be fit to those of authority and all others will not be able to see it.
In the end, we the crowd will still see things exactly as they are and those in the government will stand before us naked and stupid while Murdoch makes off with the money.
Hopefully, your idea gets a foothold Jeff, and to any organization trying to hide behind a se[e]mstresses new disguise to cover your tracks, realize that it will be only you believing as hard as you can to be blind to the fact that you are standing up before the world, ridiculous and naked before a world that sees you with new eyes and new vision.
There are already many platforms for providing a clipping service… Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, Feedburner… and if you want them all in one space, try Newsvine.com.
That is an awesome suggestion, but I think there is more with it than clipping service. Also, it would be difficult for the government to take on many people to take care of one business. They would have to hire someone to take charge for it, and Murdoch comes into play again.
Great idea. Sign me up.
Jeff-
There’s a certain point where the Left/Right political spectrum loops back on itself, and I’ve noticed in your posts, and in venues such as TWiG, you’re rapidly approaching it.
[...] Cross posted at buzzmachine.com 1 [...]
Excellent idea, but it needs a lot of momentum.
If it would collapse the idiosyncratic clippings licensing system we have in the UK, so much the better.
I think it is a great idea. I would start by feeding things like this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5FhQc-LJ-o&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideosearch%3Fsourceid%3Dnavclient%26rlz%3D1T4GWYF_enUS310US310%26q%3DNational%2520Security%2520Alert%26um%3D1%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN&feature=player_embedded
…into the loop until those who reflexively ridicule independent researchers with epithets like truther or wingnut at least have some sense of the corruption that they are perpetuating with their ignorance.
The real resistance that your plan for crowd-sourcing will encounter will be from all the entrenched institutions that are sort of co-dependent with the government to enforce the status quo. Especially the more lethal institutions like the military industrial complex.
One interesting problem is that once someone is committed to a party line no amount of evidence will change their position.
My mind is already made up, please don’t try to confuse me with the facts!!
I know it is hard to sift through but there is a great deal of truly disturbing evidence that 911 was not as your government would have you believe. How many more lives and how much more treasure does this country have to destroy before the people wake up. I suppose that there are probably 25 percent of the people that would openly support the despotic militaristic leadership we have, but could these forces, if exposed, win honest open elections?? NO!! The LITTLE people of this country are basically good people. It is only the rot at the top that greed, fear and corruption has wrought that supports this delicate lie.
Wow! Interesting .That is an overwhelming idea, but I think there is more with it than extract overhaul. and, it would be difficult for the government to take on many people to take care of one business. They would have to hire someone to take charge for it, and Murdoch comes into play again.
Don’t we already have what you propose with Digg?
A good example of this (crowdsourcing government work in general) actually happening is the cooperation of OpenStreetMap communities with municipal administrations. This was, for example, announced just yesterday in Augsburg, Germany (text in German):
http://www.augsburg.de/index.php?id=17571&tx_ttnewstt_news=3325&cHash=8dd2c8cba488b0fcfb9f69c4867d3f67
I thought of another usage … leverage something like Intrade to predict actual budget costs of large government programs. Denver International Airport was supposed to cost around $2.8B, it wound up costing $4.8B; the Big Dig in Boston originally estimated at $6B, ran over $14.6B … and on and on … if governments are doing cost benefit analyses, it seems that they should be using more accurate figures for costs … I’m guessing the collective wisdom of Intrade would be a whole lot more accurate AND a lot cheaper than the hired consultants who blow the estimate and only have their hefty fees to show for their poor performance.