What the Readers Want

People usually don't much care how you, the elected official, make a decision. They just want to know whether they agree or disagree with you.

That insight was a surprise to me. I didn't begin this blog thinking that. I began my city council blog years ago sort of naively approaching my content as a former newspaper reporter. "People would appreciate a window into the decision-making process," I thought. "People would participate in the decision-making process," I thought, and appreciate the chance to do so.

There's no question people do want to participate in their democracy through town halls, committees, even blog forums on news sites. But they don't necessarily want their elected officials involved. They just want to know whether they disagree or agree with the elected official.

What I found over time was that after I described how I was making up my mind, and asked for feedback, people said I was being wishy-washy or indecisive. Sure - if you asked people in the abstract, they'd say they want their politicians to be open and thoughtful. What people have been trained to expect is for politicians to manipulate and deceive them. So it's a pretty long road to take if you try to involve the public in your decision-making process.

This comes to mind after reading a fascinating exchange on the blog of a fairly new city council member from Massachusetts, Ari Herzog. He's clearly a bit frustrated, and titles his blog "This Blog is for You, Not for Me." I'm not familiar with the specific issue referenced in the post, but it sounds like Ari had to vote on something where he had not heard from citizens. Apparently some citizens did not approve of his vote, and contacted him. He writes:

If you don’t share your thoughts with me before votes occur, it’s harder for me to appreciate a complaint after the fact ... if you don’t tell me what you think I need to know until after a vote occurs, how should I respond?"

His point in the blog post is, If you want an elected official to know something, tell them. The idea of a blog is to have one more way of exchanging information.

If you read down the page a bit, you see one of the comments to the blog perfectly summarizes what I've heard from a lot of citizens here on the other side of the United State:

In the end, we voted Councilors into office to make decisions even in the absence of our input. We don’t expect you to vote for each item based on a poll. We want you to make a conscious decision based on fact and then if/when appropriate explain your reasons. We reserve the right to disagree and obviously we’ll let you know! If we agree more than we disagree by the end of your term, maybe you can stay

Isn’t that how this works?

The citizen is right. That's how this works. Citizens have been trained to think that a politician asking for feedback is taking a poll - not honestly asking for help or collaboration.

That's how this works. Those of us who blog often wish there was another way.

Why We Do This

Preparing for the recent talk to other city council members in Washington, I hit up one of the best council bloggers in our state for a testimonial. Councilman Jon Snyder invests a lot of time into his blog for Spokane. Here's his well-spoken words about why he does this stuff:

The reason I blog is to be proactive in communication with citizen.

As a councilman, I am very close to the issues and engrossed in the nuances of policy, but if I forget to take the time explain those nuances to my constituents I leave the door open for other interpretations that may be based in ignorance.

My blog, my monthly email, and my Twitter and Facebook feeds have been invaluable in focussing attention to this issues I think are important and getting my message out. It also shows my constituents what I'm doing with the immense amount of time I put into public service.

Ultimately how you spend your time is one of the most important decisions you make as an elected official. My electronic communication helps create a story of that effort that people can understand and respond to.

Some of the biggest reaction I've ever had to blog entry would be a very detailed response I wrote about a very expensive and controversial downtown real estate purchase. You can see it here:

http://councilmanjonsnyder.com/?p=223#more-223

Most of my entries aren't this involved, but there are times when the blog is the best way to get complex treatment of an issue out to the public. I've found citizens respond positively to being talked up to instead of being talked down to. My weekly recap of our City Council meetings is my most popular regular blog feature. A lot of folks have thanked me for writing about Council meeting content that isn't being covered anywhere else. I usually announce new blog entries on Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest piece of advice I would give about blogs is settle on a minimum posting frequency and stick to it.

Jon writes something worth repeating for someone considering elected office or someone in office: "Ultimately how you spend your time is one of the most important decisions you make as an elected official."

That's a point worth contemplating often. It was astonishing to me, once I got elected, how many times people expected me to come to events in a ceremonial role. These things, and many other aspects of elected office, public service, and public policy, all take time. I've found when I spend time too much time communicating, it takes away time I would otherwise spend on research. However, besides all the advantages Jon notes above, communicating about something forces you to frame and focus on the topic in a focused way that can help you make, or reinforce, a decision. Communicating is vital.

Frankly, it tells me something about Jon that he's willing to take time to write, and fact check and self-edit, a post about elevator inspection fees. It tells me something good about him. When I look at my own workload, I find it pretty intimidating to write up topics in Lakewood to that level of detail. His desire to be definitive is impressive. I don't think all of us choose to be that definitive because of other demands on our time, but it's impressive to see in action.

How do other elected officials find time to communicate when there are so many other demands on their time?

A Change In Approach

It hit me with a dull thud, strolling from an air-conditioned conference center in Vancouver to a hot downtown street, that I've been going about this all wrong. Well, somewhat wrong.

By presenting twice now to my fellow city council members at the Association of Washington Cities .... by being in a "how to" webinar last January ... by helping in my own modest way with OpenGovWest ... I thought we'd help current elected representatives find new ways of using social media and other aspects of the so-called "Gov2.0" movement.

The brutal truth the other day in Vancouver at the 2010 Association of Washington Cities meeting was that co-presenter Everett Asst. City Attorney Ramsey Ramerman and I had probably a fourth of the people we had at the 2009 meeting of the Association of Washington Cities. Honestly, I'm not surprised. If you talk to a lot of city council members, they don't get it. They were elected without social media. They were elected without Gov. 2.0 Why bother? People are clamoring for more services and lower taxes. Isn't that enough of a challenge?

There are a few exceptions - the moderator of our panel, for example, City Councilwoman Jennifer Gregerson of Mukilteo. But in general, the currently elected folks are pretty ambivalent about diving into these waters. After the workshop, I spoke with two city council members thinking of blogging. Both are motivated by a lack of competent news coverage. So there's interest but ...

What I'm left to wonder is whether it's better to focus on the people who got elected last year who practice new forms of communication, and those of us few 'old fogeys' taking a swing at a better world of communication and democracy. Maybe we can share examples of how this stuff helps. So I'm going to take more of a focus on sharing best practices than trying to convert anyone. Maybe if those of us using the tools use them better, and share how that strengthens democracy, it will matter.

I sort of went down this path with the collection of city council bloggers I began on Friendfeed. But we need to share more aggressively. And of course there's a lot lot lot more to digital democracy than blogging, which is really a communication vehicle of last result for more politicians.

Still, blogging is what I know best. As part of prepping for the AWC meeting, I got a great note from Spokane Councilman Jon Snyder that explains why he blogs. I'll post that next week after the holiday, and try to do a better job of highlighting how a new generation - regardless of their chronological age - is using digital tech to strengthen public policy and democracy.

Neither Fish nor Fowl: Better Gov 2.0

As a city councilman, I found myself reflexively nodding my head up in down in agreement while reading the entire post. Citizens will often suggest solutions as well as concerns. But the ideas often end up floating in a big soup of words. When social media can make organizing possible, it's a win for the community. Just off the top of my head, I can think of one neighborhood situation described on my blog in which some great people found each other but it was very unstructured - just chatting on a blog. The tools described in this post are intriguing, and any elected official should want to know more.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Open Government West

Open Government West is just revving up on this second day. People from several states and British Columbia are gathered around, looking at the various proposals for presentations here in Seattle City Hall. We're all voting about what talks people would like to see and hear.

The picture from right is from yesterday, at a panel I helped moderate about social media policy and government. People were voting there too, this time on recommendations for how to best implement social media policy and government.

It's only normal to look at what's happening now in the light of what happened to you in the past. As I look back over my career, the most workshops I went to were staged by or for benefit of journalists, such as the National Writers Workshops. Journalists would gather for a couple of days and talk about reporting and writing. These sessions were always valuable for the people you met and for what you learned. The other day, at the first gathering of Social Media Club Tacoma, one of my former writers floored me by saying she remembered a writing technique I had taught her. I had picked up the technique at one of those national writers workshops.

There's clearly a need for something similar in the Open Government community. As I look around the room and pick out people I know, I see citizen activists, community organizers, a slew of Information Technology workers, Web techies, PR people, software developers, small business entrepreneurs, grad students from the Evans School at UW and officials who work in a variety of jobs and a variety of levels at a variety of government levels.

The challenge, of course, is that this is not a unified group of people who are used to meeting with each other. So it's an open question whether events like this will continue to take place. I hope they do. The group of us do not constitute a profession that naturally gathers. But we constitute a movement that believes passionately in the importance of communication and the dialogue of government. There are tools to be learned, challenges to overcome, opportunities to be recognized and articulated.

What makes me smile as I type is the biggest difference. Journalists were a profession that organized workshops. Open government believers are here a conference organizing a sort of profession. Five years from now, our vocabulary and tools about open government will be much broader than any of us can imagine. So will a new 'profession' - the profession of linking communication, data and democracy for better public policy and a better world.

The Webinar about Social Media, Cities and the Law in Washington State

The recording of a pretty detailed webinar about social media, digital communication, governments in Washington state, the law and cheese is up! It's available for your viewing pleasure. I tell people in all candor that it's about 75 minutes, so have coffee nearby. I'm very grateful to attorney Ramsey Ramerman for his lead role in, really, the state of Washington, in making important information known to local governments.

Here's the slideshow. We debated whether to post it separate from the webinar. We already got some feedback, well said, that we left something out. We really should have counseled elected officials and others to meet not only with attorneys but also their IT department. The computer people play a huge role in this, as we discuss in the webinar, and Ramsey and I agree we could have called that out better in the slides.

Friends, Faux Pas, Tweets and Traps: How Elected Officials Can Use Social Media and Comply with the Law

View more documents from Walter Neary.

Something that's a bit frustrating is that we don't really have an online forum anywhere to have an 'afterparty' to discuss what came up during the webinar. So the webinar happened, there was a good discussion, and then everyone dispersed. But someone familiar with the webinar's contents will probably enjoy the question and answer document which we worked on after the webinar was concluded.

Interesting Websites about "Gov20" Law and Issues in Washington State

I'm looking forward to an appearance tonight on "Government 2.0 on Blog Talk Radio" with Barb Chamberlain of Washington State University. I thought I'd open up this file to place URLs of items that may come up in the conversation. I'll probably shape this up after the interview so it's got the URLs that actually did come up in the conversation.

Dated events:

Friends, Faux Pas, Tweets and Traps Webinar: Jan. 7 Discussion with Ramsey Ramerman, an assistant city attorney in Everett about legal issues particularly of interest to Washington State.

Open Gov West: Workshops and an "Unconference' about Digital Democracy: Jan. 29 and 30.

Legal Issues Special to Washington:

Here's my original post about the conference where the attorney and I gave people conflicting advice. The two of us are now joining forces to present the webinar mentioned above on Jan. 7, hosted by the Association of Washington Cities.

Here's a post about the Arizona metadata case that mentions the phrasing in Washington State law that we all have to be aware of: wwww.ediscovery.law

This then leads to the Shoreline case, where there are a number of writeups. These offer different, but equally interesting, perspectives. If you have time, you might as well start with the actual court decision.

Evergreen Freedom Foundation

Center for Justice

This document, filed by an attorney for the city, is the most favorable rendition of what happened from the city's perspective, and discusses the metadata involved.

Finally, I just found this, what seems to be an excellent and up-to-date review of legal issues about metadata: Illinois Municipal Review

Elected Officials Will Rely on New Media During Disaster

'Course when it happens, no one tells you that you and your community will be landing in the middle of a social communications revolution.

Nope. Instead ... You sip your morning coffee, all relaxed cuz everyone else in the house is asleep, and it's just you and your coffee and Twitter. You look at your TweetDeck column that searches for all references to "Lakewood WA."

And you can't believe what you read. You just do't want to believe it. And then you find out it's true.

And then you just go numb. And tear up. And go numb again.

For hours and hours and hours.

So that was my Sunday last. It's probably not wise to write definitive blog posts when you've been going to bed late and waking up at 5 early every morning since then. But one thing I do know: elected officials HAVE to learn social media and new tools of communication.

Why is very clear. It's not just that you will be one of the first people to learn about a problem or disaster, though of course that's helpful too. More importantly, the city of Lakewood seized up and focused during this horrific tragedy. The focus was on a crime, on four families, on those who remain, on emergency operations, and on daily operations. As a city council member, I can say nearly everything I learned about the incident, and shared with constituents, came via media. As just one example, the next day, the only way I found out that our city was having a news conference at a particular time and place was from radio, 90 minutes before the event.

I was the only other council member besides the mayor who was able to attend the conference, standing among the media reporters whose pack I once belonged to. I was able to look out officers in the eye as they stood proudly in front of their station. I suspect they had other things on their mind, but it was an important moment for me.

True, radio is an older form of media, but the vast majority of the information I got came from Twitter. I was able to inform my constituents and answer their questions via Twitter, Facebook and my blog only because of new media. The first time I learned that I would be in a memorial service Tuesday at a certain time and place was by way of Twitter.

I'm sure that will be true for your city as well if you get caught up in something like this, unless you've got a huge communications staff sitting around. Lakewood has one city manager and one communications director, and they had more to do than worry about keeping their city council informed. This event was a tsunami. Nothing was normal. Nothing about it should be normal. Something like this should NEVER happen again.

There are probably newer links on this topic - how social media informed this breaking news event - but the one I know about is well-written and found on John Cook's TechFlash blog. If you are an elected official, it is worth reading this post closely. Think about where and how in your particular community both old media, new media and all of your citizens will participate in the communications revolution.

As it is, Lakewood is catching its breath and is communicating very effectively, including a powerful website. By the way, we welcome suggestions for it.

So that's all for now. If you are another elected official, the message is clear: learn the tools. You need those tools today to be effective. The lesson here is that someday you may someday REALLY need them.

Update, Saturday morning: Another good link about how some Seattle media used new communication tools to be the first to find, announce news: http://crosscut.com/2009/12/03/media/19419/

Cautions from an Unknown Prophet of 1873

The April 6, 1873, issue of The New York Times had an anonymous story that's well worth reflecting on for its take on modern times. There are implications for politics, and those who conduct public policy with all these new social media tools.

I found this article, "The Drama of the Future," from the book "Buffalo Bill's America." The book tells part of the long story of how both the truth and fiction of the Old West got baked into U.S. culture.

What the article seems to be about is the fad of famous figures playing themselves on stage. For example, Wild Bill Hickok, before his death, briefly starred on Broadway in exploits supposedly based on real-life adventures. Buffalo Bill built a whole long career on doing this. That's the two of them, pictured before one of their shows together, at right with Texas Jack Omohundro in the middle.

As the article states,

"The gist of the movement, as thus portended, consists in going beyond the old idea to "paint matters living as they rise," and to illustrate current history through the painting of actual events, by the real actors in them.

"By this means, the theatre may be made a kind of pictorial disseminator of the news of the day, and public curiosity as regards noted individuals may be gratified by having them appear on the boards in dramas depicting their own exploits."

Now, the article goes on to give one example of this trend that could be completely serious, namely, an Arctic explorer who uses his real tools, pots, pans, etc.., to illustrate the adventures he was just on. The article then seems to make fun of its own idea by suggesting Brigham Young could also illustrate his life on stage accompanied by "a score or so of real wives."

If you are like me, you're already thinking of reality television and how much of this has come to pass. Some very popular and very real programs feature the supposed girlfriends or boyfriends or even spouses of both famous and 'everyday' people. We can imagine a long-dead writer from the New York Times smiling knowingly in his grave.

So what's this got to do with politics?

What I wonder is if the person smart enough to pick out this trend in 1873 is smart enough to predict how it might be abused. Hear this, toward the article's conclusion:

"By and by, a still further step forward may be taken, and we may find people deliberately seeing strange adventures, or even courting deadly perils, with the idea of thus acquiring attractive material for a success on the boards."

Of course, "balloon boy" comes to mind. But what of the politician? Right now, any of us in politics can perform on the public stage by Tweeting or posting on Facebook or a photo site or may other forums exactly what we are doing. At what point can we be sure the politician is not now doing what she or he should be doing, but instead what looks good on Facebook or Flickr? Can we trust ourselves to know? Are we going to consciously or unconsciously subordinate wondrous communications tools to create the dramas we enjoy chronicling? And will the voter reward this behavior by saying "Thank you for communicating with us!"

The article concludes:

"Some such thought may have been in the mind of Shakespeare when he made Jacques tell us that "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players;" for the lives of most people are already more histrionic than they think, or own, and consciously or unconsciously to themselves, there are infinitely more actors and actresses in real life than there can possibly be on the stage."

Just something to think about.

You can read the whole article by way of this link. Photo credit's here.

Does Interacting with Elected Officials and Bureaucrats Matter?

Disillusioned citizens: Had some interesting reaction to my recent city council blog post about a controversial action in Lakewood. Basically, state government is throwing Lakewood under the bus - or in this case, under the train - to reroute trains through town for benefit of Seattle to Portland commuters to shave six minutes off the route.

The pros and cons don't matter in terms of this posting. What matters is the reaction I got from a couple folks about
my blog posting that encourages people to write state and federal officials.

Here are quotes from some of the responses ...

I would appreciate your suggestions as to the most appropriate next step and assistance in preparing a letter format we can use so the message from our neighborhood is consistent and articulating our concerns clearly. We are also concerned that we are careful not to undercut the efforts being made by City staff to force change upon the State DOT.

So far only one neighbor has expressed doubt about our opposition and he said it is useless and unwise to oppose the state. Yes, I did point out that we had a revolution to establish our right to oppose government heavy-handedness, however, he seems not to think it relevant (must be a tory!!!).

I am so disturbed by this news, that I am physically ill. The future looks bleak for us in the Nyanza area. I have written to every single person Walter Neary suggested on his webpage. Will it really matter?

Notice the ideas running through here.

There's a concern about whether a citizen writing a letter could somehow interfere with what government is doing.

There's a concern that it is useless and unwise to oppose a government.

There's a concern that corresponding with officials may not matter.

I've spoken to many people who've been even more direct; they don't see the point of commenting to government.

To me, there's a huge tension between these real citizens and all the "stuff" I see floating around the Internet: breathless Twitternouncements with the hashtag #gov20 and references to stuff like open source data and Drupal. Heck - we need to get citizens thinking their participation even matters. Can the Government 2.0 movement do that? Or all we all running around Tweeting, Facebooking and generating meetings and workshops for our own amusement?

The real question is whether our use of these tools will rebuild credibility with citizens. That's the real challenge and the real goal.

Photo credit: Peter Halen and The Tacoma News Tribune.

Writing the Night Before About The Morning After: My Advice to Newly Elected Officials

It's a few hours from when the polls close in Washington State. Around the country in different time zones, people are being elected to local and state office. The official declaration of who wins and loses will come in future days, but in a lot of cases, it's pretty clear or will be clear from the vote tonight who will serve in office.

So ... If you are one of those who gets elected tonight, congratulations. Elected office is a wonderful adventure. It's a call to make a difference. You will now have a real vote to make that difference.

Here's something you probably already know but can now experience: People are going to look at what you say and write and do in a new way. It's going to be odd. Even some of the people you've known for awhile will treat you differently. That's because you're now a politician. Being with a "politician" pushes buttons on some people, regardless of who the politician is. When I first started blogging as a city council member, I had the voice of the journalist that I had been. The actually really upset some people, and it took me way too long to figure that out. You're a political leader now. You have to act like one.

Whatever your background, the tools that helped you get elected now become tools that suddenly develop a much sharper edge.

Many of these new elected officials have used Twitter, Facebook, and other Internet tools to talk with voters and others, and thus, to help get elected. Obviously that's good. We communicate more fluently and broadly than our ancestors could have dreamed of. Communication is the fuel of democracy.

What I worry about is, so where do these new elected-officials-to-be wake up tomorrow and turn to for advice? I hope that if you are one of them, you will wake up and know you now need advice. These communications tools are new, and what you can or cannot do as a political leader with these tools is still being decided in courts around the country.

In other words, when those election numbers came up, your world changed. I have two pieces of advice then. Here is one piece of advice: Don't write anything on Facebook or a similar place that you wouldn't want to see in print in the morning paper or read aloud to you at a local restaurant. I don't care if you only have three friends on Facebook. Doesn't matter. You write something juicy, it's going to be known: if not now, then later.

Be aware of that. Please, don't be someone who puts something jarring on Facebook or Twitter and then claims to be surprised anyone noticed. You make us all look silly.

Your voice suddenly quadrupled in volume; whether you want it or not, you now wear a megaphone. You are now in the public spotlight. Enjoy it. You wanted this job. Step up. The spotlight can be bright, sometimes blinding, but it's part of the role.

Second piece of advice, by far the more serious: Don't break the law inadvertently by using communication tools the wrong way. I can think of one city council member who may or may not get re-elected tonight who helped to cost her city a fortune in legal damages because she was accused of participating in secret meetings even before taking the oath of office. There are many other examples of people who meant well but cost their city big money, and, more importantly, broke the law.

Don't break the law and inadvertently hold a secret meeting. It is very easy for someone who gets elected to keep doing what they have been: using Twitter, Facebook, and email to communicate with others. And you should. These tools are amazing. Just be aware that if you start or continue communicating with other future or current elected officials, you run a big risk of breaking the law. I can't say if that's true everywhere, but it is true in Washington state. You are responsible for knowing the rules where you are.

If you did just get elected in Washington state, and for considerations on how you conduct yourself now, I recommend reading the "Don't Hold a Meeting" section in the Washington state wiki that some of us put together: http://citycouncilbloghandbook.wikispaces.com/Legal+Issues+and+Guidance

If you currently use social media or other Internet tools to talk to a lot of other elected officials, then it would be very, very smart to read this post with guidance from the Washington State Attorney General.

So that's the advice for the morning after.

Oh ... and have fun. This job does not last forever, nor should it. You've got the spotlight and a share of the podium for a limited time. Enjoy and make use of it while you can.

The power and potential to inform about budgets

'Tis the season for budget hearings in local governments across our land. Budgets are not particularly sexy. But budgets are important for the conduct of local government. Budgets are where local governments enshrine priorities by encasing priorities in specific allocations of cold, hard cash. The city council bloggers around the country who write about budgets have been doing a great job educating people. As you might expect, there are lots of different approaches.

Douglas Athas of Garland, Texas, tells people just how much in debt their government is on their behalf. He's got a real gift among us council bloggers for his use of graphics to explain things. I don't know issues in his town, but in Lakewood, Wash., if 45 percent of our budget went to pay debt the voters woulda strung us up by now.

Matthew Petty of Fayetteville, Ark., finds himself in dialogue not only on his blog but on Facebook and the papers over the 'T word:' Taxes.

Seattle's Tim Burgess directs people to video.

Alderman Garry Schroeder of LaSalle, Ill., gives some heck to the local newspapers and his peers on the council, but more importantly, says he's setting the record straight on a proposal.

And in what I thought was the funniest post, playing with references to clairvoyance, Dallas' Angela Hunt talks about what happened after the previous budget was passed and what collisions may be expected this year. She also has some budget town hall video on her blog, which combines very well with the printed material including a third element, Excel spreadsheets of her own design. Impressive.

As I read or skim all these items, I think: how did all these things get said and distributed *before* all the digital tools we have today on the Internet? Just looking over our partial compilation of the city council members who blog can get you excited about the growing potential of digital democracy.

Photo credit: And thanks to East Carolina U for a great mood photo of money!

Washington Considers Creating an Agency to enforce Open Meetings and Records Laws

The Washington state auditor, Brian Sonntag, and attorney general, Rob McKenna, have set up an open government task force to get at one of the big problems with Washington state open public meetings and records laws. Right now, the only way you can enforce them is to go to court.

A slew of references about current issues, controversies and potential solutions for issues about open government can be found at the attorney general's website.

Clearly, what a lot of members of the group seem to be moving toward is formation of an agency that enforces public records laws and open meetings laws. The idea is that there has to be something better than the current system. If I am unhappy with an agency's response in Washington, I have pretty much one choice: sue. And that means hiring a lawyer, dealing with courts, and delay. That's expensive and slow, as a famous case out of King County shows.

If the idea of an agency doing this sounds strange, it's actually not a new idea at all. The committee that met yesterday morning in Olympia got on the phone with the chief enforcement officer of Pennsylvania's open government laws, Terry Mutchler. She says that the agency has the power to command governments to follow the law and give citizens what they want. That certainly sounds appealing. And they also have credibility when they have to explain to citizens that certain records may not be available under the law. More information about what they are doing in Pennsylvania is available here.

The direct link to the Penn agency is here. Take a look. It's impressive.

Here's the handbook and guide for citizens

Here's something that anyone would find useful: A list of what requests have been approved, or not.

And here's something that at least *ought* to prevent lawsuits: informal mediation between the requestor and the agency.

The committee also discussed something that most of us never expected to come out of the public records act. There is a small, but significant group of people who file bizarrely huge numbers of records act requests that cities have to respond to. In Lakewood, we have one fellow who we figure costs us $40,000 a year in staff time. Ms. Mutchler of Pennsylvania said nearly every government she knows of has one of these folks.

It would only inflame these folks if I speculate on why they do it, and the reasons vary. Let's just say that even advocates for open government who were at the table in Olympia generally agree that this is a problem and, to an extent, real squandering of public resources. This problem is much trickier to solve, because citizens do have a right to inquire of their government.

And finally, for another view: A guy I used to work with who thankfully is still at The Olympian, Brad Shannon, wrote a news story about the meeting.

The committee will meet again in November to recommend something, presumably, to the Legislature. I'll post an update then.

Hope it helps digital democracy

Can't wait to see how this is applied to local government websites. Power to the people.

in reference to: Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

Useful Legal Advice about Twitter, Facebook and Blogs

Washington attorney Ramsey Ramerman, who has been mentioned here before, has a very useful column in the current issue of the Association of Washington Cities magazine. I'd call this required reading for anyone dipping into, or currently immersed in, the waters of social media. If you know someone who is a candidate for office, be sure to give this to the person because they would not normally get the magazine. Both Ramsey and the AWC are to be commended for compiling and presenting this material.

You might find it easier to click on the link below, which should open the document at its source so you can move it around and read it.

Government and Social Media: The Legal Issues to Consider

View more documents from Walter Neary.

Among the highlights:

- Don't post anything you don't expect to see in the local paper or blogs. This stuff we Tweet, post or 'Facebook' is public regardless of who you think might see it.

- If your site allows comments, don't moderate them. You could violate the First Amendment.

- Be extremely careful so council members don't start deliberating via social media. That breaks the law.

- There are court cases going on now concerning what material you have to archive from all this social media to comply with public records rules. Be aware of the latest rules and guidelines, and act smart so you don't get fined for failing to produce something (and there's a link from his article to the blog of Ramsey's former law firm to get the latest news)

And that brings up a personal note. Ramsey developed his interests as a private attorney and has recently become assistant city attorney in Everett. That's great for him and Everett, but it means he will have a lot more on his plate than social media. We can only hope the officials there can give him some time to take advantage of his knowledge of social media. Government attorneys need to provide more of this sort of advice, and Everett is to be commended for the time they've already given Ramerman.

A Soundtrack for the Collective Sound of Democracy: Crunching

Mostly during vacation, I shut down thinking about digital democracy. But not all the time. What I heard during vacation was the soundtrack of digital democracy: full citizen participation and steady progress.

And this soundtrack, like those recordings you hear of whales or dolphins in the water, comes from nature.

This is where we find out who has been snorkeling and who hasn't. I snorkeled for the first time only about a year ago. I was mystified not by something I saw, but something I heard.

In some areas, you dip your head into the water, and you hear ... crunching.

The water conveys sound broadly and disperses soundly widely. So when you hear something under water, it can be difficult to pinpoint a location. What I heard during that first time snorkeling was crunching, coming from everywhere.

Turns out it was. This is the sound of creatures like the parrotfish (and assorted critters like them, but let's pick on the parrotfish for simplicity). What the parrotfish does is pretty amazing. He or she wanders the bottom, and bites coral and rock. He or she extracts the living matter, and then gets rid of the crunched material.

That makes what we call sand. One parrotfish, with his or her tiny mouthfuls, makes hundreds of pounds of sand a year.

Now that's an accomplishment.

So what's this got to do with democracy? Suppose for a moment that the conduct of public policy is as important as eating. Maybe it's not that important, but just suppose. People have to get along somehow. So do fish. Notice how the fish approach the Herculean task of eating and generating sand.

You will notice that the fish in a cove do not sit back and elect seven other fish to do the chewing for them.

They don't elect a city council of fish to go out and do the chewing and be responsible for handing out the food.

The fish in the cove also don't sit back and let a few other fish activists do all the work.

Nope. The cove reverberates with the sound of hundreds or thousands of fish, all chewing.

That's what digital democracy on the Internet should be. It shouldn't be blips of posts and dialogue from council members, from staff, from just a few individual citizens who happen to know how to Tweet or post. There should be a way, someday, for a digital dashboard to light up, or sound off, to measure massive citizen participation: Not just the participation of a few.

And that's the trick for Gov 2.0 and digital democracy. What forms of hardware, software and public practices will take us to a digital democracy as participatory as that of the conduct of the parrot fish? Can't we rise to their standard?

Photo credit: Count on National Geographic to tell us about nature ... and the parrotfish.

Elected Officials Should Get on Twitter If Only to Listen

I recently asked a bunch of folks how they are getting information about a particular topic when they don't read newspapers. Not that long ago, the answer used to be news websites and blogs; more and more, the answer is, Twitter.

It makes sense. In a lot of the circles where I run, including elected officials, people unfamiliar with the service think it's all about people Tweeting what they ate for breakfast. Well, it sometimes is. But Twitter also allows people to exchange links. When I look back, I'm amazed at the amount of information I've taken over the transom via Twitter. It's yet another reason elected officials should sign up and listen, not only about their communities but other topics of interest.

That's my way of introducing a broad theme that I write thanks to all this information, Hints of the Future. Each of these sites are a sign of something that's bound to grow and develop. I found some of these sites via Twitter messages, and some through good ol' fashioned blogs.

Online City Council: This just floors me. You can send a Twitter message or post to Facebook a *part* of a council meeting that might interest people. There's a nice overview about the significance of this site here.

Why would this ability come in handy? It's a lot more significant than breakfast. This is all about informing and involving people. In my town, for example, we had a political dispute about some folks who didn't want to fund social services programs that serve Latinos and gay people. This is an incredibly shocking discussion for this century. But almost no one knew about the situation because we don't have a community print newspaper. We just have a big metro daily that strains under declining staff numbers to report anything, and a local news blog that can't afford a reporting staff. It would have been amazing to be able to send out a Tweet saying, 'Hey, watch this broadcast.' I bet we would have got some public feedback.

Idea exchanges: If someone asks me what Government 2.0 would look like in, say, a year, I think of a site like this. People exchanging ideas. That's what it's all about. I found this site by way of a Tweet, like described earlier, from Seattle tech whiz Bill Schrier.

Reacting to change: I am fascinated with how big ol' staid government reacts to change. Here's something found on Twitter, a story about a city that decided to ban access to Facebook. Expect to see a lot on this subject in coming months as governments try to decide how to interact with the public via Facebook. I am liking it more and more because it's one place where you don't get anonymous comments.

Good models: Several Twitter posts let the world know about model websites such as one from Virginia Beach. More and more websites are going to look like the sites listed at that link, and push the limits of providing service and information. Thanks to Twitter, one can know about these model sites now and see not only the present but a brighter future.

That's long enough but there are plenty of other examples of great sites that one can learn about via Twitter. One can expect more and more services to spring up to aggregate and sort through the raging floods of Twitter posts today. For now, most elected officials as a baseline will want to monitor what's being said in and about their community. I've got a post on my own council website on how listening via Twitter led me to convey a citizen concern. One can expect more and more communities and elected officials will take advantage of these tools to better serve citizens.

This is Publishing

Listened in Wednesday on the C-SPAN coverage of the Potomac Forum discussion of new technologies and government: the Gov 2.0 Leadership, Collaboration, and Public Engagement Symposium. One phrase kept rattling through my head later in the day, stated by Jack Holt, Senior Strategist for Emerging Media for the Department of Defense, Defense Media Activity.

The Defense Department is doing a lot of innovative things in terms of communicating with the public. Holt was asked if there are risks that information might be revealed. His response was, you have to remember that social media is publishing. And he went on to say, there are rules when you publish something: rules about defamation, for example. One must, or should, follow the rules when publishing. That's a very productive line of thinking, because every local elected official should be familiar with the rules of the publishing road if he or she is going to become a publisher.

I'm going to dive into the wiki guide to a local official's use of social media some of us have been working on and add that phrasing. Remember, you are publishing. As detailed in my post a couple days ago, some government officials have got into trouble for thinking what they are doing on Twitter or Facebook is whispering. It ain't. It's distribution of a form previously undreamed of.

Meanwhile, the conference continues, and anyone who looks at Twitter can keep track of the action.

Tweeting Success

Wanted to crosspost a case history: how we used Twitter in Lakewood to recognize and fix a problem.

The Politician as Human Being

Lately what's been on my mind as a blogging councilman is what is going to happen in November after the election. We're going to have a lot of new local elected officials who have used social media tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and such in order to communicate and thus, in order to get elected. They are going to come out of the gate expecting to use these tools as local elected officials.

There isn't, to my knowledge, any way of orienting these folks to how they should behave once elected. So my plan right now is try to convene some other Washington elected officials and see if we can come up with something in a hurry.

Why am I concerned? Well, here's the deal. Three of the people who use social media in this state ran into trouble:

1. A councilman from Olympia got embarrassed by use of social media. I've known Jeff for a long time. He is a smart guy, and a conscientious person. If he can make a mistake, so can I.

2. And I did. I blogged during a council meeting when people don't expect you to type during a meeting, and paid dearly for it. Good intentions don't count. I don't know if I am as smart or as conscientious as Jeff, but I sure try. So that's two of us now.

3. More recently, a sister in the use of social media to communicate, a councilwoman from Mukilteo, got embarrassed via Twitter. Her situation also shows council members could maybe have known a little more about what business should be done in public and how meetings should be conducted. It's good the discussion among councilmembers came to light via her post, but maybe that wasn't the best way.

And it's clearly not a Washington thing. A political figure in Oregon was caught very publicly unawares because he apparently did not realize Facebook is a public forum whatever your privacy settings might claim.

None of us are idiots. All of us got caught unawares. It's up to us to come up with something to prevent others from stumbling over great tools. Some of us have been working on a wiki about the usual of social media that might help a lot. But surely there's more we can do.