I’ve written before about the federal government’s experimentation with blogging. It’s a “let’s wait and see” thing for me but mostly, I’d have to be convinced that it’s not all about spin.
A little over a week ago, Democratic presidential candidate and Senator (D-NY), Hillary Clinton indicated a desire to employ bloggers throughout the federal government. From Wired:
“We should even have a government blogging team where people in the agencies are constantly telling all of you, the taxpayers, the citizens of America, everything that’s going on so that you have up-to-the-minute information about what your government is doing, so that you too can be informed, and hold the government accountable,” Clinton said.
Clinton made the remark during a packed evening rally held at a health and sports center in Manchester, New Hampshire, Monday night — just hours before voters there began casting votes in the nation’s first primary.
I love blogging and I love live-blogging so the idea that we could watch As The Government Churns on our computers, cellphones and PDAs is seductive at first.
Sonia Arrison of TechNewsWorld likes the idea:
In politics, more information is generally a good thing, and that’s what Web 2.0 helps to provide. The best everyone can hope for, not only during but also after the election, is that new tech tools provide citizens with better ways to understand and watch government. The more transparent government becomes, the less likely it is to be corrupt, and that’s something everyone would like to see.
Although Howard Mortman, in his Weekly Standard piece, “Blogger in Chief?” writes:
If it’s government accountability she wants, Sen. Clinton might do well to check out what White House press secretary Dana Perino had to say from Abu Dhabi on her Trip Notes blog:
“Dinner consisted of a lot of food–and it was all cooked in a traditional way, in large metal boxes with very hot coals. The food cooks for a long time–my favorite was the Sea Bream . . . and then for dessert I enjoyed the dates.”
Who knew that our leading government officials are, in their hearts, really repressed food bloggers?
Now just so you don’t think I pulled out the one silly line from Perino’s blog, consider that she also dishes up this observation: “Conversations ranged from educational student exchanges, renewable energy, foreign investment, sustainable development and . . . Seinfeld. Yes, Seinfeld.”
Thus, my blogging friends, the first government blog truly about nothing.
If Clinton gets her way, we’ll probably have many more.
As for me, I tend to put blogs into an RSS feed, and then, that gets full and I only take time to read the ones that really matter to me on any particular day. And then, I realize just how few I follow, of the several hundred I like.
Would Clinton create a Nielson rating system? Would there be new award categories for government blogs in the proliferating blog awards available? Could the citizen users control the employment future, depending on our reviews of each blogger?
But what really struck me is how many federal government jobs would be created if Clinton’s suggestion was implemented. And how would the bloggers be vetted? What background information would be relevant to have to have and to screen out? Would their blogs be eligible for Technorati? Sheesh – that would really throw off those rankings.
And would you trust the government bloggers? I mean, how much do you trust government workers right now? I’ve had excellent interactions with IRS folks around the country for different needs and even the TSA people in the airports aren’t so bad. Most career government employees are probably as trustworthy as anyone else in the U.S.
But government bloggers? Would they be political, presidential or civil service appointments?
Sigh. Blogging. Not as simple as you think, Senator Clinton.