Web we can

There's much speculation now in the blogosphere about how President-elect Barack Obama will transfer his internet cache to governing. This past week, he launched change.gov, where people with BarackObama.com withdrawal can go see what the transition plans are and sign up for alerts.

Campaign finance laws won't allow Obama to transfer the millions of names and email addresses he's collected from his campaign over to the White House. But he can build a new list to use to communicate with the American public about policy in novel ways, says TechPresident's Kevin Thurman:

"This list can be used in any way the President normally communicates with the public – everything from breaking news, pushing legislation, to holiday cards. It is a chance to build a list that is less partisan, less political than any that has yet to be built. It is a chance to use email to persuade Congress, the media, and engage a new generation in not just the government, but in governing. It should act as the 21st century call to service, done through the internet."

Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo writes that it will be a much bigger challenge to mobilize people to unite around a policy agenda than a simple act--voting for Obama. That said, the possibilities are intriguing. As he points out, if Obama hits a wall with Congress over health care policy, he could directly ask the people on his list who support his plan to contact their representatives in Congress. In the past, this is the sort of work that's been done by advocacy groups.

Manjoo also speaks to the point of what Obama would likely do if people start using the new White House site to oppose his policies: nothing. That's what he did when a group of his supporters used BarackObama.com last summer to oppose his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Obama did nothing to censor the activity on his site. Instead, he let them be and actually engaged them by posting a lengthy explanation about his decision. This seemed to work, says Manjoo:

I called up Chrisi West, a 29-year-old Obama supporter who opposed his position on FISA but who, nevertheless, went on to become one of the campaign's most active supporters in her home state of Virginia. West told me that Obama's response on the eavesdropping bill helped convince her that the online community wasn't incidental to Obama—that he actually respected what people thought of his positions. That kind of openness only pushed people to work harder, West said, and when he takes office, "we'll all be ready to jump in when we're needed."

Unleashing the power of internet needn't stop with the White House. There are people thinking hard right about how to make the entire edifice of the federal government more transparent and accessible. The internet isn't the be-all and end-all of everything--there are still the troubling fact that there are many people who have sporadic or no access to it. Nevertheless, these are intriguing developments. My mouse is in hand, and I'm ready to click.

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