US House Adopts New Third-Party Web Site Rules 49
GovIT Geek writes to tell us that third-party websites will no longer be off limits for members of the US House, provided that they use it for "official purposes" and not personal, commercial, or campaign purposes. "The rules are seen by House Administration Chairman Robert Brady as a compromise between several proposals under consideration in recent months and are closely aligned with those circulated by the Senate Rules Committee last week. [...] 'These new guidelines are a step in the right direction for a Congress that has been behind the technological curve for too long,' Boehner said. 'By encouraging the use of emerging and established new media tools, Congress is sending the message that we want to speak to citizens, and receive feedback, in the most open and accessible manner possible.'"
I didn't know that they were off-limits (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone has, for example, a linkedIn account, do they have to close it if they get elected?
Hopefully... (Score:3, Interesting)
This could lead to us being able to get YouTube videos from Barack Obama if he's elected (adding to the 1400+ he and his campaign already have [youtube.com]). Of course, John McCain just posts his campaign ads [youtube.com]...
Or maybe thinking open, ongoing communication from representatives is too idealistic.
(Yes, I realize this applies to the House and not the Executive branch.)
Franking regulations (Score:2, Interesting)
Congressmen like to use government funds to push their next campaigns, and the campaigns of allies. Franking regulation is needed to stop such abuses.
LDS Church local unit website precedent (Score:1, Interesting)
Back in the Wild Wild West of Web 1.0, the LDS Church (Mormon church) had a hodgepodge of 3rd party sites built by savvy members who were given that responsibility, and it acted purely as a supplement to the newsletter handed out on Sunday.
As more people got used to looking at a site than getting the newsletter, they had a problem with not every unit having a page, multiple pages and out of date pages for a unit, blatant image copyright violation, links to copyright violations that were in direct violation of the precedent they set: linking to copyright violations is a violation of the copyright itself, etc (sorry for the laundry list).
To combat this, they built a template that would provide the protection from copyright violation for the main organization, while allowing even unskilled church members to make a site. It was hosted on the church's servers, and was extended as needs presented themselves.
I would think a simple solution such as this would be a way to simplify the interaction between congressmen and their constituents (analagous to the franking regulations above: standard set of contents, scheduling etc to foster transparency). It might also force them to consider open source and maybe provide enough bandwidth to avoid getting slashdotted over every outrageous bill they tried to pass: "I'm sorry, but I just don't get that much criticism. I get a flood of comments and then nothing for about an hour, then a flood, then nothing."
Bad news for open government (Score:4, Interesting)
Allowing representatives to use third-party services for official purposes, rather than government-run official IT infrastructure, enables them to hide their operations in plain sight. This is much like gov.palin@hotmail.com and Bush using RNC services while in office.
With these new rules in place, official goverment records that should be open to scrutiny will be spread across thousands of privately-controlled servers. Oversight will be impossible.