30-Mar-09 9:00 AM CST

Web 2.0 in the White House: What is the impact of Social Media on the American Government?

When President Barack Obama was just another hopeful on the campaign trail, we saw him embrace Web 2.0 technologies in a way that has morphed the old way of campaigning into something new and unprecedented.

Now that President Obama is in office, he has taken his use of technology to an even higher level with his special town hall titled "Open for Questions" that aired online last Thursday on the WhiteHouse.gov.

Ed Schipul recently weighed in on the topic of Obama's town hall meeting in an article by David Beizer published on Federal Computer Week.

“What’s interesting is you usually see innovation in local communities and [then] working its way upward in society,” said Ed Schipul, a social-media expert and chief executive officer of Schipul – The Web Marketing Company. “What is surprising is that we are now seeing innovation from the executive branch going down.”

A marketing professor at Saint Joseph’s University, Scott Testa, thinks Obama's town hall will lead to the adoption of similar practices by other agencies.

“The lead is definitely going to be the president’s office and the administration, and it will filter out to other areas of the government,” Testa said. “Historically, governments have been late adopters, so I think it will be a wait-and-see situation as some of these early initiatives come online.”

While Schipul agrees with Testa that Obama's green light for the use of Web 2.0 will be a wonderful outlet for the government, he does warn that it may take some time for all of the agencies who adopt these new policies to understand exactly how to use them.

“We’re not out of the woods yet because we don’t necessarily have a way to respond to 92,000 people [during an online town hall],” Schipul said.

According to Tom Kellermann, vice president of security awareness at Core Security Technologies, security is also going to be a big issue on the Web 2.0 frontier.

Agencies, for example, should test Web applications for security vulnerabilities and their user communities for their susceptibility to client-side application attacks to manage the risks posed by Web 2.0, said Kellerman.

For more information on President Obama's town hall, check out his reca p on the White House website.

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Comments:

Total Comments: 3

Caitlin on 30-Apr-09 12:31 PM permalink
That link should be http://tr.im/k7N7 !
Caitlin on 30-Apr-09 12:30 PM permalink
I think it was so successful because Obama made the election accessible to people. He made people feel like their small contribution - whether it be a few dollar donation, attending a neighborhood rally, talking to their friends on Facebook or Twitter, wearing a tshirt... could really add up to something great. And I hope to see that spirit continue. Obama's campaign had about 3.4 million individual donors. 25% of his money came from people donating $200 or less (USA Today- http://tr.im/
Jason on 3-Apr-09 2:48 PM permalink
Obama's campaign gained the support it needed by focusing on the younger crowd, a crowd that can influence others. They understood where to find them and how to turn them into soldiers for their message, plus they made easy for these new followers to share his message. This campaign is one for the ages and many of the same tactics will be emulated for years to come http://www.thesemblog.com/2008/08/google-website.html