Stirring The Pot: Ari Herzog on Gov 2.0

by Loki on April 19, 2009 · 0 comments

herzog

One of the first voices I ran across when I started to test drive Twitter was Ari Herzog. He was all over the place it seemed. I had already been familiar with some of his work on Mashable and the Huffington Post, and found his thoughts on transparency to quite interesting.

At that time the Presidential election was looming and every Internet channel imaginable was humming like a Tuvan throat singer. Twitter’s infamous Fail Whale was sighted frequently and links, snark, and political data were inescapable.

As the Obama campaign showed us, the Internet has now had a direct and massive impact on our nation’s political process. Ari has been staying at the forefront of the intersection between social media and government, or Gov 2.0 for some time now. Recently he kindly agreed to share his views and knowledge (and a great cookie recipe) with us in the following interview (conducted via email).

In His Words: Ari Herzog is the principal of Ari Herzog & Associates, providing online media strategies for business and government. Leveraging 10 years of experience in information technology, community journalism, and government administration, Ari uses a holistic approach to explain why it is important to embrace the social web, focusing on different, customized approaches for every client. For instance, every company does not need to blog and every PR firm does not need to tweet. By the same token, every company needs to blog and every PR firm needs to tweet. Confused yet? Ari can help you cut through the Web 2.0 clutter.

The author of AriWriter, where he provides strategies and tips on social media and online marketing, Ari is also a guest writer at the Huffington Post and Mashable. He created the Twitter Fan Wiki for U.S. Government in August 2008; and recently started working part-time for Social Media Today responsible for blogger recruitment, front-end programming, and management for the Sustainable Cities Collective and Governing People online communities. You can follow him on Twitter, FriendFeed, GovLoop, and a host of other social networking sites.

Loki: Since Gov 2.0 is your focus would you share your perspective on extreme transparency as applied in a governmental setting? How important is total transparency as a goal? What do you see as the largest obstacles to implementing it?

Ari Herzog: If you rewind time to January 20, 2009, the first White House blog post was written by new media director Macon Phillips, where he expressed President Barack Obama’s commitment to the tenets of communication, transparency, and participation. Macon wrote, “WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.” Recalling Obama’s campaign platform, one of the items he planned to initiate was the ability to enable citizens to read, review, and offer feedback on non-emergency legislation. Three months later, that has yet to occur, despite many bills across the Oval Office desk. From my perspective, there are three major obstacles:

  1. outdated infrastructure, e.g. the White House received legal approval to use GMail email addresses in lieu of official dot-gov accounts.
  2. outdated or nonexistent policies, e.g. the Department of Defense has no policy on social technologies, despite military branches and Pentagon agencies using such tools.
  3. lack of streamlining across government agencies, e.g. some departments are blocking access to Twitter while others allow it; or some departments use Google Analytics to track web statistics, while others use WebTrends.

The case study I frequently cite is South Korea, where 11,000 emails are sent annually to the mayor of Seoul and he personally replies to each one. The city also offers free internet training classes to improve citizen participation; and provides online learning through podcasts and video-on-demand. Government meetings are streamlined online and across TV, and citizens can interact in real-time. Should I add that every Seoul citizen can pay taxes online, and their e-taxes are stored on government servers for five years?

How about Singapore, where an internet system called SingPass enables every citizen over age 15 to use one username and one password to access 50 government services?

For a U.S. example, you may enjoy reading an interview with Dave Fletcher, the Chief Technology Officer for the state of Utah. Among the state’s best practices are 800+ online services, a 24×7 chat session, and blogging employees. Last fall, Utah became the first state in the country to close Fridays, due to the online engagement.

Loki: Would you tell our readers a bit about the Twitter Fan Wiki of U.S. Government that you started last August, and any subsequent projects that have grown out of it? What other resources of a similar nature would you advise for those interseted in Gov2.0?

Ari Herzog: I joined Twitter on June 9, 2008 (excluding an older account I created a year earlier but rarely used) and about a month later, started blogging about the congressional Franking Commission which was drafting a memo to ban U.S. Representatives from embedding Youtube videos on government servers and using other commercial social media tools for fear of advertising. While Twitter was not mentioned, John Culberson (R-TX) and Tim Ryan (D-OH) were not convinced and are among a select few in the Congress who started the Twitter bandwagon, spurned on by the Sunlight Foundation’s “Let Our Congress Tweet” campaign last summer.When I saw a lot of bloggers writing about the tweeting Congress, I decided to be proactive and create a wiki (using pbwiki). Chris Messina noticed it, and invited me to shift it to his Twitter Fan Wiki, where he created a page for my then-fledgling list of some Senators, some Representatives, and a few agencies. Over time, others have emailed me to add them and/or signed up for pbwiki accounts and edited entries themselves. Later, other projects launched such as one by Bearingpoint and other by @TweetCongress, both of which are linked at the top of the wiki page.One of the best places for your readers to interact with, if they are interested in government is Govloop. The site is hosted with Ning, and has approximately 9,000 members today, representing government employees and assorted contractors/consultants/evangelists from around the world. There is also a Twitter account @Govloop and both Facebook and LinkedIn groups. That’s a good starting point. If anyone tweets, in particular, follow the #gov20 hashtag (and if you come across anything that’s not tagged that you think is relevant, retweet it and add the tag). Adriel Hampton, who is running for Congress in the 10th district of California, recently created a bot called @Govwiki that will retweet most, if not all, tweets with the tag; so you could alternatively track that.Also of note is Gov 2.0 radio, an internet radio show airing every Sunday night which Adriel, Steve Ressler (Govloop’s creator), and Steve Lunceford (of that Bearingpoint list) co-host.

I’d be remiss without pointing your readers to Governing People, a moderated online community I manage. If you visit it or add it to your RSS reader, you can read daily articles by some of the top bloggers advocating for a smarter government.

Loki: From your writing I know you are a huge proponent of narrowing the digital divide. What do you believe the effects of the current economic tailspin will be on this issue and how so?

Ari Herzog: I recently wrote that smart governments must embrace WiFi. Broadband is the key issue, in my mind, which will narrow the divide. However, that is a pipe dream for many due to costs, available resources (people and equipment), and legislative approvals. I’m not an economist so I won’t go into that angle, but I will say that I live in Massachusetts where the Berkshire mountains are in the west and Cape Cod juts into the ocean to the east. Both areas are ripe with areas of no broadband; it’s common to find residents with dial-up service because it’s so expensive to rig fiber optic lines up mountains or across spits of beach.Until everyone has broadband–or access to it, even if a public or municipal WiFi hotspot zone–not just in Massachusetts or the United States,but around the world, including those parts of South Korea and Singapore that are not connected, we’re not truly connected. That’s why I believe newspapers aren’t going away anytime soon; they’re changing drastically, yes, adopting to social media demands, but there’s an entire generation of senior citizens who only get their news from the printed papers and TV. So, until there is a greater demographic demand for high-speed internet, I don’t see 100% connectivity in the immediate future.

Loki: Since President Obama was elected we seem to see a lot of things being done with social media tools and government. What are your thought’s on the strides being taken on change.gov and other federal outposts on the web? What are your thoughts on the frequently heard assertion that he is “broadcasting, not conversing”?

Ari Herzog: Barack Obama used new media during his campaign, but it wasn’t social. His campaign team did invest in social media tools, e.g. Facebook, Flickr, Myspace, Twitter, and Youtube, but it was all broadcast. If someone tweeted @barackobama or posted a note on the FB wall, nobody from the campaign responded; not to me, anyway. There was a community-building effort on http://my.barackobama.com, but that was more for individuals and grassroots groups to interact with “resources,” not campaign staff. That said, we should applaud the Obama team (and McCain, for that matter) in attempting to be social. Broadcasting on Youtube is a progression from the 2004 presidential campaign, when Howard Dean had his “Dean TV,” and I’m confident the 2012 presidential race will jump again. The only question is what happens between now and then.As for beyond the campaign and election, a lot is going on. Run a search of @govloop or @governingpeople and you can get an idea of things, from the Air Force’s Youtube channe (http://youtube.com/user/AFBlueTube), the Army’s new blog this month (http://armylive.dodlive.mil), a “Municipal Government 2.0″ wiki (http://sites.google.com/site/munigov20) that held a virtual conference recently on Second Life, dozens of NASA accounts on twitter, facebook, itunes, and more (http://www.nasa.gov/collaborate/), the EPA’s blog (http://blog.epa.gov), federal collaboration (http://www.usaservices.gov), and websites built in open source Drupal (http://recovery.gov), and much more.

Loki: What do you think the most positive step forward has been in Gov 2.0 since the presidential election?

Ari Herzog: People are talking. Transparency, participation, and communication is happening; Govloop, as a non-governmental creation, is a great case study for the reasons stated above. http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2009/04/02/govloops-steve-ressler-rocks-the-public-sector/
People aren’t always agreeing, but at least they–we–are talking.

Loki: And now the moment I’m always hungry for, What’s a favorite recipe that you’d like to share with us?

Ari Herzog: How about peanut butter oatmeal raisin cookies? It’s what I get raves on the most.

The original came from allrecipes.com, but I’ve amended it. For instance, the original called for butter which I replaced with apple sauce; and white sugar and brown sugar, which I replaced with just brown sugar. Making it healthy and low-fat.

The “toppings” (banana, oats, raisins) can be substituted with chocolate chips, nuts, etc. for a different result.

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup apple sauce
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup peanut butter (chunky is best)
1 tsp vanilla extract (or Kalhua, if preferred)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
3 mashed ripe bananas
2 cups instant oats
1/2 cup raisins

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. In a medium bowl, mix the apple sauce and brown sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the peanut butter and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon; and stir into the mixture. Finally, stir in the oats and raisins.
  3. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto an unprepared cookie sheet.
  4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until the cookies are lightly toasted on the edges. Remove and cool.

Thanks to davefishernc for giving me permission to use his photo of Ari at O’Reilly’s Ignite Boston. Ten points for useing Creative Commons as well!

Tagged as: Ari Herzog, broadband, digital divide, Gov 2.0, GovLoop, Huffington POst, Mashable, SingPass, transparency, Twitter, Twitter Fan Wiki for US Government, WiFi

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