K Street Cafe

Iowa Gov to Host Weekly YouTube Address
(Tech President)
Gov. Branstad will be soliciting questions via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, then responding to them every Friday in a weekly segment called “Ask the Gov.”

This Week in Politics & Digital: The Openness & Transparency Issue (Mashable)
This week the news focused on issues of transparency, from public records to open data to President Barack Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate online.

Can One Website Bring Transparency to Online Giving? (Mashable)
WePay’s financial platform has embraced the non-profit world by allowing for transparency in its donations.

Inside Think Tanks’ Digital Designs (Tech President)
A peek inside the online media strategies of two ideological think tanks: the Center for American Progress and the Heritage Foundation.

Peter Slen of C-SPAN’s The Communicators filmed the segment below at the State of the Net Conference on January 27, 2011 — in it, Ambassador Philip Verveer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Coordinator for Communications and Information Policy, and Ed Felten, Chief Technologist at the FTC, talk about their agencies’ roles in crafting official U.S. and international information and communications policy, particularly regarding social media, free expression, and online privacy:

The video is almost a half hour, but it’s an interesting pair of interviews — they also address recent political upheaval in Tunisia, censorship in China, international copyright and other property rights protections, cloud computing adoption across the federal government, and other global economic issues tied to the free flow of information.

Cross-posted from The Partnership for a More Perfect Union Communicating with Congress blog

Today, CMF and the Partnership released a new survey of congressional staff which reveals that they believe constituents have far more influence on undecided lawmakers than lobbyists. If you listen to the media, the pundits, or the general public, however, you might think lobbyists are at the top of the heap. But our research shows this is not the case.

When asked about various groups and strategies that might influence their Member of Congress, 46% of congressional staff surveyed said that “in-person constituent visits” would have “a lot” of influence, compared to 8% which said the same of a “lobbyist visit.”

In spite of the fact that many citizens feel like they have lost their place at the table, Congress really is trying to listen to the views of constituents.

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The hard-working transparency advocates at the Sunlight Foundation have released a new suite of tools called Politiwidgets. Each tool in the 10-widget set is as easily customizable and embeddable by bloggers as searching for, resizing, and generating code for embedding a YouTube video.

The suite includes some interesting tools that haven’t really surfaced on the web in such customizable fashion, even if the data behind the tools have become available over the past couple of years through other projects like, for example, OpenSecrets.org. The list includes (with examples given for my representative in the U.S. House, Rep. Jim Cooper, D-TN 5th):

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Can Case Studies and Code Chunks Help Open the Democratic Party? (Tech President)
The Democratic National Committee unveils new open-source site Open.Democrats.org aimed to increase transparency & collaboration online.

More Bloggers Throwing Hats in Ring (Politico)
Bloggers assert their power in the political arena beyond the web by running for office.

Bringing Blogging’s Energy to the Department of, Well, You Know (TechPresident)
The Department of Energy launches a new blog, aptly named Energy Blog, aiming to increase transparency and engagement.

N.A.A.C.P. Backtracks on Official Accused of Bias
(The New York Times)
Controversy over truncated video posting raises issues of transparency when blogging.

POIA Would Make the Government Work Better (Sunlight Foundation)
Some believe the recently introduced Public Online Information Act (POIA), which will make public information available online, will empower citizens to hold their government accountable, therefore making it work better.

Hand-Deliver Your Emails! (To Congress) (e.politics)
Did you know that it’s usually more effective to print e-mails out and hand-deliver them to Congress?

Transparency Caucus Kicks Off (Hillicon Valley)
Last week twenty-six lawmakers kicked off a new caucus dedicated to making government more transparent and accountable.

Major Findings from the 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report (Personal Branding Blog)
Read up on some of the major findings in SocialMediaExaminer.com’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Undercover Persuasion by Tech Industry Lobbyists
(The Washington Post)
As K Street insiders harness the power of social networking on websites such as Twitter and Facebook, one journalist questions whether these lobbyists and public relations professionals are properly disclosing their true motives.

Women in New Media: At the Top or in the Trenches?
(Politics Daily)
Do women out-perform men in the realm of new media?