The New Political Leader

24Mar10

Web 2.0 technology has dramatically transformed the way the government communicates with its constituents. I recently had the opportunity to work with a US Navy Captain (O6) who wanted to pioneer cloud computing technology within the Department of Defense – basically open source communication within a non classified arena – something the commercial sector has been doing for years. He forsaw the need of bringing this open source/web 2.0 technology to the US Navy as globalization is rapidly crossing technological borders. This Captain is example of the new political leader.

Political leaders have begun employing social media tactics to help gain support for policies that would otherwise go unnoticed via normal communication channels. For instance, during the whole health care reform debate, Pres. Obama and the Democratic team of social media experts took charge and began their forlay against those who did not support the bill. The hash tag #hcr (health care reform) has been one of the trending topics on Twitter since the debate began, and has allowed for all interested parties to debate on a free for all forum.

The 2.0 effect can have good and bad implications as people will be more inclined to believe information they see via this new media (I’m not sure how many for instance actually read the entire 900 page reform bill…). However, at least the word is getting out to even the youngest of constituents who may have not had any other way of knowing about the issues at hand.

This impact correlates with the organizational change of young people obtaining traditionally tenured positions within the government since they better understand this new technology. Jared Cohen (member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning staff) and Rania Al Abdullah (Queen of Jordan) are both examples of brilliant young minds at work. They have both used political influence and celebrity to spread their causal messages to all of their online followers.

Just watching current trends in tech and politics, makes me question what will happen next – online voting anyone?