Austin Forum on Science, Technology & Society

I had every intention of blogging on topic and even identified a couple of articles about metadata, but then I attended the Austin Forum on Science, Technology & Society. This month’s speaker, Gary Chapman, a Senior Lecturer in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, spoke on “The Internet and the Obama Administration – So Far.” Chapman worked with the Obama campaign and discussed the ways the Internet was used as a tool during the election, as well as the administration’s current web presence.

Chapman covered three primary topics during his talk: Obama’s online presence post-election, the issues of network neutrality, and online transparency. The third is the most related to topics of digital curation, but I thought I’d say a bit about the first two as well. The Obama administration used social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to generate interest during the campaign and continue to use these sites post-election. According to Chapman, Obama was the first person to have over 1 million Facebook friends and Twitter followers. One primary aim was to raise funds using the Internet, which turned out to be enormously successful. Post-election, the administration has created a YouTube channel for the White House on which they broadcast a weekly address, and maintained Twitter and Facebook pages. Criticisms of these practices include questions about using of corporate companies for public purposes.

A primary topic of concern is over issues of net neutrality. Obama put Julius Genachowski into the position of Chairman of the FCC and charged him with enforcing network neutrality. The main question that arises however is whether the FCC has, or should have, the power to regulate the Internet. Chapman asserts that he does not believe this issue is a top priority for Obama at present, given the state of health care and international relations.

The third topic Chapman addressed was transparency on the web. Obama affirmed his commitment to freedom of information and web transparency on Inauguration Day and quickly launched sites that provided governmental information to the public, including data.gov (which Meg blogged about weeks ago) and Recovery.gov, which was launched in February to provide access to data related to the Recovery Act. The Obama administration is using these digital tools to increase transparency and access to government information. However, there has been some backlash, as the administration has not been completely open about everything, including negotiations with telecommunication agencies.

When reflecting back on issues of trust and authority, the government attempts at digital curation serve as interesting examples. Who owns the information generated by the government but made public through sites like Facebook and Twitter? Will Obama’s use of Twitter increase the need for or interest in finding a way to preserve tweets? Should the FCC be able to regulate the Internet? How will that change the free use of the technology? Will the transparency of the Obama administration continue beyond his presidency? What degree of openness and availability of information should we expect to have from the administration available online?