This is a powerful sentiment. It resonates because many people believe that lobbyists have become too pervasive and powerful. Thinking about his quotation in the context of a discussion about transparency leads me to ask a more pointed question: As the government becomes more transparent, will lobbying activity decrease?

I don’t have empirical data to present, so let me talk intuitively instead. How would a researcher connect increased levels of transparency with a decreasing level of lobbying activity? I used “decreased lobbying activity” as an intentionally generic term. It might mean fewer lobbyists, fewer lobbying firms, less impact due to lobbying, or some combination.

Let’s drill down a little bit. Here I propose a simple method: compare the roles of lobbyists with some specific benefits of transparency and see what connections jump out. Lobbyists serve many kinds of roles, some more legitimate than others:

• representing the positions of their affiliated organizations
• presenting information relevant to their situation
• trading influence, currying favors
• using financial means to influence law
• building relationships and bridges
• getting insight in the future; e.g. future legislation

How might these lobbying roles connect to transparency? In a previous blog post, I listed the the five benefits of transparency according to Eggers:

1. Enhance accountability
2. Increase citizen involvement in government
3. Raise performance
4. Boost government credibility
5. Reduce corruption

In this simple method of looking at connections between lobbying roles and transparency benefits, there are a couple of direct connections that stand out.

(a) The second benefit of transparency, namely having more citizens engaged, has the potential to reduce the impact of special interest lobbyists. The rationale is straightforward: engaged citizens are more likely to contact their lawmakers directly and perhaps even organize. As citizens gain more power the impact of lobbyists will decrease, all other things equal. Examples such as Open for Questions at whitegouse.gov and Change.org illustrate some technology-based platforms for bringing in public opinion.

(b) The fifth benefit of transparency, namely reducing government corruption in general, should also reduce corrupt lobbying behavior. The rationale goes like this: increasing the reporting of lobbying activity brings more public attention. This means that citizens and journalists have the raw data they need to delve deeper, form their own opinions, and raise a stink if they find something objectionable. Resources such as the Influence & Lobbying section of OpenCongress.org were designed with this purpose in mind.

This is far from a systematic analysis, but my thinking so far offers some support that increasing transparency will decrease lobbying activity. There are probably other connections that deserve mentioning. I’d appreciate if you added your thoughts in the comments.

Going beyond the discussion above, it is clear that as long as we have private interests and organizations, there will be a need for advocacy and therefore lobbying. Of course, that lobbying needs to be done responsibly and kept in check.

I spoke with Jeffrey Levy and some other people after the panel. The big picture is that we have 535 elected officials that represent about 306 million people. Getting access to your representatives and sharing information with them in that sense is a big informational challenge. Lobbyists traditionally have served a key role in this dynamic.

1. Enhance accountability
2. Increase citizen involvement in government
3. Raise performance
4. Boost government credibility
5. Reduce corruption

This is just a quick placeholder. I will interconnect these ideas to other policy topics in future posts.

On Sunday, April 19, 2009, those interested in e-democracy will gather at eDemocracyCamp in Washington, DC. Join us.

Surprisingly to some, the GSA does more than manage government buildings. Did you know that its Office of Citizen Services runs USA.gov? WhiteHouse.gov has new life thanks to the Obama administration. Perhaps we will see a similar shift in USA.gov as well?

How quickly and pervasively will government adopt social media? I’m not holding my breath; it won’t be fast and it won’t be easy. To zero in on just one element of the challenge, I don’t expect any executive agencies to move from “Web 1.0″ to “Web 2.0″ as a simple matter of a technological shift. An agency will have to understand and appreciate the importance of collaboration culturally, not just technologically.

I know first-hand that at least one group at GSA that embraces the ideas of collaboration both online and offline. I have attended several collaborative expeditions hosted by Susan Turnbull of the GSA. These bring together a diverse group of people from government and industry. These workshops break down traditional barriers in government. This spirit of in-person cross-pollination helps to motivate and stimulate online social media connections.

I’m not star-struck by change.gov. Yes, the team is iterating quickly, doing good technical work, and rightfully impressing some people. Their progress is incredible by government standards. Let’s give them credit for that. But change.gov should also measure itself according to a broader perspective. The team behind change.gov should challenge itself by asking “What is possible in the field of online participation?”

The field of online participation is relatively young. I’m not sure that anyone who watches this space really knows what is possible. So I don’t think we know what the “bar” for achievement should be. Randy Pausch probably said it best: “You obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do a disservice by putting it anywhere.”*

I’ve got questions about the big picture of change.gov, where it is going, how internal decisions get made, and what organizational capacity backs it up. You can see some in my prior blog post. Every question seems to lead to another.

Asking these questions comes naturally to me, but I also want to:
1. Find out the answers to my questions
2. Find out if change.gov is asking these questions of themselves
3. If not, find a way to bring up the questions to the change.gov team

How can I accomplish these goals? Here are some ways:

1. Write. Blog. Tweet. Argue. Persuade.

I’ve done some of this and could do lots more. I’ve got all kinds of energy and ideas pent up. You can get a small dose if you follow coinsight (my account for Collective Insight LLC) on twitter.

That said, writing is only the beginning. I don’t think I’m going to be satisfied unless I can convert these rants into action!

2. Put pressure on change.gov to improve.

Perhaps I could join forces with an organization that can help. This is a good idea in theory, but I’m not sure that I’m going to find an organization that is ready to ask the tough questions and apply the kind of pressure I’m talking about.

To the average bystander, change.gov is kicking butt: why criticize something that is working just fine?

On the other hand, those who are tuned into e-government, online participation, and wisdom of the crowds see the imperfections in change.gov. Despite this, I suspect that these mavens are quite pleased with the progress so far. They are hanging back and holding back their criticism. For now.

I must admit that I don’t just want to criticize for its own sake. I want to engage in a discussion for the sake of improvement. I want to criticize because it is the first step to rethink, restructure, and rebuild.

3. “Work around” the problems of change.gov.

It is possible that I could find ways to improve change.gov indirectly. For example, I could build a companion Web site — perhaps it could screen-scrape to get the underlying data from change.gov and package up that information in a more usable way. The Sunlight Foundation is an inspiration in this regard — checkout their post about Opening Your Seat at the Table.

I like this approach, but it has some limitations:
1. You have to work hard to get traffic and attention to the companion Web site
2. It is a second-best use of resources (it is inefficient)
3. The companion site may be brittle (a change to the original Web site can break the interconnections)

4. Join the change.gov team.

This would be awesome. It is easy to be an armchair quarterback, but there is nothing like being on the actual team. Sitting down and understanding the vision and constraints that the change.gov team faces would be eye-opening.

Now I just need to figure out how to make it happen! If you have suggestions, please let me know.

Perhaps my chances are unlikely. Still, I’m confident that my background and experience would be useful to the team. You can find my professional details, including my resume, over on my personal Web site.

Notes

* You can get the back-story about the Randy Pausch quote by watching watching his last lecture.

I have lots of questions about the Web tools and the team behind it. Here are just a few:

• What is the vision of change.gov? Where is it headed?
• What are the metrics for success at change.gov?
• Where does the change.gov team fit into the transition team’s power structure?
• After the inauguration, what happens to change.gov?
• Does the team have in-depth debates about what wisdom of the crowds really means?
• Do team members think that designing civic participation is a key part of their job?
• Do people in the group disagree as to what kind of ranking systems are best?
• How many team members roll their eyes when they hear “Web 2.0″?
• Has the team tried to quantify what it means for “the best ideas rise to the top?”
• Are there people on the team that are passionate about civic participation?
• What particular civic engagement technologies inspire the team?
• What first-hand civic engagement experiences inspire the team?

What questions do you have?

* For example, I’ve attended and sponsored eDemocracy Camp 2008, presented at Online Deliberation 2005, and helped a teammate pitch a project at the “Constitutional Convention: Building Democracy 2.0″ conference.

You may want to read the source document, EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0318. It is titled, “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Greenhouse Gases Under the Clean Air Act”. To comment, submit your comments on regulations.gov.

You can also make your comments by submitting through an advocacy form. Here are some advocacy organizations supporting the CO2 regulations:

• RepowerAmerica – Affiliated with WeCanSolveIt.org
• Sierra Club

And here are some advocacy organizations opposing the CO2 regulations:

• The Heritage Foundation
• Stop The ACLU

If you want to read over the docket documents in hard copy and live near DC, you can always head over to the Air and Radiation Docket and Information Center.

a. “But my wise old aunt Selma, now 91, often reminds me that the sins of omission are greater than the sins of commission, and that the greatest evils in the world, like mass poverty, are more the result of inaction than that of direct brutality.” -David Bornstein, So You Want to Change the World

b. “French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday world came within “a whisker of catastrophe” during the recent financial crisis and that those responsible for the crisis must be identified and held accountable.” -Express, 9/25/08, by The Washington Post

Certainly there is plenty of blame to go around. But identifying the “culprits” (or their whiskers) is not quite so easy. Who is responsible for the crisis due to their actions? Due to their inactions?

The culprits?

1. What about homeowners who got mortgages that they could not afford? Are they completely innocent? Perhaps many were tricked or did not understand variable rates. But if we are assigning blame, we should be willing to perceive shades of gray.

I will note that assigning blame is sort of like bringing donuts to the office — if you bring them, you better bring enough for everybody. So while we are blaming, we might as well not discriminate against the “less noticeable.”

2. Moving “up the chain” so to speak, we next arrive at the lenders. Financial institutions that offer loans without the proper diligence put their firms at risk. This is true. So do we blame the institutions themselves? Perhaps we should also blame the people who work there?

3. The individuals that work at these institutions are supposedly intelligent and properly incentivized, right? If so, on the whole, they would not promote their individual short-term gains over the institutions.

4. But what if the organization has the wrong incentive structure in place? Perhaps the organization “had it coming” to them. Call it karma or call it statistics. But management has to realize the impact of its choices.

5. Let’s move “across the food chain” now. Since these financial institutions are highly connected in the financial markets, they put other institutions at risk as well. In economic terms, this might be considered an “externality”, a cost that one “organization” can impose on another. The problem with externalities is that the organization affected was not responsible. A typical example is air pollution. If Mexico pollutes and the wind blows it into Texas, Texas is harmed but Mexico is not. Is the creator of the externality to blame? Yes, in some sense.

6. But in another sense, the recipient of the externality sometimes can pursue strategies to minimize the effect. Doing so is part of the cost of doing business. Let’s think about this in a bilateral transaction sense — a connected institution can reduce its potential for damage by being skeptical — asking tough questions about institutions that it depends on, hedging its bets, and having alternative plans ready.

7. If the ecosystem as a whole is built on strong bilateral understandings, conventional thinking would say that the ecosystem should not be damaged by the loss of a few “bad apples.”

8. This raises another question — maybe we are too quick to assign blame to individual firms! Perhaps the whole financial ecosystem wasn’t as strong as we gave it credit for. Perhaps we are merely scapegoating when we complain about Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or AIG. Chaos theory probably could offer scenarios in which such an ecosystem, even if strong at the bilateral level, could still have failure modes.

9. What about regulators? Don’t they have a responsibility to oversee the financial markets? Don’t they have the intelligence and foresight, and thus, the responsibility to act?

Conclusion

In practice, the person that throws the second punch is most likely to get caught and blamed. But what about the first punch? What if it wasn’t a punch, but a stinging insult? What about all the actions that led up to the conflict? Assigning blame to the most visible offense is overly simplistic.

Let’s use our brains instead of just finding scapegoats. Let us understand the nature of the problem across the whole system — and then correct the problem using as-specific-as-possible, targeted interventions.

Yes, I am glad that politicians are using online tools to reach out to people. It is high time that issues of energy and transportation are in the public consciousness.

Ok, no more Mr. Rogers. I’m done being nice now. The poll bent me out of shape a little bit. Here’s why:

1. Using a traditional radio button format for a poll is pretty weak in my opinion.  It is a common approach, sure.  But it constrains responses to pre-defined choices. Why not allow free-form text entries? Just an idea, not really a stinging criticism, I admit. No one ever got fired for using a radio-button poll!

2. I don’t like that only one response is allowed. Such a poll reflects a (flawed) mentality that one option
is “best” or a “silver bullet.”  We need to wise up and plan for multiple future scenarios.  We need to hedge our bets.

3. The given options are far from comprehensive. Why not also list ideas such as:

• Implement energy conservation programs
• Improve our electric infrastructure
• Drastically reduce our need for gasoline
• Launch an “apollo program” for solar energy
• Elect Barack Obama (my favorite)*

4. The poll also presumes that “gas should be affordable.” But that is not what really matters.  What really matters here is making transportation affordable.  We could be more broad — what really matters? Quality of life is what really matters.  Let’s make it affordable and safe to travel between work, home, and third places.  Now we’re talking about urban planning, commuting, mass transit, cycling, and walking.

Conclusion

Energy, economic vitality, and transportation are the core issues here.  Gasoline is only one fuel source; we should not view the debate only the terms of oil.  Let’s put our priorities in the right places. Our leaders should lead by framing questions in ways that elevate the public debate.  The poll above does the wrong thing; it reduces our collective intelligence.

* In case it wasn’t already obvious, let me share my personal biases. I do not see McCain as being a good choice to lead America into the next four years. I want a President who understands problems at their core (i.e. transportation, quality of life, healthcare, and economics) and can apply this understanding to lead and solve the millions of surface problems (i.e. pain caused by the rising cost of oil, lives lost in Iraq, the economic cost of Iraq.)