Era of Responsibility – From Citizen 2 President and President 2 Citizen

Welcome to my Blog. Let me start by first quoting the inaugural address of PresidentBarack Obama’s:

Our challenges may be new.  The instruments with which we meet them may be new.  But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old.  These things are true.  They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.  What is demanded then is a return to these truths.  What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny

Not only did The President launch a new era of responsibility – on January 20th, high noon, Barack Obama also tansformed his campaign website into the first C2P (Citizen to President) and P2C (President to Citizen) site – launching a new era of direct communication with the people. True that past presidents have reached out to the ‘common man’ to get their views. But the reach, annonymity, and richness of the online channel will transform this Presidency and the way in which the Executive Branch deals with the Legislative Branch of our country. 

So what can the President use this site for. Let’s explore a few possibilities:

• Let’s say The President wants to have a certain legislation passed (the way he wants it rather than the compromises made by the Congress or Senate) all he has to do is to reach out to his MyBO users in that constituency to organize a grassroots movement to lobby their Congressmen and Senators. 
• Talk about participatory democracy – he can pre-release his policies in the language of the ‘common man’ rather than the incomprehensible legal language and gauge the public reaction to his policies. 
• Will this be also an era of Open Source Legislation? An era where legislators, academics, and even the common man can participate in the legislative process, craft the legislation, look for loopholes, ensure that legislations are fair to the majority and not influenced by the ‘money power’ of the minority.
• Moving on from the American stage to the International stage The President will have a powerful channel to directly reach out to the ‘People’ of other nations – not just their rulers.  

I am sure there are many more ways by which The President can and will forge a ‘conversation’ with the Citizens of America and of the World ushering in the Era of C2P and P2C. 

Being a consultant, I cannot end this post without talking about the significant operational challenges in implementing the vision of such a C2P and P2C site.

• If successful, just imagine the traffic to this site – especially during a crisis. Millions of Americans – not to mention ‘billions’ around the world will be accessing the website. 
• The sheer number of messages the site receives and sifting through the messages to even categorize the ideas is a task that may not be humanly possible and will require the use of sophisticated filters, semantic web, and intelligent software agents (look forward to more postings on these subjects in the near future. But for now you can click here). 
• How can you be sure that The President sees some of the ‘critical’ messages and they are not intercepted and sanitized by his Staff? May be an automated solution where the President receives a selection of the messages by pre-defined categories directly to his Blackberry?
• Not to mention the dark side of technology – hackers and cyber-terrrorists gaining entry and spreading false propaganda messages on the website.

In this ‘era of responsibility’ and the age of social networking, I think every individual CAN make a difference. This blog is an attempt to take on that responsibility as a Citizen of the World and a resident of this Great Nation to make a difference. 

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

Hope you visit my site again to read and see about how we can address some of the issues (financial crisis, healthcare, retirement)  from my personal viewpoint.

Tags: C2P, citizen2president, Era of Responsibility, Financial Crisis, healthcare, intelligent agents, online, open source legislation, P2C, president2citizen, retirement, social networking