Briefly, at the tick of 12:00 yesterday, our new President was sworn in. At the tock of 12:01, our President’s tech-savvy team went online with a new WhiteHouse.gov website that includes a blog. Actually, it’s not a blog, without the ability to comment it’s simply a fancy public announcement system masquerading as blog.
This change is reflected elsewhere: check out State.gov. Note the subtitle under “U.S. Department of State”: Diplomacy in Action. Also, note the prominent placement of DipNote on the homepage as well as the social media bookmark feature.
At “R”, the following is available:
The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs leads America’s public diplomacy outreach, which includes communications with international audiences, cultural programming, academic grants, educational exchanges, international visitor programs, and U.S. Government efforts to confront ideological support for terrorism. The Under Secretary oversees the bureaus of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Public Affairs and International Information Programs, and participates in foreign policy development.
With no link to CitizensBriefingBook.Change.Gov, where “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” meets social media, it is likely that any future citizen-input solicited by the Government will primarily come from individual Departments and Agencies. By the way, the public diplomacy topic is here and has received what nothing in the way of professional contributions.
For the techie in you, see also this post regarding the revised robots.txt file.
