Crowdsourcing and the President: A Failed Marriage?

The blowback from President Obama's interactive town hall has been intense and widespread. In dismissing a legitimate policy issue the President seems to have shown an uncharacteristic degree of political tone deafness. There are many excellent reasons to rethink the War on Drugs—that most ill-fated of American conflagrations, and mostly bad ones for staying the course. Many in Obama's base felt betrayed by the brush off. And they weren't the only ones. A former police chief and mainstream newspaper columnists also cried foul. Donations to NORML spiked last week.

It's all terribly interesting, though not for any of the reasons people think. The incident signifies the end of one, increasingly troubled stage in the courtship between the President and social media, and — we can only hope — the beginning of another, more realistic and mature stage. At this critical juncture I'd like to offer some relationship counseling.

It's perceived by many that the forces of drug reform "hijacked" the White House’s Open for Questions platform. Indeed, decriminalization is nowhere to be found in any list of what Americans think are the most important issues facing the country. But this conclusion assumes the technology used by the White House is capable of creating a representative sampling of popular opinion. The tech doesn't do that, and we shouldn't expect it to. We possess other, highly effective tools for that job — they're called polls.

Open for Questions fits squarely within a genre of crowdsourcing I call "idea jams." These are often called suggestion boxes on steroids, or some such silly thing. But in reality they constitute their own evolutionary branch of brainstorming. Users don’t just submit ideas, but also vote and (usually) comment on them as well.

Idea jams are a big hit with the private sector. Companies like Starbucks, Dell, IBM and even General Mills have all adopted them, for the excellent reason that they’re a cost-effective method for product innovation, and inspire good will with your customers to boot. The best-publicized incarnation involves Dell's "IdeaStorm," which the computer maker used to tap its most loyal (or at any rate, most vocal) customers. They've now integrated some 280 suggestions into their product line. Tellingly, Dell used the same Salesforce.com platform that the Obama transition team used to produce the quickly — and justly — discarded Citizens' Briefing Book.

So if the idea jam format works for companies, why isn't it working for our President? A few reasons:

First, the White House isn't matching the right tool to the right job. "The whole point of [such exercises] is not to find the question that the whole group wants to ask and that is predictable – but to enable cognitive outliers to ask the unpredictable question — to promote ways of thinking about problems (and solutions) that are uncommon," writes Kim Patrick Kobza, CEO of Neighborhood America, which develops social software for business and government.

In other words, idea jams are built to allow people to discover the fringe question (or idea, or solution), then tweak it, discuss it and bring the community's attention to it. When Dell launched Idea Storm, it was "hijacked" by Linux die-hards which suggested (nay, insisted) that Dell release a Linux computer. These folks were "trolls" to the same extent the drug legalization lobby swamping White House servers are, and Dell struggled with how to deal with them.

The company's ultimate reaction is instructive. First, they merged all the Linux comments into one thread, giving much-needed daylight to other ideas. Next, they saw the value in what the Linux folk were saying. The loud and clear demand for an open source OS had revealed that there was a "constituency" large enough to justify enacting this particular "policy." Put another way, there was adequate demand to support a new product line. Three months after launch, Dell released three computers pre-installed with Ubuntu.

In this sense, last week's virtual town hall performed a valuable function. It highlighted an important, if non-urgent issue and stimulated an ultimately useful public dialogue. The problem was that the President's "Director of Participation" wasn't part of that conversation. Which brings me to my second point: Participation goes both ways.

"Idea management is really a three-part process," says Bob Pearson, who as Dell's former chief of communities and conversation rode heard on IdeaStorm. "The first is listening. That's obvious." The second part, Pearson says, was integration, "actually disseminating the best ideas throughout our organization. We had engineers studying IdeaStorm posts and debating how they could be implemented."

The last part is the trickiest and most important: "It involves not just enacting the ideas, but going back into your community and telling them what you've done." Starbucks, which maintains its own version of IdeaStorm, employs 48 full-time moderators whose only job is to engage the online community. In other words, Starbucks is investing the vast share of its resources in the second and third parts of the idea management cycle.

By contrast, the White House essentially used its platform as a listening device, and failed to participate in the ensuing conversation.

The White House faces technological and legal hurdles that Dell and Starbucks don't have to worry about, to say nothing of the political considerations of seriously entertaining a policy of decriminalization at the very moment when the White House most needs GOP votes.

If the goal is to allow citizens to express themselves, mission accomplished. But if President Obama truly wants to engage his constituents in a national conversation, to involve them in the hurly-burly of law-making, he'll need to evince a much better understanding of how the knowledge, opinions and, yes, wisdom, of a large populace can best be harnessed. For one, he could push Google Moderator to allow users to comment on each other's ideas. Disabling this otherwise standard feature neuters the Idea Jam process from the outset.

In its current iteration, Open for Questions isn't really enabling democracy, unless if by democracy we mean the "never-ending, small-bore struggle for advantage among constantly shifting coalitions of interest groups," a conception of politics articulated by the early 20th Century political theorist Arthur Fisher Bentley. This isn’t quite as uplifting a vision as the one we were treated to during Barack Obama’s campaign, but it may—in the end—be a more realistic one.

Cross Posted from the Epicenter Blog.

Comments

[Jason Breed]

Well written article! Goes to the fact that companies/Gov't often overlook the engagement side of Social media in place of the "much easier to plan for/implement" technology side. Big Lesson here is that throwing technology at a problem doesn't solve it. Needs well thought strategy with contingencies. Google/other vendors may be good at technology. Needs a proven solution for enterprise that encompases more than technology.

[Gordon McDowell]

Very nice piece.

Not being American I only skimmed the postings on Obama's campaign site and then whitehouse.gov. It was obvious the campaign had managed to tap into a level of creativity and intelligence that whitehouse.gov has not yet managed to harness.

As frustrating as it may be to web savvy Americans to see such technologies imprecisely applied, Canadians have yet to see ANY innovation by our government in regards to crowdsourcing a national agenda or solutions.

I'm hopeful we'll look south once you've identified a truly effective model.

[Michael J. Russell - @planetrussell]

2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the Cluetrain Manifesto, whose 95 "theses" anticipated the brave new world of networked consumers/citizens - talking WITH and amongst one another...and talking back TO companies and, now, elected leaders. Of course, one of the underlying premises of Cluetrain is that you can't *control* the conversation, and should vigorously check your impulse to do so at the door.

The possibility that the people taking part in the conversation may veer far from the range of Chef's Suggestion discussion items is both one of the attractions (and unintended consequences) of social media. Actually, that's when you know it's working.

These (and related topics) are among the ideas we explored at Government 2.0 Camp in Washington DC last weekend. Attendees included White House New Media Director Macon Phillips ...and an intimate gathering of about 500 other friends.

http://www.government20club.org/
http://barcamp.org/Government20Camp
http://www.flickr.com/groups/gov20camp/pool/

"Marriage" counseling? Perhaps. Divorce? Not an option in 2009.

People taking an active role in their government(s)? Now that's change everyone can believe in.

[Emma Dozier]

Hey...isn't that whole listening and disseminating thing Congress's job? I think only the enacting part is the Executive's.

Isn't the core values of "social media" all the core values of a democracy?

So, hey Congress, could you get on that? And hey social media/tech/communication excitable crowd, could you lessen the pressure on the White House? And hey Mr. President, could you look at your job description? Thanks guys.

[Jed]

Great post. Some of the best thoughts I've read on the topic over the past week or so.

I agree with Emma that the "excitable crowd" should lay off the White House a bit, and that it's congress who should start listening to and analyzing their constituents' thoughts and feelings. Doing this kind of thing on a national level is bound to get "hijacked" or result in some really boring and obvious questions.

As I mentioned to Macon during his session at Government 2.0 Camp, the real indicator of success to my mind as a taxpayer and voter is the quality of the answers given. Were people satisfied with the responses?

I certainly wasn't happy with the flippant response to the legalization issue. I know that legalization isn't a top issue on American minds, but the ~5,630 Mexican drug war related deaths in 2008 probably merit a considered response.

[alan]

Very interesting regardless of the title, more like a headache during the honeymoon, I hope. The points you make are substantial enough to warrant pretty close scrutiny although Obama’s White House Media Director Macon Phillips probably has too much on his plate to penetrate the details.

What I find annoying is the attempt to enter into conversation about War on Drugs is either by belittling a portion of those who use or sidestepping ones personal relationship to the issue because of ones own fear of contamination, not by ones community but the professional relationships that, after all, pay the mortgage.

It is a serious issue and the war on drugs has damaged this country very badly. Just look at the prison stats, corruption of our major institutions like the CIA and . . . . . . the list is long, to long.

Why is it that this issue does not come up on any list? That is, most likely, the crux of the problem!

I suspect that the greatest numbers of regular users are not pot heads but mature individuals who because of completely inane laws can’t surface, whilst the country goes to pot!

http://blog.norml.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/obama_youth_04.jpg

Regards, Alan

[watzabatza]

I don't understand with that divorce! Why is it allowed?

@planetrussell, perhaps you're correct.

[Bob Greenberg]

It seems that they are only looking for a better means of transmitting information in a broad way (which is a good thing) as well as taking in ideas. In other words - one way discussions. They don't seem to be focusing on creating an interactive dialogue. One idea would be for the White House to moderate a true dialogue on an important issue- say health care. Rather than focus on the entire issue they could focus it on one or two vexing issues and then ask people for their input and to formulate a viable approach. To succeed they would have to have some of their health care experts participate in the process. They would also have to be transparent up front in saying that the results might not be used in the final policy but that the input will be part of the policy deliberations. If they do something like that one thing they will have to be prepared for is the massive amount of participation. That will not be an easy thing to manage properly - although there are some tools that can help. Just my two cents.

[John R. Sedivy]

Great article; I agree that participation is key. Most miss this point and believe that you can setup a discussion board or some form of social media and the rest will just happen. Participation takes time, however it is time well spent - participation sparks dialogue which creates interest, which leads to greater involvement and that's when the magic happens.

[Dr. Joseph]

Political deafness? I think it's called political tolerance.

[battery]

Great post. Some of the best thoughts I've read on the topic over the past week or so

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