Written By Kate Zimmermann | June 25, 2008 | Share This |

Advocacy and political groups aren’t the only organizations exploring new ways to use the Internet– national governments too have begun experimenting with new media as a civic resource. On Day Two of the Personal Democracy Forum, speakers addressed the question of: Now that we’ve built a vibrant political community in blogs, forums and social networks, “What’s Next?” For many luminaries, like Vint Cerf or Lawrence Lessig, the challenges ahead are those of infrastructure, bandwidth costs, and access to the Internet. For others, such as FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, the biggest hurdle will be evangelizing the social web to people with voting power, and then developing a national plan for government’s role online.

One notable difference between this year’s and last year’s PDF conferences was the number of speakers representing government institutions. Jonathan Adelstein of the FCC, Sheila Campbell, Manager of USA.gov, Gilberto Gil and Claudio Prado, both from the Ministry of Culture for Brazil, all spoke about their internet initiatives. Adelstein advocated the development of a National Broadband solution that would enable free high speed internet access for everyone. Sheila Campbell talked about some of the government’s most forward-thinking websites - usa.gov, irs.gov, the State of Virginia YouTube channel - and her roadmap for “widgetizing” our citizen experience (yeah that’s right, look for widgets like, “My Social Security”, “My Tax Refund Status”, or “My National News” in the near future…).

Gil and Prado, in the meantime, stole the show with their discussion about Brazil’s approach to the internet as a cultural resource. Since Gil’s appointment as Minister of Culture in 2003, Brazil has used the Internet as a way to connect Brazilians to the government and to each other. In addition to the creation of over 650 “cultural hotspots” where people have free internet access, Brazil has partnered with Creative Commons to lead a national open source movement that breaks down traditional notions of intellectual property. For Gil, the distribution of intellectual property is a means to foster civic engagement. From Gil’s speech at this year’s Google Zeitgeist,

“The conversion of the digital technologies, has created around the Internet a totally peaceful revolution. A bottom up unrest, happening everywhere, which I see as a very positive sign of the rising of a non governmental political movement that I believe to be a direct and matured result of cultural and countercultural movements of our most recent history, in their increasing power to influence public policies… I believe that anybody with public responsibility should look into the digital distribution of Intellectual Property as the most direct and powerful way of democratizing knowledge in the history of mankind.”

In contrast, the US remains plagued by legacy issues (old laws and lawmakers alike) that have stalled our government’s involvement with the Internet. As Adelstein remarked during a press conference for Internet for Everyone, a newly-launched initiative for universal broadband access, “It’s clear that what we’re doing in Washington isn’t working…I have a stack of proposed National Broadband plans on my desk - it’s not the plan we need, it’s leadership, coordination and commitment.” In response, Vint Cerf asked whether we even need an FCC, or any top-down organization that would attempt to impose regulations on a bottom-up form of media. Though the panelists did not come away from PDF with a unified direction for the US government’s role online, it was unanimously agreed that Gil’s invite to host PDF in Brazil next year is looking a lot more attractive.

Topics: International, Search: Innovations, Social Media, Uncategorized |