With New Site, Senate Democrats Log On To Crowdsourcing, Facebook, Twitter
Fri, 22 May 2009 13:30:00
In his previous job at NASA, Andrew Hoppin was able to convince a bunch of aging scientists to start Twittering.
After that, trying to change the culture of the New York Senate may not seem so daunting.
“That’s why I got the job: Because I was able to help turn around a large entity that was stuck in the past,” said Hoppin, the Senate’s new chief information officer, who oversaw the building of the Senate’s brand-new website.
Hoppin hopes to infuse the Senate with some of the ethos of the IT world, which holds that constant collaboration always improves the end product.
Bringing on Hoppin was the idea of Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), who has said a more open and transparent body is a priority, and who Twittered a question at the roll-out press conference about whether he would be able to view the new website on his BlackBerry.
This attitude is reflected, for instance, in the platform on which Hoppin built the new Senate website. The platform, Drupal, was built with open-source code—code that had been passing freely around the Internet, with each person working on it making an improvement and then shuttling their innovation along.
This method of working is very different from the longstanding political culture of Albany, where bills are often passed without committee hearings and then contain deficiencies that might have been avoided through more input.
With technology, Hoppin hopes to begin changing this by making the legislative process work more like open-source software.
“We’re looking for a cultural cross-pollination,” Hoppin said.
On the new Senate site, for instance, there is a feature allowing the public to post their comments about proposed legislation, a method known as “crowdsourcing.” In the first week the State Senate’s new website was online, 30 people wrote in their ideas about a bill proposed by Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) to bring down property taxes.
Hoppin also wants to implement new e-mail tools in Senate offices that would allow senators to more narrowly target their newsletters to individual groups of constituents who are knowledgeable in certain policy areas.
In addition, the Senate team also has begun the “Plain Language Initiative” that will describe the content of bills and budgets in plain English, so that those outside the lobbying industry actually understand what is in legislation.
Each senator now has the option to blog, start a Facebook page, or a Twitter site (so far, Democrats seem to favor social networking, while their counterparts in the minority apparently prefer 140-character tweets).
Hoppin added that he hopes all of this Web 2.0 flattens the hierarchy of Albany by putting lawmakers closer to their constituents.
Of course, if either senators or the public do not use these tools, the technology does not matter.
Much of the content on the site is posted voluntarily. Senators are not obligated to post bills online for comment, for instance, so if they do not want the public scrutiny, they are not forced to engage.
But at the least, Hoppin said, the website will lay bare who is soliciting public input and who is not, especially if a piece of legislation ends up flawed as a consequence of inadequate vetting.
Hoppin also admitted that changing the Senate website is only one part of making the body more democratic. If the budget is negotiated again behind closed doors, for instance, then there will be no opportunity for the public to shape the bill, fancy website or no.
There will also now be a greater emphasis on putting slick content on the site that will engage citizens, said Christopher Sealey, the Senate’s new creative director, noting that the Senate had recently hired a former producer from HBO films to do this. In particular, Sealey wants to create more emotional content that shows senators out working in their districts, rather than simply showing the more mundane legislative process.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, and a moving picture is worth even more than that,” Sealey said.
But Blair Horner, legislative director for New York Public Interest Research Group, said the Senate would be better served by focusing on creating more neutral content, in the form of a full-time “C-SPAN for New York,” run through a cable company, rather than the Senate majority, to avoid the appearance of bias, he said.
“I don’t think more promotion of members is going to engage the public’s interest,” Horner said.
Sen. John Bonacic (R-Delaware/Sullivan/Ulster), co-chair of the Senate Temporary Committee on Rules Reform, called the new website a “solid start.” But he noted that nonpartisan websites can quickly turn partisan. On the Rules Committee’s website, run by the Democrats, only the committee’s majority report is posted. The minority’s dissenting report is not.
“That goes against the promise of nonpartisanship on the websites,” Bonacic said. “I think the websites—both the main site and the individual sites for all Senators—will be positive, if they are maintained for the long term in a nonpartisan way as promised.”
After that, trying to change the culture of the New York Senate may not seem so daunting.
“That’s why I got the job: Because I was able to help turn around a large entity that was stuck in the past,” said Hoppin, the Senate’s new chief information officer, who oversaw the building of the Senate’s brand-new website.
Hoppin hopes to infuse the Senate with some of the ethos of the IT world, which holds that constant collaboration always improves the end product.
Bringing on Hoppin was the idea of Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), who has said a more open and transparent body is a priority, and who Twittered a question at the roll-out press conference about whether he would be able to view the new website on his BlackBerry.
This attitude is reflected, for instance, in the platform on which Hoppin built the new Senate website. The platform, Drupal, was built with open-source code—code that had been passing freely around the Internet, with each person working on it making an improvement and then shuttling their innovation along.
This method of working is very different from the longstanding political culture of Albany, where bills are often passed without committee hearings and then contain deficiencies that might have been avoided through more input.
With technology, Hoppin hopes to begin changing this by making the legislative process work more like open-source software.
“We’re looking for a cultural cross-pollination,” Hoppin said.
On the new Senate site, for instance, there is a feature allowing the public to post their comments about proposed legislation, a method known as “crowdsourcing.” In the first week the State Senate’s new website was online, 30 people wrote in their ideas about a bill proposed by Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) to bring down property taxes.
Hoppin also wants to implement new e-mail tools in Senate offices that would allow senators to more narrowly target their newsletters to individual groups of constituents who are knowledgeable in certain policy areas.
In addition, the Senate team also has begun the “Plain Language Initiative” that will describe the content of bills and budgets in plain English, so that those outside the lobbying industry actually understand what is in legislation.
Each senator now has the option to blog, start a Facebook page, or a Twitter site (so far, Democrats seem to favor social networking, while their counterparts in the minority apparently prefer 140-character tweets).
Hoppin added that he hopes all of this Web 2.0 flattens the hierarchy of Albany by putting lawmakers closer to their constituents.
Of course, if either senators or the public do not use these tools, the technology does not matter.
Much of the content on the site is posted voluntarily. Senators are not obligated to post bills online for comment, for instance, so if they do not want the public scrutiny, they are not forced to engage.
But at the least, Hoppin said, the website will lay bare who is soliciting public input and who is not, especially if a piece of legislation ends up flawed as a consequence of inadequate vetting.
Hoppin also admitted that changing the Senate website is only one part of making the body more democratic. If the budget is negotiated again behind closed doors, for instance, then there will be no opportunity for the public to shape the bill, fancy website or no.
There will also now be a greater emphasis on putting slick content on the site that will engage citizens, said Christopher Sealey, the Senate’s new creative director, noting that the Senate had recently hired a former producer from HBO films to do this. In particular, Sealey wants to create more emotional content that shows senators out working in their districts, rather than simply showing the more mundane legislative process.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, and a moving picture is worth even more than that,” Sealey said.
But Blair Horner, legislative director for New York Public Interest Research Group, said the Senate would be better served by focusing on creating more neutral content, in the form of a full-time “C-SPAN for New York,” run through a cable company, rather than the Senate majority, to avoid the appearance of bias, he said.
“I don’t think more promotion of members is going to engage the public’s interest,” Horner said.
Sen. John Bonacic (R-Delaware/Sullivan/Ulster), co-chair of the Senate Temporary Committee on Rules Reform, called the new website a “solid start.” But he noted that nonpartisan websites can quickly turn partisan. On the Rules Committee’s website, run by the Democrats, only the committee’s majority report is posted. The minority’s dissenting report is not.
“That goes against the promise of nonpartisanship on the websites,” Bonacic said. “I think the websites—both the main site and the individual sites for all Senators—will be positive, if they are maintained for the long term in a nonpartisan way as promised.”
