Obama is ‘open for questions’

Recently, Whitehouse.gov launched an openforquestions page which gives people the opportunity to submit questions to President Barack Obama about the economy. According to the page, people are invited to participate in the community-moderated online town hall. People are asked to submit a question about the economy, vote on submissions from others and include a link to a video. Finally, they are asked to come back on Thursday to watch the President answer some of the most popular submissions live at the site.

Giving people the ability to post questions to the President could bring a lot of interesting topics to the surface. Tracking these questions and then choosing which ones get posted is no easy task. The government has to deal with a slew of issues such as censorship if they delete comments, privacy if they keep track of you, and complicated procurement rules to use any kind of software. Despite these issues, creating this page is definitely a step in the right direction of getting the President involved and listening to people’s concerns.

According to a blog on Wired, the first big issue that arises is whether the site will be swarmed with useless questions. The internet is a great tool for harnessing the wisdom of crowds — and also the "idiocy of trolls." Nicholas Thompson, author of the blog post indicates that the trolls are doing OK in at least one area: flooding the page with questions about legalizing pot — a marginally important debate at most times, and a totally trivial one at a time of global economic catastrophe. As of right now, there are 290 questions that have been submitted that include the word "marijuana." By comparison, there are 90 that use the word "manufacturing" and three that contain the word "broadband."

While negative comments are to be expected, there are many people are that voting on various positive topics. As of right now, 92,517 people have submitted 103,755 questions and cast 3,599,068 votes. An interesting question that is number one in the Jobs Category is "What are your plans to encourage corporations to keep middle-class jobs, such as customer-service call centers and transactional-based support services like accounting and computer program jobs, in the U.S?" Needless to say, it will be interesting to see which questions get chosen and ultimately get answered by the President. The blog raises a few interesting questions about the site: Will Obama cherry-pick questions that lead into policies he has already developed and that he likes discussing? Or will he pick the hardest, most-complicated and most-important questions?

While this site is just the beginning for the Obama administration, it is definitely a step in the right direction based on the networked society that we live in and the desire people have to get involved online. Opening up a free-flowing site where people can submit questions and vote on issues is a risky step. However, this also demonstrates a new way for the president to communicate with the country.