Government with the people
Some things we learned about civic technology in Barack Obama’s White House
This is the prepared text of a talk I gave at TEDxTours in front of a bunch of French people. If you want to skip to the end, you can add your name to a petition asking the new French leadership to build their own online petitions platform at nouslepeuple.xyz.
Update: there’s a video! For those keeping track at home, the only civic tech jokes that translate to French are ones with Justin Bieber.
Hello. Salut. It’s an honor to be with all of you this evening. C’est un honneur d’être avec vous ce soir.
It might strike you as odd that at a TEDx here in France one of the presenters is from the United States. I was going to give my talk en Français, but I’ve been in Tours for a week and I know that your English is better. I also know how much you love it when Americans come here and speak to you in English.
A few months ago I lost my job, part of a mass layoff. My colleagues and I worked in the White House for Barack Obama, on the team that used the internet and social media to engage with people in America and around the world.
Today, I want to share some of the things we learned about how governments can use the internet to have real, substantive conversations with the people they serve. To use technology to help rebuild trust and improve the dynamism of democracy.
“Wait a second,” you are wondering. “What about the last election in the United States — or the ones in France, or Holland, or England — makes this guy believe the Internet and democracy mix well?”
That’s a fair question. In recent experience, the internet has done more to amplify our worst prejudices and to make our democratic systems vulnerable to manipulation, not bring us closer together.
As Ev Williams, who founded Blogger, Twitter and Medium recently noted, “the internet is broken.”
So the answer is clearly not that we should place our trust in social media and hope that with time things will simply get better. Platforms have a lot of work to do to help dial down the partisanship, trolling and fake news.
Until we can address some of these things, there’s no reason to expect Snapchat will deliver us a better president than Twitter did.
There’s no reason to expect Snapchat will deliver us a better president than Twitter did
Yet, any answer must begin by admitting that, whatever their flaws, online platforms remain the most effective tools for mass organizing and communications that humans have ever built. And we’re still in the early going. Rather than throw our hands in the air, we have to give more serious consideration to how we can harness technology to encourage more constructive participation in civic society.
Our team in the White House was called the Office of Digital Strategy. For eight years the work of that office evolved along with the consumer web. In 2009 there was a MySpace account. By 2016, the White House was posting on Instagram stories. In between, there were many videos, tweets, GIFs, vines and just about every other unit of social media.
Unlike other functions at the White House, there were no inherited notions about what the goal should be. “Digital strategy” was new. We were doing everything for the first time, like a startup.
Like any good startup, ours had a mission statement, except our mission was given to us by President Barack Obama: “Connect people with purpose.” Use technology and social media so that people across America could see themselves reflected in their government, know that they were being heard, and feel included in the process.
Like any good startup, ours had a mission statement, except our mission was given to us by President Barack Obama: “Connect people with purpose.”
Few things we did in the Office of Digital Strategy live up to that mission better than We the People, an online petitions platform. That’s where I want to focus my attention.
The first amendment to the United States constitution enshrines the right to petition alongside the freedoms of speech, religion and assembly. It’s a right that has roots in the magna carta. But when people hear the word “petition” they imagine a clip board being passed around to collect signatures.
Let’s take a broader view. Think of it as the right of real people to take part in government.
What the first amendment leaves out is how you’re supposed to exercise this right. Who do you hand petitions to? How do they respond?
We the People was built in 2011 to help answer these questions. It wasn’t perfect, but it improved with time. When we left the White House, any petition that got 100,000 signatures in 30 days would receive a response within 60 days.
It’s a simple proposition: If enough people care about an idea to sign a petition, their representatives owe them an answer.
It turns out, people liked to exercise their right to petition us on issues we didn’t always want to talk about: Pardon Edward Snowden. Prohibit mandatory vaccinations. Support Kurdish independence.
I don’t remember any petitions that said, “You’re awesome, keep it up!” But that was the whole the point. It’s a way for people to interrupt when they don’t feel like they’re being heard.
Many times our answer was no. Other times, “yes.” Sometimes “that’s an interesting idea, but we’re not gonna deport Justin Bieber.”
Yet, I don’t want this point to get lost: serious petitions received serious consideration, even when the answer was “no.” They often resulted in debates at the highest levels of the White House and among experts across the US government. They helped keep the president to his word on net neutrality. They led to a law about cell phone unlocking. They affected the direction of countless other policies. This is franklymore than we can say about the live demonstrations that took place in front of the White House every day.
So what are some actual learnings about civic technology we should draw from We the People? Let me suggest three:
First, when technology doesn’t work, don’t assume user error.
Some of the most popular petitions asked us to do silly things like “Build a Death Star” or “Change the National Anthem to the theme song from My Little Pony, ‘Friendship is Magic.’” Some observers pointed to these examples to suggest that the platform reflected one of the fundamental drawbacks of democracy: the potential for user error. The platform was just a high-tech way to troll the White House, they said. At best it was a vehicle for slacktivism.
But if there was a flaw it was a flaw in product design. In 2015 when we began a site redesign there was an assumption going into it that success meant more petitions, more users, more signatures. Those are usually markers of success in consumer technology. Fortunately, we had the wisdom to ask for input from the public, and one product designer (hi Dustin Senos ✌️) had a simple but important insight: ‘You’re in government. You don’t sell ads, you serve people.’ The question shouldn’t be how you attract more daily active users. The question is how you design the site to generate better petitions, ones that lead to action and conversation.
A petition signed by millions of people on a subject that is all over the news carries symbolic value, but doesn’t tell us very much we don’t already know. The most powerful petitions shed light on issues that have been overlooked or that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities. As a Pew Foundation report of We the People revealed, nearly half of all petitions were tagged by authors as pertaining to civil or human rights. If 100,000 people think civil rights are at risk, that’s something the government should definitely have to look into.
Here’s an example of the sort of petition I have in mind, one asking the White House to intervene on the matter of “Medicare local coverage determination for lower limb prostheses.” Basically, how and in what cases the government pays for certain prosthetic devices for Medicare patients. Not a topic on the evening news, but one that could have significant ramifications for the limb loss community. Thanks to the efforts of individuals and groups in that community, the petition received 110,000 signatures. That catapulted an issue to the attention of the White House and ultimately helped to stall a decision that would have affected health coverage for many people with prosthetics.
Lesson two, you have to build in accountability.
The biggest flaw with We the People 1.0 was the absence of deadlines. As result, some of the toughest petitions piled up. Not because we didn’t care, but usually because there was a debate about how to answer. Eventually, we made a promise to respond within 60 days to any petition that met the threshold. This was a critical improvement.
At one point in 2013, the average wait time for a response was 271 days. By 2016, that number dropped to 34.
Setting a deadline signalled to petition signers that we took them seriously. A good example of this in action was the petition to “Save Crypto,” asking President Obama to take a firm stand in favor of strong cryptography without backdoors. An issue that was the subject of very intense debate within the technology and national security communities. Earlier in the administration, this was exactly the sort of response that might have been delayed. Yet, meetings were scheduled with some of the most powerful people in the US government in order to respond in time. The text of our responses didn’t always reflect the dynamism of the discussion behind closed doors, but the issue was hotly debated. Through their petition, ordinary citizens were helping to shape the agenda for the US government on a critical question of civil rights and national security.
Lesson three, make it a conversation.
In six years the White House responded to 268 petitions. Many of those responses were some variation on “no” or “not now.” But that shouldn’t be where the conversation ends. When someone signs a petition asking the White House to require police departments across America to wear body cameras, one of the things they’re telling you is that they care deeply about criminal justice and law enforcement.
We were careful not to spam them, but we were on the lookout for ways to extend the conversation. For example, when the Department of Justice released a report on police violence, we tried to let signers know. Even when we didn’t provide the answer petitioners were looking for, we wanted their experience to feel validated by the process. To that point, it wasn’t unusual to see email open rates of 30 and 40 percent which, anyone with a background in email marketing can attest, is very high.
This reflected high levels of engagement across the board. In a given week, We the People saw many times more traffic than WhiteHouse.gov. And in six years, there were 480,000 petitions, 29 million users, and 40 million signatures.
But, like I said before, it’s not about numbers. Where it counted — creating opportunities for people to engage constructively with their government — we were just beginning to scratch the surface.
Among other things, the chaos of US politics today deprives us of the opportunity to discuss what happens next as regards civic technology at the White House. The irony is that a president who inspires so much participation is the one who will be least responsive to it.
To give just one example, a petition asking him to release his tax returns drew over 1M signatures, but his administration has made it clear no response is forthcoming.
This runs counter to one of the great themes of American politics, that we are in an ongoing conversation with our leaders. It is a theme embraced by some of our most revered presidents, from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama.
It even extends to the French! Allow me to pander. Since we’re in France talking about American democracy, I have a responsibility to invoke Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1831, he voyaged to America to see our representative democracy up close.
One thing that surprised him was the ease of visiting the President of the United States. He was 25 years old, ostensibly writing a book on the American penal system, and yet de Tocqueville strolled into the White House where he was granted an audience with President Andrew Jackson. Meanwhile, in France they were mulling a return to the monarchy.
Such anecdotes are emblematic of the idea that the president answers to the people — not only at the ballot box but at townhalls, by mail, and over the phone. Americans delight in the thought that we have the ear of our leaders.
Americans delight in the thought that we have the ear of our leaders.
The first amendment codifies this thought in the powers to assemble, to petition, and to speak your mind. As millions of Americans have reaffirmed over the past few months through large protests, gatherings at town halls, and phone calls to their representatives, the right to participate in government, to provide feedback, is essential to the healthy functioning of our system.
Still, as a suggestion box for democracy our current tools leave something to be desired. People usually only gather in the streets when they’re angry. As anyone who has ever worked in customer service will tell you, when people are angry is not when they are inclined to provide the most constructive feedback.
In principle, technology can help solicit feedback more consistently and sustainably. And it can empower people who are geographically, socially or culturally remote from power to provide it. One of our tasks now is to figure out how to build it.
Representative democracy is showing signs of stress. The system — which successfully absorbed massive shocks throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries — asks people to repose trust in representatives who are more knowledgeable and experienced to solve complicated problems at scale. It doesn’t work if people lose faith that this arrangement will reward them with more liberty and opportunity. However, research shows this is precisely what is taking place, especially among young people, not just in America but in liberal democracies across the globe. It manifests itself in declining participation in elections and lower support for public institutions. Likewise, frustrated citizens in industrial towns from Pennsylvania to the Pas de Calais feel let down and are signalling an openness to…something else.
Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard, believes the “warning signs [of democracy] are flashing red.”
People are beginning to think about how to address this, including in the tech sector where there is a tendency toward radical ideas for how technology might supplant our current system, and make our representative democracy more direct.
We should be skeptical of too much disruption. Brain power should be dedicated to how technology can strengthen our system, not displace it. Not only basic services and transparency, but communication and engagement. I don’t mean to suggest that petitions or any app will fix democracy, but learning from our past experience with civic technology can help us make it better. Some key lessons from our experience are: Product design, not user error. Build in accountability. Make it a conversation.
Concretely, what I’m talking about requires governments to devote more people and resources to this type of work, and to get comfortable with experimentation.
It won’t succeed unless leaders set the tone and show that they take it seriously.
And, governments won’t get there alone. Technologists need to spend some time thinking about what better civic technology looks like, from the neighborhood council to the presidency (if you have good ideas share them with Glenn Otis Brown). There are some great tools already — but we need to hook them more firmly into the foundations of the system. To give them teeth.
In a UN Ranking of how various countries fare at “e-participation,” the United States and France were tied for 12th place. None other than the United Kingdom, a country with a monarch, was first. If you reach 100,000 signatures on the UK’s petitions platform, they’ll debate your proposal live in Parliament.
Visit nouslepeuple.xyz to add your name to a petition asking France’s new leaders to build their own petitions platform
By contrast, France has no petitions platform of its own. But you have just elected the youngest president in the history of the republic, and one who has an ambitious technology platform. What better time for ordinary citizens to ask for a bigger seat at the table? So, in the spirit of civic participation, I would like end this talk by asking you to visit nouslepeuple.xyz. Add your name to a petition asking your country’s new leaders to build a platform of you.
