Live from Louisville

Rather than using a powerpoint this morning at the National Association of Legislative Information Technology conference here in Louisville, Kentucky, I'm going to use the blog to point to some of the technology that can be useful to both legislators and constituents.

Because today's audience is predominantly IT staff from various states, the first link deals with problems associated with commentary posted on a government domain. While it would be nice to provide personal pages to legislators from the official legislative site of a state, there are First Amendment concerns that should be addressed. Here's an on-point law review article written by a friend of a friend here in Kentucky, but it's published in the Richmond Journal of Law:

Silencing the blogosphere: A First Amendment caution to legislators considering using blogs to communicate directly with constituents
Although this article deals mainly with legislators who are contemplating a blog utilizing a government domain, I think it's still relevant to legislators like me who occasionally use a taxpayer-paid internet connection at the Capitol (and if you want to get technical, plugging my laptop into a taxpayer-paid electrical outlet).

Here are links to a few posts using technology that I think can be of benefit to legislators and constituents alike:

• Roll call voting maps
• Daily briefings (note copyright concerns)
• Political races
• Interactions with other governments
• For the future: live streaming legislative debate

Live Update: When considering the pros and cons of blogging, you have to consider the immediacy and transparency issues first and foremost (both adjectives that aren't normally associated with government). Here's an example of the immediacy (pic above taken a few minutes ago before the start of the session). This is one advantage this medium has over traditional print media, although their readership is exponentially larger than niche sites like this one.

Transparency is also a benefit to both constituents and government officials. It's apparent that constituents will eventually demand some sort of Internet presence from their electeds so that they can obtain information on demand about their government. Even if they don't want to follow legislative procedure here on Under the Dome and similar sites, at least they know it's there if they want to check in periodically.

Ask any elected official about he cons of the Internet, and at or near the top of the list will be personal attacks and rumor mongering from anonymous sources. I've talked to one elected official that left public life because of this. In the end, there's no debating that the Internet is here to stay, so public officials are going to have to become conditioned to these types of media. Thus, it's to our benefit to try and use this technology to the benefit of the public.