Obama instilled a sense of empowerment in the US electorate. He represents a departure from the helplessness (or at least apathy) that has characterized the past eight-or-so years in American politics.

As you said, Obama’s success hinges on harnessing “the same grassroots energy” that we saw throughout his campaign. Without empowering voters (by presenting them with an option other than the classic “Washington-Flavoured Status Quo”)this grassroots energy would never have been born.

What I am saying is that this “empowerment thing” is critical. What better way does Obama have to maintain this empowerment through to 2012 than open forums, councils, etc. a la Gov. 2.0?

I hope that Mr. Obama is listening (reading). I am looking foward to your coming suggestions. The American Democrats should be as well.

[...] Government: Obama is in and that means government 2.0 will start becoming a rapid adoption technology and communications vehicle for federal, and then state and local will follow. It’s inevitable [...]

Anthony – great, thought-provoking post! Dell’s IdeaStorm concept is already in play at our government at the TSA. Their IdeaFactory (http://www.fcw.com/print/22_5/features/151791-1.html) accomplishes much of the same goals. They can and should use that model as an example of how that concept can be successful in the public sector too.

We offered our best-of-breed idea portal to the administration pro bono.

http://www.brightidea.com/webstorm/

See actual data from simliar project with Cisco:

Missing Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajrIGbvfMtU

[...] Set up a series of citizen councils, organized around key policy themes, and equip users with an Ideastorm. At first these communities might look and feel a lot like Digg.com, the popular technology news aggregator. Users post policy suggestions and the community votes so that the most popular ideas rise to the top. Ideas are harvested from a broader spectrum of the population and the user-driven idea filtering process eases the burden on staff resources by harnessing “the crowd” to sift through mountains of feedback. – Anthony Williams, Obama’s web 2.0 strategy: from campaigning to governing, part 1 — Wikinomics [...]

Missing Link:
http://www.govcentral.com/

In an effort to combat climate change and to lower greenhouse gasses, President elect Obama should make the Trans-Global Highway a major policy directive in his administration., The project was proposed by Frank X. Didik, who also happens to be the found of the Electric Car Society, a number of years ago. The Trans-Global Highway would physically link the continents of the world together utilizing existing roads, rail lines and through a series of under water tunnels. The Trans-Global Highway would clearly lower transportation costs as well as reduce the huge amount of energy needed to transport products globally . I also see the Trans Global highway as a method to increase international cooperation and better allocation of global resources, with minimal invasiveness of the environment, It may well be the key infrastructure project that Mr. Obama has been seeking. The full proposal can be read at http://www.TransGlobalHighway.com

[...] Set up a series of citizen councils, organized around key policy themes, and equip users with an Ideastorm. At first these communities might look and feel a lot like Digg.com, the popular technology news aggregator. Users post policy suggestions and the community votes so that the most popular ideas rise to the top. Ideas are harvested from a broader spectrum of the population and the user-driven idea filtering process eases the burden on staff resources by harnessing ???the crowd??? to sift through mountains of feedback. – Anthony Williams, Obama???s web 2.0 strategy: from campaigning to governing, part 1 — Wikinomics [...]

[...] Many observers mistakenly think of Obama’s presidential campaign as bottom-up and open, when it was very top down and controlled in reality. The campaign maintained very tight control both on sensitive campaign information and the central message of change, even as it provided its supporters the platforms and tools to spread that message. It is naive to assume that the Obama government will be more open than the Obama campaign. So, even though we’ll see isolated examples, such as the Peer to Patent initiative by the US Patent Office, level 5 of government 2.0, therefore, will have to wait for a few more years. See Anthony Williams on a Dell Ideastorm for government. [...]

[...] Set up a series of citizen councils, organized around key policy themes, and equip users with an Ideastorm. At first these communities might look and feel a lot like Digg.com, the popular technology news aggregator. Users post policy suggestions and the community votes so that the most popular ideas rise to the top. Ideas are harvested from a broader spectrum of the population and the user-driven idea filtering process eases the burden on staff resources by harnessing “the crowd” to sift through mountains of feedback. – Anthony Williams, Obama’s web 2.0 strategy: from campaigning to governing, part 1 — Wikinomics [...]

[...] last week I started posting my initial thoughts on how Obama can tap into the same grassroots energy and organization that propelled him to the [...]