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THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN POLITICAL ELECTIONS AND GOVERNMENT
SERVICES
by Herb Rubenstein
CEO, Herb Rubenstein Consulting
The millions of dollars spent by the parties and candidates for
office in 2002 were primarily spent on old technologies –
TV, radio, posters, polling and campaign workers. In 20 years these
forms of political spending will seem as obsolete as spending money
on bomb shelters dies today.
In 1999 I proposed
to Vice-President Gore the creation of a national commission to
investigate the future role of the internet and technology on political
participation and voting. His staff at the National Partnership
for Reinventing Government told me that Gore thought elections were
“state, not federal” matters and declined to support
my offer. Not only did Gore miss my point, he and the political
elite have failed to grasp the potential benefits of technology
in the political process.
This article
goes far beyond the mundane (but necessary) ideas of internet based
voting, political candidate’s websites, on-line instant polling,
virtual political meetings and raising money on-line. These ideas
were well developed in the last century. In this century, we need
a fresh look at the role of technology. Here are five ideas that
show how technology can transform the most important political problems
we face today.
- Low Voter
Turnout, Political Apathy:
The truth is that our election system is currently not physically
capable of handling high voter turnout (greater than 75% in most
areas) without long lines, voter count breakdowns and chaos at
the polls. New technology not only allows for internet based voting,
voting could be done at local ATM’s used by banks, kiosks
that can be located in libraries, shopping malls, fire stations
and millions of other locations throughout the country. Virtual
voting will lead to reducing the “cost” of voting
(time, inconvenience, etc.) and allow for a democratic increase
in voter turnout in the 2012 election in the United States. The
party that supports achieving a 75% voter turnout in 2012 will
win the Presidential election, sweep the Congress, win a majority
of the state offices being contacted and become a truly dominant
political party in the United States.
- Voter (customer)
education and Candidate education:
While e-learning has been a bust to date, new forms of blended
learning using DVD technology, web based interfaces and instructor
led and book/paper based modules in the right combination will
become the heart of the world’s future education systems.
The key technological developments in this field not only include
dissemination or distribution technology, but also include new
technologies (simulation, interactivity, etc.) that radically
improves the audio and visual look and feel of the educational
material developed. The party and candidates that master this
new educational media will be able to reach millions of potential
voters in hundreds of languages focusing on specific issues of
interest to each individual for less money than buying a stand,
one language, one issue 30 second TV spot that leaves most voters
cold and turned off. This technology is not for the cell sales
prove. In fact, these new learning tools can help candidates and
political parties do “grass roots work” and cross
the digital divide faster than any other method of getting out
the message used today.
In addition, these tools can allow a political party to train
its candidates in a uniform, more structural manner than is currently
used today. These “learning tools” and distribution
systems can be used to train candidates on substantive issues
and campaign tactics, fundraising and will save the political
parties and candidates millions of dollars in the process.
- Organizing
political campaigns for maximum effectiveness.
Legend has it that Lyndon Johnson was the first U.S. politician
who hired a full-time campaign manager. He hired Matt Reese and
the Johnson/Reese political team turned politics into big business
in the 1950’s. Reese’s new form of organizing a political
campaign was a breakthrough. There has been no similar organizational
breakthrough in political campaigns in the past fifty years.
Now, with new broadcast technology pioneered by strategy.com and
its followers, a new communication revolution is taking hold that
will allow candidates to get their precise message to exactly
the right potential voter, in the most convenient format and at
the time most convenient to the receiver of the information. In
addition, communication among campaign staffs, volunteers and
campaign managers can now reach the effectiveness levels reserved
for James Bond movies just a few years ago.
Communication technologies not only promote the deployment of
virtual teams, they allow valuable, inexpensive communication
to take place between and among virtual teams. This means that
political campaigns that are “aligned” but running
in different races (for example all Democratic party U.S. Senate
or governorship races in an election year) can test messages and
strategies on Tuesday in selected races and communicate their
effectiveness on Wednesday or Thursday to the other candidates.
Since campaigns are “marketing”, collecting, storing,
analyzing and disseminating such intelligence data across the
nation will give an incredible advantage to the party or group
of candidates that uses new technology to create, harvest and
mine this intelligence windfall.
- Improving
Candidate selection.
Who in their right mind would have ever selected Toricello to
run for the U.S. Senate in 2002; or Duke to run for governor in
Louisiana several years earlier. How can the democrats in Virginia
not find a single candidate to oppose John Warner for the U.S.
Senate race in 2002?
While the political process has “opened up” in many
ways, the candidate selection process for most races is just as
flawed as the process to select board members for publicly traded
companies. Essentially either a person himself or herself decides
to run or the party elite draft a person to run for office. At
the outset of this process, often little is known or fully developed
about the potential candidate. While Bush handpicked few candidates
for the 2002 races, neither party has ever conducted an intensive
nationwide scientific search process to identify the best candidates.
Self-promotion becomes the political wannabe’s stock in
trade. The private sector learned 50 years ago the value of retaining
“search experts” to help identify the most appropriate
candidates for top jobs in companies.
The political party that begins using new information technology
to identify, recruit, screen and assess potential candidates against
the preferences, temperament, culture, sought after competencies
and emotional demands of the electorate will be the party that
produces the best crop of candidates. Most voters today often
have a low opinion of all major candidates in the race. Self-promotion
must no longer be the road to the slot on the ballot. New technologies
can collect and analyze candidate and voter preferences to yield
better, more winnable candidates.
- Improving
government itself.
Most voters think government stinks. Many government agencies
have started using new technologies and treat voters and users
of their services as “customers”. However, like most
monopolies, in either the government or private sector, over time
the monopolist will treat the customer like dirt because the customer
has no choice but to put up with it. Freedom means having choices.
New technologies for customer relationship management, new information
systems, the end of political patronage through privatization
(with appropriate oversight) and the setting, monitoring and enforcing
of new standards for the delivery of government services can pave
the way toward bringing the quality of government services to
an acceptable level. Automation, demanding government workers
be fired when customer complaint reach a certain level, instituting
new processes to insure better government services is all now
possible due to new technologies created within the past ten years.
The candidates who pledge to end the long waiting lines at DMV,
who pledge to speed up the court system so that a party can get
a trial in months, not years and the candidates who develop the
systems so to monitor and fix government SNAFU’s will be
the candidates that will easily gain victory at election time.
Today, poor, inefficient government operations plague this nation.
The private sector continuously streamlines itself, reorganizes
itself, gets out of business areas and markets where it can not
be effective and, when it does not, the private sector business
goes out of business. Today, parts of our government need to streamline
and improve services or go out of “business.” Information
and new process technologies pave the way for new, alternative
methods and forms of delivering government services. We must experiment
with these new forms and go beyond reinventing government –
we need to get the job done right, on time, on budget with satisfied
customers. Nothing less is acceptable.
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