Dan Froomkin of Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism writes in It’s time for a Wiki White House that it’s time for a White House website that gives people an ongoing look at what’s happening in the west wing, and actively solicits – and responds to – their input:

Imagine a White House Web site where staffers maintain blogs in which they write about who they are and what they are working on; where some meetings are streamed in live video; where the president’s daily calendar is posted online; where major policy proposals have public collaborative workspaces, or wikis; where progress towards campaign promises is tracked on a daily basis; and where anyone can sign up for customized updates…

He suggests that a wiki could serve as both a focal point for policy and legislation, and a place to improve public political discourse:

Embracing “wiki culture” — by having members of the public contribute to an evolving body of information and ideas — could help develop a shared set of facts and assumptions. That could go a long way toward repairing the deep political fissures caused by our increasingly fractured media. It might even help build an American political common ground.

Tim O’Reilly writes that Obama should Put Change.gov Under Revision Control:

The real holy grail, of course, would be to provide revision control on all government regulations, and eventually, on legislation. This would no doubt be fought tooth and nail by lobbyists who don’t want their fingerprints on the final result, but that’s precisely why it would be such a breakthrough. And that’s also why I suggest that the Obama team start with change.gov: demonstrate that the system works, that it has enormous benefits in transparency, and work from there.

He acknowledges the difficulty in doing this:

Like so many things that go under the rubric of “change,” I’m sure that there would be many complications to this proposal, many problems I haven’t thought of. Many current assumptions and processes would need to be challenged, and some of the challenges would take us down dead ends. But that’s what change is all about. If it was just like the present, it wouldn’t be change.

But he makes an excellent point about adoption of a new, collaborative, wiki-like way of building administration documents:

Once the tools are in place, the social pressure to use them has a point of leverage.

Froomkin also discusses the value of a public input system whereby people can directly ask questions of the President and his administration:

So imagine a Web site where the president regularly answers questions sent in by citizens; where ordinary people can vote up or down items they want brought to the president’s attention; and where Americans from across the political spectrum engage in honest debate.

Obama’s Transition Team took the first steps toward that today, by launching Open For Questions, a section of the Change.gov website where anyone can ask a question and others can vote it up or down. Already, three people have asked about the possible use of wiki, and all three questions have received overwhelmingly positive votes:

“Will you support the application of version control technology (as used in software engineering, wikis, etc) to drafts of legislation and regulations, providing transparency to their creation process, authorship, etc?”
Rich, San Bruno, CA

“Will you consider putting everything your Administration (all departments) does in a singular, seamless online “wiki” (used by all departments) that truly leverages hypertext and contextual interlinking?”
Mitch Gore, Portland, OR

“How could wiki technology be used to improve government?”
Emae