Opinion from PC Magazine: Decentralize and Network the Federal Government Now — This is my latest column from PC Magazine. An important issue.
Some years ago I was flabbergasted when Congress banned the use of laptops by U.S. representatives. The rules are more relaxed now, and computers are part of the day-to-day life of a legislator. But I think it’s time for us to consider taking things to the 21st century by completely virtualizing Congress, letting the representatives and senators work from within their districts instead of living and working in Washington, D.C.
Things would work more effectively with teleconferencing, and the Congress folks wouldn’t be so hounded by lobbyists in a corrupting environment. Lobbyists would have to travel to the districts.
More important is the security issue. As things sit today, one suitcase nuke set off near the Capitol buildings would pretty much wipe out the federal government and kill all the representatives and senators at once. This would be a serious problem. Just look at the devastation a submegaton bomb caused in Hiroshima. Well, imagine D.C. being in that condition. Why does it remain a sitting duck?
If we decentralize, John, the Lobbyists who own America would have to spend all their time traveling. Though, I suppose they could just do wire transfers.
Also, the movers and shakers would have to acknowledge that the country is bigger than Washington D.C.
If the President is calling for less travel and lower energy use by government employees, this would seem consistant. Then again – what is saved in DC may be consumed by the lobbists who would have to fly about to inflict their influance. One saving grace: that may just be the shot in the arm that the airlines need.
Ferget it! I’ve worked in the hotel industry and every time there’s a fuel price jump or a business downturn everyone starts talking about teleconferencing or whatever. Then they go back to traveling so they can meet face-to-face. Body language, inflection, humor, bonding through golf and drinking, these are the ways of measuring the man with whom you’re trying to make a deal. You talk cynically about empty legislatures while the legislators are meeting lobbyists. They’re also meeting each other – committee meetings up the wazoo. The same process that produces bad legislation also produces good laws and regulations. Maybe we should just give them free dial-up and a big library of emoticons. Naaah!
I’ve got a computer vote for me in the nexr election.
Never happen. Like you said John, in DC they get all the perks that come with elected office. Few would be willing to give all that up. I do agree with you though.
John… Love the idea, but it’ll never fly. There’s too much infulence from the lobbyistes and they’ll lobby long and hard to keep peeps in DC.
Now I would like to point out, some of our senators are computer literate.. One of my Senators, Barak Obama, has a Podcast! Check it out: http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/
-A
You said you were arguing for decentralization, but all you were talking about is the physical structures. How about actually making more decisions at state and lcoal levels, or even in each house? Then the lobbyists would pack up, and you wouldn’t see millions of dollars from out of state being spent on a Senate race of 400 thousand votes.
On a higher level this raises an interesting question: When a technological solution to a real problem is blocked only by a mindset (in this case the “inside the beltway” mentality), what does one do?
Federal Fish Story
1 million fish and eggs infected at federal hatchery.
The Allegheny National Fish Hatchery found that lake and brook trout tested positive for infectious pancreatic necrosis.
This is the second major loss to the hatchery this year.
They are so busy with stuff like killing the fish, who has the time to worry about sitting ducks? The fish were all fine until the Army Corp. of Engineers showed up and began building dams and making the waters run the way nature never intended. Now the federal government is in the business of growing fish and cities and villages are occupied by, you guessed it, fish and the people had to leave. FEMA is going to fix it all up! They hired Mike Brown as a consultant after Bush booted him out before he hurt himself.
Hey John,
You are right on the money with this. It’s absurd that these guys do this when they could be doing what you propose and strengthen our nation. I work in the tech industry and I know that it would be insane to have all your servers in one location in case of outages etc. , why have all your top government officials in one location? A distributed network of public officials would be the smartest organizational structure we could have at present. I hope we can convince them of that before it’s too late.
The federal government is decentralized in one way. We have a federal building and federal courts in my area. It seems that the courts understand that decentralization makes sense and the federal government gets it up to a point. What to do about Washington is very complex. I would say that the Smithsonian should develop a plan. I would make Washington a top science and research center, but I don’t have a plan. Maybe they could turn it into a university and let the whole thing be a center for lifetime learning. No American left behind. Americans from all walks of life could go to Washington and study and explore a better future for generations to follow. It sounds better than a bunch of lobbyists, bickering congressmen and rich senators sitting around trying to expand our future with more government and red tape. They could easily operate out of a local federal building (Youngstown, OH has two), the result of which might be a cost savings. The federal judges do this sort of thing on a daily basis. Maybe they could put all the federal courts in Washington, since all the states and counties have courts in their districts. In which case Washington could be converted into a giant law school and we could have a no lobbyist left behind act.
I see the sense in this. The same idea was proposed from business several years ago. It still hasn’t taken hold. Even with the increase in gas prices the leadership of companies still prefer to “fly” to do business rather than do it over the Internet. Let’s face it: there are always better prostitutes there than here, so why stay here when we can “fly” there.
This would improve security. As far as lobbyists for big interests (ie corporations, NRA, etc) and corruption go, it’s a different matter. I wish that I thought decentralizing congress would change things, but I don’t think it would. The major lobbyist groups are already decentralized. Every lobbyist group that can afford it already has a stable of lobbyists in every state capital that passes laws that might apply to them, as well as in DC, and the only thing that would really change is that all 50 state lobbyist offices would get beefed up, while the DC lobbyist offices would shut down.
Lobbyists for small interests, or interests with small budgets, would suffer. Non-profits would suffer. More money you donate to charity would be spent on travelling folks around to chase down senators. Granted, I’m not sure how much those voices are heard on Capital Hill nowadays anyway, but you would certainly cut into their chances like this.
It would also become correspondingly more difficult for the press or anyone else to keep an eye on the government, as most “under the table” deals would go from being done in person or at least with someone nearby to online, which is going to be over secured networks and completely private, barring hacking (which is illegal). Laws can be passed to try to make these things public, but does anyone trust that? If it’s under the table, its already breaking the law anyway…