Jason Goldman
White House Chief Digital Officer
Discussion
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
I'm Jason Goldman, the White House's first Chief Digital Officer. I help people interact directly with their government, particularly through projects like We The People - which is a way for people to create and sign petitions online. Today's announcement of the site's redesign presents an exciting opportunity to answer your questions on how we built the platform, what might be next, and how you might get involved.
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Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Jason - what's your story of breaking in? First how did you get into twitter? Then, how'd you get into the white house?
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@eriktorenberg prior to joining the White House, my experience was in product management; working with creative teams to help build new things. So in that way, it's actually fairly similar to what I do here now. I decided to join government because I was interested in the intersection of tech and civic engagement -- how to use the platforms to actually allow people to engage with their government in ways that weren't possible before.
OpenGovMetrics
@opengovmetrics · Collaboration Engineer @OpenGovMetrics
@goldman44 @eriktorenberg Last month, before the President spoke at South by Southwest #SXSW, you blogged about a "White House Summit on Civic Engagement" that would happen "later this spring" and gave a link for email-updates. However, I have not received any email about it. I am #OpenGov rep from IAP2usa.org, an organization with hundreds of members who have been working at the intersection Technology and Civic Engagement .. for decades!
Unfortunately, our organization has no D.C. office "inside-the-beltway", so it is hard to get ourselves invited to meetings on this topic that, we feel, is our obvious strength. Here's a thought: Let us help you #civictech to engage other advocates of #CivicEngagement (e.g. NCDD.org's 2000+ members) to collaborate on how best to use #civictech (!). But, for now, please update us on the WH Summit, so we will know "what's going on" and how to engage with it. Thanks --- Steve Buckley @OpenGovMetrics
Hey Jason, thanks for joining us :)
Was wondering why you are using @Goldman44 as your Twitter handle rather than @Goldman? Is @Goldman44 and account that will be passed down to the next Chief Digital Officer of the White House?
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@nivo0o0 Yes @goldman44 is my official work account and like the other official WH accounts (including @whitehouse) they stay with the institution. Which is why I have a personal account just for personal things that I'll use once we're done here.
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
@goldman I have to ask such a base question, but what does a day look like for you in the position of White House Chief Digital Officer? What are the pros and the cons? Always welcome on @twentyminutevc
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@harrystebbings Surprisingly it's actually very similar (structurally) to other jobs I've had at companies of similar size. We have a morning team check-in, there are recurring meetings on given topics, etc. As with being a good product manager, my role here is often just being a good router of information and helping unblock the creative folks on the team.
Danny Nemer
@dannynemer
Officer Goldman:
The White House's digital and tech efforts are substantially improving areas of the federal government which were long neglected. Further, the White House now employs many skilled tech workers whom years ago were unlikely to work for the U.S. government.
Q: What is the fate of these tech operations, efforts, and employees at the end of the Obama administration? Are they bound to the current administration, or will they continue unabated?
Thank you!
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@dannynemer Thanks for the positive feedback! I do think we are making improvements and that the work we've started will carry on after we are done. That's one of the inspiring things about working here is establishing new ways for tech and government to work together. The goal is that the next Administration - whoever that may be - will see the positive work that's been accomplished and underway and continue to improve upon it. Concretely, the petitions platform is something that was created during this Administration but given the strength of engagement we see with We The People, it will be a great civic engagement asset to any future Administration.
Ines Mergel
@inesmergel · Associate Professor at Syracuse U.
@goldman44 @dannynemer how do you work in the meantime to scale up (or scale across) USDS' and 18F's effors across the federal government? What is needed to get each department up to speed to implement their digital services teams following the White House' lead?
Kate Symes
@kate_symes
Federal agencies are notoriously slow to adopt new technology, but the White House under Obama has been very progressive with its digital communications. What do you think is the most important thing Federal agencies should be doing right now to engage citizens through digital communications?
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@kate_symes Thanks for the compliment and I think a number of agencies are doing a great job. For example, the Department of the Interior's Instagram account is a must follow in my opinion. And not only does NASA have some of the best content but they've continually found new ways to make it accessible and conversational. This is the big point: these platforms are fundamentally ones of human conversation. So if you approach them as a place to interact with others (as opposed to a digital bullhorn) you'll be on much stronger footing from the jump.
@goldman44 @kate_symes I was just over at Kennedy Space Center for a NASA Social Event. The SpaceX launch was incredible 🚀
@Goldman can you tell us a little more about @WeThePeople?
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@nivo0o0 We the People (petitions.whitehouse,gov) is your voice in the White House - it's the way you can exercise your 1st Amendment right to petition your government on the issues that matter to you. Created under this administration we've received over 32M signatures and over 440k petitions have been created.
Stephen R. Fox
@f6x · Communications Strategist, F6x
Can you describe how you collaborate with 18F, what kinds of ideas get prioritized, and how they get approved?
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@f6x love 18F! They've done some amazing work including vote.usa.gov, data.gov and Open Opportunity Project (http://opportunity.census.gov/). They're also just a great convening place in the broader USG to pull together folks from disparate agencies to talk about best practices. Along with the US Digital Services, these are the groups of folks who are really building citizen-centered tools and services that are the spine of a Modern Government. Obviously a lot more work to do but they are heroes of mine and a big part of the reason I joined. My office doesn't do as much development so we don't work as closely on individual projects but do end up hanging out a fair amount of the time.
George Carlisle III
@george_carlisle_iii · Owner, AlterSciences
Why did you decide on the redesign? I saw the old site and it was functional. What goals weren't really addressed with the old site and what do you envision the new system will give us that we didn't have before? My main question is why 100,000 vs, 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 limit for a petition?
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@george_carlisle_iii There are two main goals: first, we wanted to make the site easier for anyone to use. That means mobile access as well as accessibility to screen readers. But also simplifying the petition creation process (and the product as a whole.) Second, we wanted to make the experience of petition creation more guided so that we created more petitions that the Federal government can actually address and respond to. I wrote more about this in my post and thanks for the question! https://medium.com/@Goldman44/re...
George Carlisle III
@george_carlisle_iii · Owner, AlterSciences
@goldman44 My main question is why 100,000 vs, 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 limit for a petition?
Michael Peloquin
@mmp7700 · Partner, Borderline Media Company
How do you weigh the risk-benefit analysis of posting stuff when you know most of the Internet is just waiting to troll it? It's like trying to make the White House cool and not Donny from The Big Lebowski.
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Jason Goldman
@goldman44 · Chief Digital Officer, The White House
@mmp7700 you know one rule that I personally have always found helpful is to focus on accentuating the positive. Fortunately, this also works well with one of the President's fundamental attributes: a relentless optimism. So starting from there you are already in good stead. And then just remembering that in all things, folk's first reaction is going to emotional followed by rational. So if you understand the nature of the platform and the nature of the folks you're talking with, it'll be ok.
Michael Peloquin
@mmp7700 · Partner, Borderline Media Company
@goldman44 Love the answer. Lead from the light. Tell that to the right. (I should really be in politics with slogans like that)