07/06/11: Open more avenues of communication

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

THE PRESIDENT will host a Twitter town hall meeting today.

U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, whose district runs from Hampton to Northern Virginia, holds one nearly every Tuesday. Hampton Mayor Molly Ward has embraced social media like no other: She regularly tweets the happenings of her city, has a blog, is active on Facebook and hosts a live chat every Tuesday.

At the root of these are a commitment to transparency and civic engagement.

While candidates and campaigns put up websites, create Facebook pages and open Twitter accounts, they are often abandoned after the campaign is over, even if the candidate is successful. And if they aren’t abandoned, the posts are often from staff and rarely from the elected representatives themselves.

It is refreshing to see a representative actively engage the public on issues of importance, whether it be a pothole or the federal deficit.

A recent report on a national survey of transparency, civic engagement and technology use in local government agencies concludes that email is the primary method of communicating with citizens.

More than half of the departments surveyed have adopted social networking, such as Facebook and Twitter. A majority of the managers said that the Internet helps to make people feel connected to the city. City websites are used to disseminate information, although less so to facilitate two-way interaction between the public and local government agencies.

One website encouraging such interaction is operated by the city of Virginia Beach on the topic of redistricting. Announced last Friday, the website (www.vbredistricting.com) contains a treasure trove of information.

It has gathered in one place all of the data necessary for anyone to be able to follow the entire process, including the schedule of upcoming public meetings and the plan alternatives so far.

Perhaps the most impressive part for me is that the site invites residents to submit their own maps and provides an easy mechanism for doing so.

The survey on transparency and social media use, conducted by the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that more than half of key decision meetings in local government organizations were open to the public.

“It may be,” the authors wrote, “that organizations that require more political responsiveness are more likely to provide opportunities for input from the public into their decision processes, whereas organizations that are more rule bound and require greater control may choose not to enable the public to influence important department and agency policy decisions.”

That’s one explanation. And it might explain why Norfolk handled redistricting far differently, or why it held a closed session to appoint School Board members.

Another explanation is far simpler: Some of our elected representatives are more committed to transparency and civic engagement than others. Truth is, it shouldn’t be left to them. One of our roles as citizens is to participate in decisions affecting us — and not just by showing up to vote.

If we want transparency and civic engagement, we have to demand it of those elected to represent us.