A recent report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, The Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future suggests:

Most surveyed believe that innovative forms of online cooperation could result in more efficient and responsive for-profit firms, non-profit organizations, and government agencies by the year 2020.

Mostly, the people surveyed were ‘technology experts and stakeholders’ who would be expected to believe that technology is going to make things better.

Recall Congress Now reports that

A New Jersey Appellate Court, in a March 16th unanimous ruling, paved the way for the first ever recall effort of a U.S. Senator. After originally being denied their constitutional right last September by the New Jersey Secretary of State for the circulation of petitions to recall Senator Menendez, The Committee to Recall Robert Menendez sued, taking their case to the New Jersey court…and won. The American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) was the only outside organization that filed an amicus brief with the Court supporting The Committee to Recall Senator Robert Menendez, the group formed by NJ Tea Parties United and the
Sussex County Tea Party.

Is this the sort of more efficient and response government we are looking for? I know that a lot of people would have liked to recall Sen. Lieberman here in Connecticut, but I worry that this moves us even further into a world of constant campaigning, paid for by the most wealthy and creating more gridlock in Washington.

To support the Project Vote has announced “the first mobile canvassing tool for Apple's iPad. This will increase voter registration and drastically reduce canvassing costs”. As a Nokia N900 user, I’d love to see this tool available on other platforms as well. The press release notes that “Currently only four states, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, support online voter registration”. Slowly, we are seeing that more and more government services are going online, and hopefully, move governments will use technology to improve their voter registration process, and make it easier to register online as well as easier to verify the legitimacy of the registrations.

Meanwhile, here in Connecticut, the battle over the future of the Citizen’s Election Program continues. The current Governor, who was elected before the program went into effect, wants to take over a quarter of the remaining funds in the program as part of the deficit mitigation efforts. Many express concern that cut of funding will force the program into insolvency. Perhaps everyone in the Governor’s office and the Legislature should take a 25% pay cut before we make that large a cut to the Citizen’s Election Program, since it is people that were elected prior to the program that have gotten us into this mess.

This again, returns to the latest Pew survey, where people noted that institutions are a strong resistance to change. Barry Wellman, of University of Toronto noted “Institutions know how to protect themselves.”

Will government be more efficient and responsive as a result of innovative forms of online cooperation? It would be great if that turns out to be the case, but the efforts of institutions to protect themselves significantly cast doubt on this.