Bente Kalsnes’ blog

Openness and transparency in politics is important. Very important. It gives indications of how legitimate a political system is. It gives us better possibilities to check whether the politicians are doing the job they already promised us they should do. The more secretive, the more suspect, in my opinion. New technologies are giving politicians new tools to open up communication, decision making, influencing, governance, etc. I have written about possibilities for wiki foreign policy earlier, and recently, Pål Hivand wrote (in Norwegian) about how different public entities can open up for the social web.
To name an example, EU’s lobby register or “Register of interest representatives” opened up this week, and so far, 79 companies/lobbyist have registered (it has already been criticised for being voluntary and without names on lobbyists, just the company). Norway doesn’t even have a lobby register - how is that possible? Here is the American register.

But much more radical are Barack Obama’s ideas for utilizing technology in public administration. Take a look at his technology ideas. Among his ideas are:

* Protect an open Internet
* Better filtering systems for parents
* Safeguard rights for privacy
* Open up government for citizens - by making governmental data available for the public, open up decision making processes, make is possible for citizens to follow and participate in public meetings online
* Online town meetings.
* Employ blogs, wikis and social networking to modernize agenzies to modernize governmental decision making.

These are just a few of his ideas, which seems very promising. In the latest issue of Morgenbladet, I wrote about (in Norwegian, requires access to the archive) how EU should steal some of Obama’s ideas, especially when it comes to communcating and explaining their policy, which EU is struggling to make sense for ordinary people, such as the Irish. It might seem unfair to compaire EU and the US, two so very different systems, but still, Obama’s ideas can and should be utilized in other political system. He has already proved he is able to build up an enormous grasroot organization with 1,5 million email addresses from donors and even more from other supporters.

Bissy, bissy days, very little time to blog, unfortunatelly. But I’ve read lots of great stuff recently, and wants to share some of my favorite links.

• Recently, I wrote an article in Morgenbladet about a new law proposal that seems to make EU less transparent. While writing that article, I became aware of these two great sites that are pushing EU to become more transparent: wobbing.eu and farmsubsidy.org - very inspiring for journalists.
• I’ve followed the news about the new Swedish FRA-law. Here is an explantation of how it works, and another piece of why bloggers have been important on this matter.
• Nicolas Sarkozy’s anti-piracy law “3 strikes and your out” is also something I’ve also followed closely. Now, it’s closer to become a reality in France than before with this decision. My article about the ISP’s and what kind (if any) of responsibility they should have, is in next issue of Mandag Morgen (Monday 23rd).
• The last few days have been crazy in Brussels, demonstrating tractors in the street, combined with the huge influx of politicians and journalists for the European Council. Euroblogger Jon Worth is a great read about everything EU-related, and you can find some very interesting analysis of the “Irish problem”.
• I’ve just started reading “Here Comes Everybody” (yes, it is a book…), looks very promising.
• Weezer has a cool new video out, with lots of YouTube-heros (recommended by Andreas’ andedam). Have fun!

Yes, I have also got my Firefox 3.0 update!

I haven’t had time to test it properly yet, but it looks good, is safe, free, is prefered by web designers and you can be part of a world record if you download it today - what more do you need to hear?

Update: Firefox made a download record, according to BBC. In the first 24 hours the web browser was available the software was downloaded 8,3 million times. Impressively -at their busiest the servers were handling more than 9,000 downloads per minute. The software has now been downloaded more than 10 million times.

But obs - there are apparently security flaws in the new browser. DV Labs/Tipping Point reported a flaw only five hours after Firefox 3.0 debuted. The flaw potentially lets an attacker take over a PC if a user clicks on a booby-trapped link.

Several of my friends have walked the walk from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama for the past few months, and Anne Juel Jørgensen has a very interesting revelation of her process. Obama clearly emerges as a different leader, who has not only inspired the West Wing (Olav Anders Øvrebø has a great video and analysis), but also millions of people, not only in the US, but all over the world. In my view, he also seems to the be a potential tech president. On this amazing web site, the techpresident, I found this great article by one of the founders, Micah L. Sifry about Obama’s organization (via David Sifry on Twitter). And even more importantly, I became aware of this video of Obama giving a pep talk to 300 staffers in Chicago.

Take a few minutes to watch it, you will not be disappointed, I promise (he even has a comment on the fist bump!).

Obama says, among other things (transcribed by Sifry): “Even if we had lost,” he tells the crowd,”I would be proud of what we’ve built….Collectively all of you, most of you whom are, I’m not sure, of drinking age (people laugh), you’ve created the best political organization in America, and probably the best political organization that we’ve seen in the last 30 40 years. That’s a pretty big deal.”

But just the fact that this internal pep talk is filmed and put on YouTube gives an indications on the openness surrounding this campaign. By the way, did you know that Obama has between four and eight million email addresses registred on his website? As a contrast, Hillary’s husband, Bill, is not even using email, according to this article.

Obama has also some thoughts on volunteers, flat structure and transparency in this video:

“One of the things that I’m really proud about this campaign,” he told an audience in Indianapolis on April 30, “is that we’ve built a structure that can sustain itself after the campaign.” He then talks about how he won so many states, including states like Idaho. It was because of volunteers, he says, “they built the campaign.” We didn’t originally have big plans for Idaho, he tells his listeners, “but people made this structure.”

Huffington Post is one om my favorite web sites/blogs (and right now, it’s filled with Obama victory news), and I’ve been amazed by the way Arianna Huffington has built up the site since 2005. I wrote about the site when it went live in 2005, and since then, it has more or less skyrocketed. Now, it is actually no 1 at Technorati’s blog ranking (according to authority).

For those curious about Arianna and her philosophy, you can now watch this behind the scenes video by CNBC, where also journalism professor from NY University, Jay Rosen, is interviewed.

For those of you interested in EU, gender equality, Norway, blogging (what a strange mix, kind of like me…), you have to read Vice-president in the European Commission, Margot Wallström’s blog post, and even more importantly, take a look at the comments. She went to Norway a few weeks ago to participate in the debate “Does the EU threaten the Nordic welfare system?” On the same trip she also visited the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, NHO’s “Female Future”-project . She has written about all this, and look at all the aggression she has triggered!

Anti-EU and anti-gender-equality folks have united over there - but there are also some quite interesting remarks about Norway’s foreign policy.

Have you ever felt naked online? Too much information out there, about yourself, your feelings, your surroundings, your private opinions?

I was struck by the resemblance between these three stories yesterday, as I by coincidence stumbled upon some of them. And all of these three people; Dag Solstad, Norwegian writer, Lee Siegel, American critic, and Emily Gould, American blogger, have or are still dreading the online exposure (mostly self-inflicted though), and even more, the interaction with the readers.

Dag Solstad has been all over Norwegian news recently, after his essay (not online) in Samtiden about freedom of speech, where he argues (among other things) that he is supporting the freedom of press, but he doesn’t think freedom of speech is a sacred right. “The perverted freedom of speech, which is expressed in blogs, such as in Dagbladet (…) is what I react against, Solstad says (my translation).

A few sentences later, we learn this: “I have never read a blog and will never do it”.

Of course, the reactions have been strong, both supportive and highly critical (take a look at the readers’ comments at Dagbladet). I think it’s rather sad to read such an elitist approach (hail the author/editor, but spare us from the unreflected crowd out there), with so little trust in the “people” (Solstad has been a communist, he might still be). Eirik Newth has a sharp post about the same issue, here is also John Olav Egeland.

Anyway, Solstad seems trapped in the 60’s, but the two Americans I mentioned earlier, are definitively not left behind. Emily Gould has this amazing and very private article in the NYTimes Magazine (via Mary Madden at Pew Internet) about her life as a highly confessional blogger at Gawker, a New York gossip blog.
Solstad, if you want to learn about the Internet culture, with all its ups and downs, addictions and heart beating intensity, read her article (which has 1216 comments at this moment - and so much aggression!).

Over at Guardian, the literature critic Lee Siegel is biting back at his critics. He lost his job at The New Republic after he got caught posting flattering comments in his own blog. I wrote about his story here. Siegel got so sick and tired of the unfiltered, anonymous and hateful comments in his blog that he created his alias “sprezzatura”, who wrote: “”Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.” He was so content with sprezzatura that he even repeated his alias’ phrases when writing as Siegel - yes, that was when the bloggers caught him.

The Internet is painful, no doubt. But also, I think these stories has something to do with a point the cartoonist Gapingvoid has depicted so perfectly:

I was interviewed by Kurer recently, a radio program at NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) about “Politicians in a Digital Culture”, based on an article I wrote for Dagbladet. Here is the podcast.

I must admit, it is very strange to hear my own voice “from outside”, so I avoided for a while to listen to the program (very childish, I know). But I have pulled myself together and I think Ida Jevne, the journalist, has done a great job in presenting different opinons on the topics. She has also interviewed Erik Solheim, the Minister of Environment and International Development (yes, look at that title, he has way too much to do!), who has made some podcasts with interesting people, and Dag Terje Andersen, Minister of Trade and Industry, who is blogging.

Jevne has also talked to Marius Eriksen from GCI Communique, and later, his colleague, Fredrik Johansen has blogged about this topic.

Yes, I did it!

Finished Brussels 20K. My first race ever (except from the Icelandic 3K Kvinnalaupur I did in DC, where we were not allowed to run…). I’m really proud of myself.

Since this was the first time I ever ran 20K (I haven’t even done it while training), I was not sure what time to expect, everything between 2 hours and 2h30min - I actually ended up with 1h58 (number 11 396 out of 25 000)!

This was the song that got me over the finishing line, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” by Vampire Weekend. Vampire Weekend was even mentioned in an op-ed in New York Times a few days ago, The Alpha Geeks (via AnneJJ on Twitter). Here is another Vampire Weekend goody, A-Punk.

My running group made our donation to this organization, Make a Wish foundation, that fulfill wishes for kids with life-threatening medical conditions.

Norwegian foreign policy as a wiki document? Would that be an intriguing idea? Open for contributions and editing from the audience?

I do understand if some diplomats would bite their tongue off if reading this, and to be honest, I’m not sure how that would work out. But why not try it out?

The reason why I write about this issue, is that I heard about the Refleks project (which means reflex) yesterday here in Brussels. And I have to admit I got a bit disappointed. “Refleks - Norwegian interests in a globalised world” is initiated by Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and the purpose is to “invite to reflection and debate about the content of Norway’s foreign policy in modern time”.

A great, but very broad idea, and thus, somewhat unclear. The leaders of the project talked about the different challenges confronting Norway (oil, climate, energy, work force, pension fund, foreign aid, international laws, identity, and a few words about EU - which always creates lots of controversy among Norwegians).

The ideas clearly lacked priorities at this point of the discussion, but what I’m also concerned about, it the lack of digital tools to bring this project out to the people and opening up for online discussions. In 2008, that should be obligatory, even for a governmental department.

If you have a look at the Refleks site, you can read several relevant documents, but there is no digital interaction at all, except from the possibility to send an e-mail to refleks@mfa.no. The debate that is suppose to occur around Norway’s future foreign policy, will clearly not take place online. But in public meetings, such as at Oslo’s Litteraturhuset (where they are sure to meet the cultural elite) and among established organizations and experts. But what about “the wisdom of crowds” and smart mobs, because they are clearly alive and kicking in Norway as well?

A debate forum would be the minimum, a blog/twitter to follow the development of the project as well. And perhaps a place where people could cross off which political topics should be highest on Norway’s priority list. Much cooler though, would it be if the ministry dared to open up for users to build new services for the web site in a beta, similar to what Rune Røsten suggested here (via AndreasLunde).

The Ministry of Government Administration and Reform has already gotten a very clear advice when it comes to the social web - use the new opportunities - not just to share information, but also to create eGov-wikipedia (Petter B. Brandtzæg).

But will the diplomats and bureaucrats dare?

Update: New Zealand has already used wiki to prepare a new law. In 2007, this website was set up, where the audience could edit and make suggestions to the new Police act. According to the website, they got an overwhelmingly respons, lots of ideas and suggestions for what the new Act should include.

This is really something to look into! (from Boingboing via forteller)