Senate 2.0
Posted Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 1:47 pm by John Brian (91 posts)
According to Roll Call (subscription req’d), the Senate recently revised their rules to allow Members to make use of YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and other free web applications on their sites, as long as they otherwise comply with franking rules:
Senators can now legally post YouTube videos on their Web sites, thanks to a long-awaited update to the chamber’s rules.
Until now, any Senator who embedded a YouTube video or linked to a Flickr album was in violation of outdated rules that required them to keep within the senate.gov domain. Some posted such links anyway, and few were reprimanded.
But last week, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee voted to allow Senators to use third-party sites.
This is pretty much indisputably a good thing. Not only does it allow Senators to bring their websites into the 21st century, but many of these tools foster interactions between citizens and their representatives in Washington. In addition, Congress’s ability to use technology is directly related to their ability to understand and regulate it wisely.
No movement yet on the House side, but hopefully we’ll see some changes there with the next Congress once they see how effectively their Senate colleagues make use of user-generated content tools.
In the meantime, I’d like to suggest that Senators celebrate their new freedom by embedding this video on their homepages:
