Today’s Government Leaders – Driven By Technology

A feature length article this week from Government Technology showcases how leaders like Newark Mayor Cory Booker (who just co-founded a new video-sharing service) and Alex Torpey (elected Village President of South Orange, NJ, at 23 years old last year) are using new media and other emerging technologies in their work.

Highlights from the GovTech article:

• Social media lets Booker engage with hundreds of people at a time and broadens his connection to people he can’t necessarily reach at a campaign or community event.
• One in 600 people in the United States is elected to public office at some point in their life, said Joe Green, co-founder and president of NationBuilder (disclaimer, my company) — a community organizing system that blends the customer relationship management and content management systems as a synthesized website and people database.
• California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom is writing a book on how citizens can use social media, technology and available government data to cut through bureaucratic red tape and redesign government in their own image.
• Torpey: “I think [affordable, accessible technology] has amazing democratization implications for the political process, which ironically enough could seriously use some democratizing.” Torpey, the second youngest mayor in New Jersey, says he won his election “by bringing technology to government and government to the people.”

You can read the full article here.