Source: http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/11/04/pelosi-addresses-e-parliament-conference/ , by John Wonderlich , Tags: eparl, Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi
Speaker
Pelosi yesterday spoke on a panel to kick off the World eParliament Conference 2009, in the US House of Representatives.
Her prepared
remarks are available here, and include the following:
“In the
history of American democracy, there was a time when a message could travel
only as fast as a horse could gallop or a ship could sail. Today, a message
from the American people to their representatives in Congress travels as fast
as a citizen can twitter, blog, or post to Facebook…
Led by the innovation and enthusiasm of young people, Americans and Members of Congress are holding a running conversation – in real time. There is no greater tool to increase transparency than the internet. Now, Americans can watch committee hearings, check votes, read bills, and review financial disclosures–all online. Next month, they will be able to see exactly how Members of Congress are spending their office funds, and at the start of next year, they will be able to watch and search our House floor proceedings in real time …
Clearly,
Sunlight agrees that “there is no greater tools to increase transparency than
the Internet.”
Also,
“watch[ing] and search[ing] floor proceedings in real time” will be a welcome
addition to the current real-time web presence of the House.
Speaker
Pelosi also engaged in a long aside during her delivered remarks yesterday,
invoking the distinction between disclosure through
office-hours-basement-binder-public-inspection and disclosure in real time,
online, expressing an explicit preference for the latter.
Ellen is
presenting this morning, and I’ll also be tweeting from much of the event.
Reference
http://www.ictparliament.org/wepc2009/index.htm
See background paper in the Documentation
10 Projects that Help Citizens Become Government Watchdogs
By Katie Donnelly, November 3, 2009 at http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/11/10-projects-that-help-citizens-become-government-watchdogs307.html
Posted by: Kat | November 09, 2009 at 08:35 AM