Changing Congress Through The Semantic Web?

Everyone has been buzzing with the elusive concept of a semantic web for a while now, but we have yet to see it work in a concrete way. Wouldn't it be nice if the first large scale use of a successful semantic web application effected a change in Congress? Professor Lawrence Lessig certainly thinks so, and he's launching the Change Congress wiki to do just that.

The Change Congress site isn't fully active yet. Users can expect limited functionality for the first launch level, with increasing usefulness as the site grows and gathers more data and more momentum. The site offers a place for you to sign up and show what level of congressional change you support. You can then download code to place on your web site declaring your support for changing congress to the world.

How is the site planning to effect change beyond producing yet another widget to clutter the side bars of blogs and take up the open space on web sites? Lessig hopes that his project will bring together people and their representatives to eliminate any impact lobbyists, big businesses, special interests and PACs have on representatives from both the House and the Senate. That seems like a tall order for a web site, but Lessig, creator of the widely used Creative Commons system, thinks it can be done.

The web site promotes four main goals for a reformed congress. These are:

• no longer accept money from PACs and lobbyists
• banning earmarks
• supporting public financing of campaigns
• promoting a completely transparent congressional process

The simple widget Lessig is encouraging people to put on their sites to show support is only the first step in a process. Once the widgets are installed, Lessig plans to use them to track where support is coming from on what issues, in the same way the Creative Commons licenses are tracked. As the data is tracked and gathered showing where support can be found, Change Congress plans to use a method similar to that of Wikipedia, crowd sourcing, to vet the data.

What crowd sourcing will do is tell them which sites displaying the badge have what level of support. The crowd sourcing will be done by volunteers. The volunteers will be researching each instance of the widget's appearance to see if the support shown is just window dressing to promote the cause passively, or if the person or site is actively supporting the aspects of the cause listed in their widget. That data will also be mapped out and added to the general support data, enhancing it.

Once the widget and mapping systems are working well, Lessig plans to add ways for the public to out their money where their mouths are. As more and more semantic data is gathered using the tools provided by Change Congress, people will be able to match themselves with the candidate most like them on policy reform and donate to their campaign. Personally, I'd like to see the site use semantic data to match people to candidates on more issues than just the four bullet points key to Change Congress's philosophy.

I don't think four bullet points of compatibility are enough to get people to back a candidate, no matter how badly we need reform. But Lessig's involvement with MAPLight as a board member and collaboration with Joe Tippi, a political consultant, tells me he may already be thinking of a bigger picture than just Congress and special interests. He took a moment to write out some of his immediate goals for the Huffington Post:

Let the cause of this political cycle be substantial and fundamental reform of Congress. For with an approval rating hovering in the low 20s, no other federal institution needs the renewed confidence of the people more. From the scandals involving outright bribery, to the indirect corruption of earmarks, to the pervasive and persistent skepticism born of the view that too rarely does congressional action track policy sense rather than campaign dollars, this is an institution in desperate need of change. Done right, the Net can leverage the support for that change. And get it done.

It sounds like Lessig and his team have lofty goal for their web site. The climate is indeed ripe for change with 67 congressional seats open in this election year, and a Presidency up for grabs. Can a web site really take big money out of government and effect change in Congress? It's a little early to say, but if it catches the right groundswell of support I think that yes, yes it can.