Via NextGov, the Department of Defense has launched a new online campaign aimed at destigmatizing the mental health struggles for active duty and reservist soldiers. RealWarriors.net frames psychological wounds -- including those stemming from traumatic brain injury -- as part and parcel of the battlefield challenges facing service members. The site features web video profiles of military members who have fought and overcome mental challenges, and gone on to continue their careers. One clip features a Marine dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In it, his commanding officer and family members praise his strength while discussing in honest terms his psychological battles since returning from war. He's now, says the clip, an intelligence officer. (Notice the .net domain, which might appear a bit less imposing to service members seeking help than a .gov address.)

Multnomah County, Oregon, won't be getting its very own Twittering, Facebooking, and blogging social media coordinator after all. After getting heat for advertising the job at a government salary of $60,000 to $70,000 a year, Tom Wheeler, chair of the county that includes the city of Portland, yanked the listing. Wheeler has been making the case to his colleagues that the brave new Internet world is best navigated by government that connects with its people wherever their eyeballs happen to already be:

Looking forward, we have some ambitious plans to meet the demands of a changing media environment. The reality of shrinking news staff and 24/7 media coverage, means we will be producing more of our own news content. We hope to launch a county news television show later this year, and will be using more social media to get our messages directly to the pubic. We’re looking at creating a Multnomah County Facebook profile, and evaluating how tools like twitter make sense for our organization. You may not be aware that CDC is using twitter and the State Dept. hosts public Q&A’s on YouTube.

But the social media gig fell victim to public outcry. As Mashable's Pete Cashmore notes, the first line of the job description ",Do you tweet and use Facebook?," seemed about tailor-made for skeptical news teasers. Much of the trouble could probably have been avoided with a bland job title like "Online Communications Director." That said, Multnomah County's predicted budget short fall of $46 million dollars over the next two years probably didn't help matters much.

In a report released today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology are advancing the idea that the federal government's near-blanket ban on persistent cookies -- imposed by OMB back in 2000 after the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy was found to be tracking web visitors -- is too absolute. (Via Shaun Dakin) Without a way of compiling metrics on web use, the government can't intelligently measure whether what they're doing online is worth the effort. So EFF and CDT are proposing more nuanced limitations on the use of cookies and other tracking tools by Uncle Sam:

• Use data only for measurement Data collected for Web measurement should only be used for that purpose. Agencies should avoid outsourcing data collection to commercial partners.
• Prominently disclose Federal agencies using Web measurement tools on their sites should provide disclosures in their privacy policies about the tools.
• Offer choice Site visitors should be offered a choice about having their data collected for cross‑session measurement. The choice mechanism and the visitor’s choice status should be clearly visible on every page of the agency site.
• Limit data retention The individual‑level data collected for measurement purposes should be retained for no more than 90 days. The retention time frames should be disclosed, correlated to the purpose for which the data was collected, enforced through technology, and explicitly stated in commercial partner contracts.
• Limit cross‑session measurement Federal agencies should only use cross‑session measurement when single‑session measurement cannot be used to obtain the same metric.
• Obtain third‑party verification Agencies engaged in Web measurement and their partners should have their privacy compliance procedures regularly verified by their Inspectors General or a designated independent third party.

The full report is here.

Here's how you know that open government absolutists and CRS, the internal research wing of Congress, are so far apart that the entire Library of Congress plus the states of Connecticut and Arizona could fit comfortably between them. At the very same time Joe Lieberman and John McCain are pushing legislation to force CRS to post their closely-held report database online for all the world to see, CRS is calling in the FBI (!) to figure out
how a cache of their reports got out onto the Interwebs.

As things stand, CRS operates under a somewhat convoluted systems in which members of Congress can dribble out CRS reports to constituents as they desire. Beyond that, Jane Citizen can proactively get her hands on a report through her representative, if she knows enough to ask for the latest work on airport passenger screening or organized crimes (two recent CRS work products). The whole system can be a bit nutty. And nutty to the tune of about $100 million a year. The New York Times today is editorializing in favor of Lieberman and McCain's plan under S. Res. 118 for a public "centralized electronic system" of CRS reports:

The Congressional Research Service investigates important issues and produces detailed, well-written reports that are available to members of Congress but not the general public. A resolution has been introduced in the Senate to make these reports freely available online. It would be an important step forward for government openness, and it would narrow the information gap between Washington insiders and ordinary Americans.

But it's worth considering why CRS objects so strongly to a shift in its mission from a purely internal expert body to something with a public face. It's helpful to see CRS as it sees itself: a consigliere to Congress, a veritable Silvio Dante to the 535 Tony Sopranos that make up the Senate and House...

This whole thing is something like a leather-bound edition of Diet for a Small Planet. Holding an AA meeting at a bar. Passing around a charity box at an Objectivist conference. The Obama Administration's process for crafting the mandated open government directive is happening largely behind closed doors. The objections of transparency advocates are most likely amplified somewhat by personal pique at being cut out of the process, but as a procedural matter it's a funny way to demonstrate the virtues of open government. Politico's Josh Gerstein has details, as does NextGov's Aliya Sternstein. Sternstein reports that new CTO Aneesh Chopra will be delivering only the rough outlines of a directive to the president by the May 21st deadline set up in Obama's presidential memo. Gerstein's coverage seems to confirm that. He has the Office of Science and Technology Policy saying that what will pop out of that office eventually will be a process, not a product.

Internally, a major sticking point seems to be debate over how to get the myriad agencies and departments in the federal universe to adhere to President Obama's dictates on the triad of transparency, participation, and collaboration. The OSTP approach here seems to be to iron out those major structural decisions behind closed doors before inviting a second round of public engagement. Of course, that's the holy grail of participatory democracy: figuring out how to let people make meaningful, game-changing decisions, rather than consigning them to piddling about the edges of an opaque bureaucracy.

The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas does his second round of grading WhiteHouse.gov, the White House's main online home, and a salient criticism peeks through the comments of the various graders. On the plus side, the Obama White House's web operation is moving into "advanced" level web work with gusto. In a little more than three months, they've expanded what's expected from a presidential administration to include interactivity like online town halls, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blog posts from a range of administration officials. But the White House is losing points for completeness. Getting lost in the process is a strong grasp of the basic ABCs of government web work. The daily tedium of press briefings and presidential remarks and details on planned events has often slipped through the cracks on WhiteHouse.gov. That record-keeping might not be sexy. It is, though, a box that a modern presidential administration needs to vigorously check first before moving on to far more fun and attention-grabbing online experimentation.

There's hope yet, though: the critics grading of the WhiteHouse.gov has moved up from a C+ to a respectable B.

The set-up for tomorrow's "Privacy and Analytics on Government Web Sites" event in Washington DC promises a refreshing blend of techno-utopianism and cyber conspiracy thinking. The Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation are planning to explore the question of what it means to live in a world where the President of the United States wants to be your Facebook friend and the FBI is reading your tweets. The groups will also be announcing a joint report on how the federal government can properly balance the use of social media with respect for the privacy desires and creepiness tolerance of the American citizenry. RSVPs are requested, and you can do so here.

Tomorrow (Thursday) morning at 11:30 ET, President Obama will return to the White House's East Room where he held a prime time press conference Tuesday night for a somewhat less precedented Q&A: a virtual town hall on the economy -- organized to respond to online questions submitted and promoted through Open for Questions, WhiteHouse.gov's first experiment in interactive citizen engagement. According to the White House press office, Jared Bernstein, chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, will "facilitate" the town hall, posing selected questions to the president and even teeing up video queries.

Popular questions unlikely to make it past Bernstein includes those advocating for the legalization of marijuana, which -- in a demonstration of the iron-clad "Mary Jane Rule" of online forums -- have risen to the top of the OFQ sections on green jobs, financial stability, health care reform, and the budget. The question round closes at 9:30 tomorrow morning, and as of about 10:45 tonight, about 55,500 people have submitted 57,000 questions and cast 2.1 million votes. Some big groups with big email lists have been playing along. Organizing for America, the mobilization wing of the DNC, has been mailing their contacts to encourage participation, saying "Americans deserve to know what their government is doing to get our economy back on track. But it's up to you to participate and make this experiment a success." And MoveOn is asking supporters to search the Google Moderator-powered tool for "public health insurance plan" and cast a vote in support of a government alternative to private health insurance. (There's a web-form-based alternative if you don't want to create a WhiteHouse.gov account or pass through Google servers.)

Gathered in the East Room for the morning event, says the White House, will be "approximately 100 people, including teachers, nurses, small business owners, and community leaders," as well as a contingent of press. Micah and I will be doing some liveblogging of the occasion, so join us here.