Go read British Cabinet Officer Tom Watson's speech on the "Power of information" and imagine a Member of Congress making a similar speech on how technology can radically reinvent government. Imagine one of our presidential candidates making it (even Barack Obama, who has done the most thinking on this topic.) You can't. But maybe, if we pay more attention to our cousins across the pond, soon someone will.

Five years ago, Watson was one of the first MPs to blog, and notes that even though it opened him up to daily abuse, "the blog broke down the walls between legislators and electors in a way that interested me. So I persevered." Now he says, "I believe in the power of mass collaboration.... I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever."

I'm at the Politics Web 2.0 conference at the University of London, Royal Hollaway, and things have just kicked off. As always with my visits to conferences, I will try to blog that which I find interesting (I'm no Ethan Zuckerman) and all my renderings are not verbatim, but rough paraphrasing. Here are my notes on one of the first keynotes, which definitely held my attention. Helen Margetts, of the Oxford Internet Institute, is presenting on "Digital-era Governance: Peer production, Co-creation and the Future of Government." This is one area where the possible impact of the internet has been underestimated, especially within the community, she starts off. These technologies could have a huge meaning for government.

Time for some editorial housekeeping. In our never-ending quest to cover how technology is changing politics and serve the growing community of activists, technologists, journalists, politicians, government workers, bloggers and plain old citizens who are engaged in making this change happen, we are pleased to announce two new additions to our editorial crew. Dave Witzel and Allison Fine are coming on board Personal Democracy Forum as senior editors who will help expand our coverage on PersonalDemocracy.com of how mass, networked participation in the public arena is affecting all the important arenas outside of electoral campaigns (which we cover obsessively at techPresident).

While much of the tech industry and blogosphere is pondering who President-elect Barack Obama might appoint as the nation's first Chief Technology Officer--Eric Schmidt? Jeff Bezos? Larry Lessig?--a bunch of heavy-hitting public interest groups in Washington and a couple of civic-minded techies out in Seattle have each launched promising interventions in the discussion.

The next White House Web site should tell us a lot about whether Obama believes what he has said about bringing transparency and accountability to the government.

[With the federal government in transition, and high expectations for the Obama Administration to revolutionize how government uses the web and other technology to make its processes more open, interactive and effective, we thought it would be interesting to repost this white paper, which was recently posted online by the Federal Web Managers Council. The council is an interagency group of almost 30 senior web managers from the federal government, that includes web directors from every cabinet-level agency, several independent agencies, and representatives from the judicial and legislative branches. It serves as the steering committee for the Web Content Managers Forum, a group of nearly 1,500 government web managers across the country. These folks are on the front-line of how government uses the web--and as you'll see from what follows, they're chomping at the bit to move forward into the Networked Age. The Editors.]

(We recently posted a white paper from the Federal Web Managers Council detailing how the incoming presidential administration should focus on "putting citizens first" when it comes to the web. The FWMC, an interagency group composed of more than two dozen web managers from cabinet-level agencies, independent agencies, and the legislative and judicial branches, was established in 2004 to build U.S. government sites "on par with the best websites in the world" and create a nationwide community of skilled and creative government web managers. Earlier this year, the FWMC began preparing for the 2009 presidential transition. The incoming administration will enter a world where rules and regulations make the simplest Web 2.0 acts -- posting to YouTube or creating a Facebook group, for example -- the cause of bureaucratic headaches. Those are challenges the members of FWMC know intimately, and in this new paper, "Social Media and the Federal Government," they detail how the Obama administration can overcome them. -- the editors)

Launched at yesterday lunchtime, the second round of Change.gov's Open for Questions -- the Obama transition team's attempt to tap into the questions Americans most want their next president to answer -- has already pulled in 1,753,453 votes from 39,860 people on 33,150 questions...The Nation's Ari Melber sees in Open for Questions a chance to advance question that the press corps seems loathe to ask: will President Obama appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration on torture, warrantless wiretapping, and more?...The Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet is beating up on Obama for his Seat at the Table feature, which posts the printed materials from meetings held by the transition team...and more.

The Obama Administration took its first major steps toward implementing its promise to make government more open and transparent, with two presidential memoranda covering freedom of information, transparency and open government. The first memo directing all agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure." This is a 180-degree turn from the policies of the Bush Administration. Most interesting for e-democracy fans: The memo says "all agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government."

The second memo reiterates those points, and adds more detail. It calls for information about government operations and decisions to be put online, and urges departments and agencies to get public feedback on the information of the greatest interest to the public. Even more promising, in an explicit tip-of-the-hat to "web 2.0," the memo states...

Deciding to "go naked" and expose yourself online is a difficult enough decision. When you represent some part of the sprawling federal government, though, there's more to contend with than just personal demureness. Federal agencies, reports NextGov's Gautham Nagesh, are in the very final stages of negotiations with YouTube, aimed at creating a safe place for government departments to play, a la the House and Senate's walled YouTube gardens. The Federal Web Managers Council is helping to lead the talks, and the sticking points are two. First, an indemnification clause that refers YouTube disputes to state court. That's a no-no for federal agencies, which are required to settle things in federal courts. The second is the easily-solvable matter of videos of scantily-clad vixens showing up alongside a FEMA "How to Apply for a Housing Reimbursement" clip.

The State Department -- a department for whom social media carries, arguably, the most promise and potential peril -- had been aggressive under the Bush Administration in using the Internet to engage in what it branded "Public Diplomacy 2.0," with initiatives like the cross-cultural social-networking site ExchangesConnect and the Alliance of Youth Movements. National Journal's Amy Harder surveys the landscape and sees signs that new Secretary Hillary Clinton is committed to a webby State. But one bit of contrary evidence: Undersecretary James Glassman, PD 2.0's main champion in Foggy Bottom, skedaddled when Obama took office. He's yet to have been replaced.