The First E-President 169
Szentigrade writes "Popular Science is running a letter by Daniel Engber of the online Slate Magazine in which he offers the US Presidential nominees advice on using the full potential of the Internet upon their election into office. Some examples discussed in the letter include: a project already being developed that speeds up the patent approval process, a UK site that aims to improve government-citizen interactions, and perhaps most importantly, a call for government information to be 'presented in a standardized and widely used data format, like XML, so that anyone — in or out of government — could use and reconfigure it however they pleased.' Will 2009 be the first year of the E-President?"
Re:Is XML a data format for documents? (Score:5, Informative)
XML can be used for documents. just because it has broader uses doesn't mean it can't be used as a document format.
besides, OOXML, ODF, and XHTML are all based on XML--meaning they all validate as XML documents.
Let's not kill Socrates again. (Score:4, Informative)
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
"Direct democracy," no matter how well intentioned, is a recipe for dystopia. Every democracy worth living in has mechanisms set up to protect individuals from "the will of the people."
We don't "need" to make radical changes, at all. Sorry to get all conservative on you, but given such a high level of complexity, a established system, incorporating countless bug-fixes, is preferable to a complete re-write. A similar principle applies to software developement.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)