Obama uses Web to solicit questions from public

March 25, 2009, 02:23 PM —  IDG News Service — 

President Barack Obama plans to answer questions on Thursday that were submitted to the White House through Google Moderator.

On Monday, Obama posted a message on YouTube, which has received more than 10,000 hits to date, telling Americans that "we're going to take advantage of the Internet to bring all of you to the White House to talk about the economy."

The White House is using Google Moderator, an application that allows users to pose questions and vote on ones that they like. There are 11 categories on the site including small business, veterans and health-care reform. Nearly 12,000 people had submitted questions and cast more than 420,000 votes by Wednesday.

"We're going to compile those questions and votes and then on Thursday I'll be giving you some answers myself," Obama said in his YouTube address. The administration will have a lot of work, though, as nearly 14,000 questions have been submitted so far.

Under the home ownership category the question with the most votes is: "What benefits from the stimulus plan are there to those of us who are paying our mortgages, but living paycheck to paycheck?"

A younger user from Washington, D.C., posed a question in the retirement security forum, "I'm 19 years old and just beginning to see my earnings deducted for Social Security. Though retirement is a long while away, how can you guarantee that this program remains solvent?"

Calling the project an "experiment" Obama said that "it's also an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about."

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

obama

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace