OpenID in Politics
From InternetIdentityWorkshop
Background: Trei Brundrett and Pablo Mercado are with Forward Together PAC, the PAC of Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia, who was considering running for president. PAC was fertile environment for technological development because people at the top (starting with Warner) understood the value of technology. Mandate from governer to innovate and use technology as a competitive advantage.
Asked themselves: how can we do things differently? What went wrong with Howard Dean's compaign?
One problem w/ Dean's campaign: created many silos for user data. E.g., Meetup database was never integrated w/ anything else from campaign.
FTPAC tried from the beginning to collapse their silos of data, to create a user-centric architecture. Integrated online w/ offline -- e.g., online users with offline CRM voter file.
Decided to pursue SSO. Evaluated OpenId and Sxip. (Found Liberty and SAML too complicated.) Picked OpenID because it seemed most lightweight, straightforward, easy to implement.
Decided to implement an OpenID consumer and server. Currently using it to manage identity between all applications controlled by FTPAC, began to pursuade other democratic organizations to use their OpenID server. (Use a "presidential campaign stick" to beat vendors over the head to convince them to use OpenID.)
In a political campaign, SSO was useful in several ways:
- technology community outreach. Adopting OpenID was tech savvy, allowed FTPAC to reach out to the tech community (a community that is generally untapped by politicians).
- started the conversation about digital identity issues with regards to policy.
Basic problem in campaigns is identifying peopple. After you do that, you have to dedcide how to treat them.
Focus for campaigns is on how to get elected, not so much on the governance that occurs afterward. Therefore ideas of how to use technology post-election take a back seat.
Secret mission within FTPAC: empower the people who are interacting with campaigns. Currently, if you invest into a campaign:
- you associate yourself with the campaign
- camapoign gets all your data (including your reputation, e.g., how much money you raised, your relationships w/ other supporters)
- when the campaign ends, either all that data is gone, or that data is transferred in a way that is outside the control of the activist
Instead, put the user in control of their identity. They maintain their reputation. They control its lifespan and who is able to gain access to it. If their candidate betrays them, they can withdraw their support and grant it to someone else.
Scenario that would be amazing to solve: Someone has, on his own, raised enormous amounts of money. When he approaches a campaign, the campaign should be aware of his reputation so that they can interact with him appropriately. Campaign should be able to efficiently, programmatically verify activist reputations.
Another problem to solve: Activists (people who volunteer, raise money, etc.) inevitably get spammed by other organizations in the party. Often get annoyed and unsubscribe, which can cut them off from all communication entirely. Activists want to be contacted, but on their terms. Should be in control over who is contacting them and why.
How else can these technologies add value to campaigns?
- Currently voters cannot understand the value of the party. The party does a lot for the candidate, not much for the voter. Party could begin to add value by helping the user manage their identity, their reputation, the isseus they care about (in an ongoing way, such that they can change their preferences over time.)
- Instead of receiving 500 emails from John Kerry, might be better to get an email from the activist down the street, who constructs an email to the recipient in a targeted way. The identity/reputation of both parties can be shared/verified by each other
Next steps:
- Build technology for the '07 state races in Virginia, create an identity layer between the state party and the netroots for reputation sharing.
- Activist OpenID provider. OpenID server, social networking, reptuation management.
