Digital Parsimony

The little things say a lot about a politician and his or her campaign. The one I want to address is specifically design and utilization of technology. Everything from good organization skills to breaking things down the right way should be an important aspect of selecting a candidate.

What am I getting at? The importance of technology and design. Brittney once talked to me about an entire book that was written to help navigate through all the programs that the Veterans Affairs (VA) offers. Someone actually had to write a book to sift through all the legal garbage and technical lingo our government uses to keep our people from their entitled rights.

When my friend Jeremy (a veteran that just came home) showed me a link a printout of a VA website and vented his frustrations about not being able to find any contact information, I was mildly amused at how tactfully these assholes could hide this stuff or at how chalked-full of morons our government really is. Barack Obama seems to be the only one looking at this as a current issue, and hopefully if he gets into office he carries these organization skills into government, making government programs like grants for students, taxes, forms, and (I cross my fingers) the VA easy enough to navigate for the average joe.

I finally got around to looking at the current candidates websites to see if there’s anything I like. So here’s worst-to-best as far as technology goes:

Worst: John McCain
This is by far the worst site of the three covered. The navigation bar is cumbersome at best, and the grammar on certain pages is so typical “politics” and “business” that none of it is understandable. I also see lame and stretched RSS buttons on his blog, with crappy content. Sorry man, your site likes like it was born when you were. Not only that, but no technology policy to be found.

Better: Hillary Clinton
Unlike John McCain, this lady’s site tends to make more sense. Alright, she at least has links to communities like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter (to which she has no followers…). My worst gripe is her issues drop-down menu on the navigation bar, it’s nearly impossible to read any of it! So sorry, you too fail a designing a functional and well organized website.

Best: Barack Obama
From proper organization, and a clean layout, Barack wins my vote. Obama’s website uses Web 2.0 architecture and has wonderful statistical features. On the right pane, he has a results center that gives live statistics on his current amount of votes and delegates. Also, he has technology identified in his issues, in which he has a great deal of content of keeping the internet open and using technology to help solve our problems. Social bookmarks seem to also be the site’s forte, it links to Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter (where he has 14,000+ followers), Digg, and LinkedIn to name a few.

Yeah, I can tell all that from a website. Organize the government and its programs like Obama’s site and he will make enough difference to change the way our government programs work entirely. If you didn’t get it, I’m not ranting about me choosing a candidate based on how pretty his or her website is, but on the ability to organize and manage information through the use of technology and having a policy to improve technology and its function in government, which will hopefully carry on into the candidate’s term as president.