:: Decentralize and Network the Federal Government Now

By John Dvorak

Some years ago I was flabbergasted when Congress banned the use of laptops by U.S. representatives. The rules are more relaxed now, and computers are part of the day-to-day life of a legislator. But I think it's time for us to consider taking things to the 21st century by completely virtualizing Congress, letting the representatives and senators work from within their districts instead of living and working in Washington, D.C.

Things would work more effectively with teleconferencing, and the Congress folks wouldn't be so hounded by lobbyists in a corrupting environment. Lobbyists would have to travel to the districts.

More important is the security issue. As things sit today, one suitcase nuke set off near the Capitol buildings would pretty much wipe out the federal government and kill all the representatives and senators at once. This would be a serious problem. Just look at the devastation a submegaton bomb caused in Hiroshima. Well, imagine D.C. being in that condition. Why does it remain a sitting duck?

Times have changed, and a centralized federal government that has to meet in one location all the time is no longer what we need. That makes no sense. It barely made sense once the telephone was invented, but now it makes no sense whatsoever. For a few committees or major hearings I can see the rationale for a gathering. But for debate, votes, and even discussion, it's nonsense. Watch C-SPAN and you'll see people yakking to empty rooms. Suddenly everyone runs in to cast a vote, then they're off to lunch or dinner with lobbyists. This exercise could be done just as easily on a BlackBerry. More important, if congressmen, representatives and senators alike were in their hometowns most of the time, rather than in expensive Georgetown flats, they would have a better grip on what constituents want from them.

The idea with representative democracy is that you "represent." How does an Alaskan senator represent anyone when he lives in D.C. and his kids go to private school in D.C.? A friend of mine pointed out that with a distributed central government such as I propose here, you'd get a better caliber of representative, too. After all, there are plenty of qualified and smart people who simply won't sacrifice their family lives and local values to move to Washington, D.C.

This reengineering of the federal government is long overdue. Government needs to decentralize. With ubiquitous high-speed networks, portable computers, VPNs, teleconferencing systems, and BlackBerrys, the entire Congress can easily operate in a distributed environment. —Continue reading...

There is not one nuclear weaponry expert out there who doesn't agree that sometime in the future a renegade bomb is going to go off someplace. And this problem isn't going to disappear by magic. It is here to stay.

The logical targets are New York's financial district and Washington, D.C. Let's be realistic about what terrorists want to do. They want to disrupt the country and ruin the stock market. Look how easy it was to park a truck in front of the offices in Oklahoma City and blow up a building with a fertilizer bomb.

With the growth of networks and computer technology that has occurred over the past 25 years, I honestly don't even see much of a reason for centralized offices of any sort. I've worked from home/hotel/beach since 1981 without an interruption. It's quite doable, and you get more accomplished. And, yes, you can still have meetings and go to confabs where you can socialize if you have to. Most of the time spent in an office is wasted time, and people who promote it as "team building" and all the rest are nuts. Office work over time does not become team building; it becomes empire building and counterproductive. Government work is the same way.

I sure hope some maniac doesn't set off a nuke in D.C., but with all the Homeland Security and other initiatives, why do we even think twice about employing our home-grown high-tech scene to bust out from the centralization? Those big pretty buildings can be used as tourist attractions and once-in-a-while meeting locations. Send Congress home to work at home.

Of course there isn't even a plan for this, and everyone in D.C. is slaphappy because of all the great restaurants and wonderful museums and those free-spending lobbyists doing what they have to do to keep those soybean subsidies alive. And, sadly, 90 percent of Congress is computer-illiterate.

What I find most ironic is that the public at large is allowed to vote on computers via various supposedly safe mechanisms. I think this is too hard to control, just because of the sheer numbers. But for 100 senators and a few hundred representatives on VPNs it makes sense. The networked legislative voting would be verifiable and safe, because these are not secret ballots. That's the difference. The public—all people—should be forced out of the house to vote, where they can be seen, just as the folks in Congress should be sent home where they can be seen.

Now is the time to act. A distributed, networked federal government would be a better and safer government. It would streamline everything and create a new model of governance for the entire world.

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