David Miller’s Twitter skills are, by now, well known.
During the last electricity outage, he skillfully replied to a flurry of tweets from worried constituents. Of Miller’s 13,000 followers, more than a few Tweeted him. Beyond that, he lists “open gov’t” – a movement to make all city data more easily accessible – as one of his main interests.
But what about his successor?
I sought to find out what the mayoral candidates thought about the city’s existing communication technology, and what they intended to do about it (if anything).
At the same time, I endeavored to assess the candidates’ already-existing competencies in online technology as an indication of their views and goals in that area.
First off, how easy is it to contact them?
Since Mayor candidates Rob Ford and Joe Pantalone are already councillors, the city does provide a listing for them where one can find their email addresses, but not their websites or any social media links.
Actually, Don Andrews, our perennial white nationalist nutball candidate (sorry, self-described “racially-aware white”), provides a short list of his fellow candidates’ websites on his homepage. I used this list as a starting off point for compiling information on the candidates’ email addresses, websites, and social media presences, then contacted all the mayoral candidates whose email addresses I could find, and who had put forth their nomination by early July.
I asked six general questions about their plans for the city’s use of communication technology if elected mayor.
Many of the fringe candidates didn’t write back. Not Rocco Achampong, who has been dissatisfied with press coverage of his campaign, or Kevin Clarke, the homeless anti-poverty activist, for whom I couldn’t find a working email address but who seems to update his Twitter account with occasionally hilarious posts, nor David Vallance, the candidate whose main goal is to make Toronto into its own province.
It was promising to hear from some of the candidates with lower campaign budgets and skeleton staff, but many miss the mark greatly.
Sonny Yeung seems to take an honest and personal interest in his web development (he is staunchly proud of his online brochure), but has no discernible – coherent? – plan for the city’s online presence.
Himy Syed, who has no campaign website but engages the public on his platform though his personal Facebook profile and Twitter account, replied to questions with a long wandering description containing deep within the noteworthy notion of migrating “our 311 data to the open standard used by San Francisco and New York.”
A few lesser-known candidates, given the resources at their disposal do have their internet shit together.
For Howard Gomberg, who believes that “technology can be used creatively to promote democratic, interactive activities,” the internet is the best medium through which he can realistically expect to draw attention to his campaign. Gomberg has a blog and a Facebook group and says that he even knows where to find them “on the intertubes.”
Mark Cidade, a web professional who also is currently carrying out his campaign sans home page, depending instead on a Facebook page and Twitter account to connect with his base says he is “the most knowledgeable candidate on the subject of information technology.” He would make sure the city’s IT department is “expanded and better-funded,” and feels that “a deep level of integration and value-added features” to city hall’s web technology would help engage young people politically.
It might not come as a surprise that for the most part, the best-known candidates (Ford, Pantalone, Rossi, Smitherman, Thomson) have the snazziest and most integrated web technologies.
Ford and Pantalone’s websites are flanked out with the latest in internet trends, but I have nothing to report from them on the city’s online technological future, because neither of them responded to my email. They clearly both rely on the internet as a key campaign strategy, reaching out to voters by advertising events, campaign videos, and major platform points.
Perhaps these efforts are truly shallow, because neither of them followed through to the point of responding to a Toronto citizen’s six questions on their plans for the city’s use of communication technology and their commitment to engaging young people in municipal politics. By “they” I mean their communications teams, which sift through correspondence and decide which pieces deserve timely responses. If my questions are ignored, forgotten about, or simply overlooked by them now, how can I think that the candidates consider engaging and communicating with young voters to be a serious priority?
Sarah Thomson got back to me immediately, demonstrating impressive thumbsterity by composing a multi-paragraph response directly from her personal cellular telephone/text messaging-and-emailing device™.
She responded to my concerns about the correlation between the city’s lack-lustre online technologies and lack of youth involvement by asserting that she wants to attract young people to municipal politics.
Specifically, she says she’ll create a task force of young people to transform city hall with “innovation and ideas.” To upgrade city hall further she has two interesting proposals: making all departments’ financial data available online, and allowing for civil servants to work from home. As she says, “we have the technology and it is time to use it.”
George Smitherman’s team got around to sending a response a few weeks later I suppose his office did have bigger issues to deal with around the office at the time of a campaign staff switch-up. The response to my inquiry about Smitherman’s plans for tech-city hall was disappointingly elusive, stating that the campaign will “soon be releasing information about new policy that will maximize the city’s use of online resources to enhance the quality of city services, access to information, and to reduce bureaucracy at city hall.”
Smitherman did express an interest in improving the city’s communication technologies, stating that the idea of access to information “needs to be laced throughout city hall so that it may operate in a way that best serves the people of Toronto.”
In general, the candidates with the most resources and political clout have the best — most modern and accessible — online presences. Will any of them be able to translate that success to the technological improvements needed at city hall?
