Corporate Governance

Virtual Reality and the Obama Administration

By J. Robert Brown

Blogging has a number of downsides, not the least is a certain willingness to accept abuse from those who object to a post.  Now it turns out your online persona can be a factor in whether or not you can work for the Obama Administration.

The NY Times had a short article on the application used by the Obama Team for anyone seeking a position in the Obama Administration.  A copy of the application is here.   The form asks for assorted background information and a discussion of "the most controversial matters you have been involved with during the coruse of your career."  What caught our attention, however, was the interplay of the application with electronic communications and the blogosphere.  Specifically, the form asks:

• Electronic communications.  If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but not limited to an email, text message or instance message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect if it were made public, please describe.

Needless to say, one would have to be a true luddite to escape an affirmative answer to that question.

Nor does the inquiry stop there.  You are asked to "provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g., Facebook, My Space, etc.)."

Finally, the application wants to know about any writings or publications.  Not content with scholarly work, the application asks for everything, including "posts or comments on blogs or other websites."  As part of that, you are asked to provide all "aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the Internet." 

Despite the techno-savvy nature of the Administration, there may be a gap in the inquiry process. They are not asking about any virtual characters or avatars you have assumed online, something that might provide very interesting insight into the candidate.

Nonetheless, this sort of thing is only likely to increase.  So, you should keep this in mind for future applications to future administrations (including your choice of avatar).  The old adage that you shouldn't write an email that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times needs revision.  You shouldn't write a blog post or a comment to a blog post that you wouldn't want Barack Obama to read.  That standard should tone down blog commentary, at least for anyone with White House aspirations. 

Full post as published by The Race to the Bottom on November 16, 2008 (boomark / email).