Congressman Culberson Posts Copy of Healthcare Bill on Internet – Using Web 2.0 Technology

I may not always agree with his platform and thoughts on everything, for one I am in California and his district is in Texas, but one thing for sure is that I do agree with the progressive moves using technology Mr. Culberson is using. I have a few posts from the past here on the Congressman and for sure you have to applaud his efforts in communicating for sure. There’s absolutely no comparison with his modern techniques compared to the “dud” Town Hall we had here in the OC and our representative could stand to take some lessons from Mr. Culberson by all means.

I have been following him on Twitter since he started and attended one of his Town Hall meetings as a wringer here in California as I was curious to see how it would take place, remember tweaking the curiosity “gene” leads to intelligence, study recently conducted, so get curious by all means.

Mr. Culberson also earned a cameo appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart when they covered the use of Twitter.

The Daily Show – Jon Stewart Talking about Twitter – Hilarious

This is a step in the right direction for sure, a non partisan move where everyone can benefit to view the bill and comment. My thoughts here again though are moving up to the next level, as when you stop and think about it, that’s a lot of reading for anyone, a member of Congress or a constituent. I still believe we need algorithmic centric bills. We need to see the formulas and algorithms used so this all makes more sense, as with just verbiage, it’s leaves a ton of room for attorneys to make a lot of money, money better spent on actual healthcare in my opinion.

Would Someone Explain Data Aggregation and algorithms to Congress

And furthermore, do we need a Department of Algorithms, me thinks yes as all business models used everywhere else in the world today uses them, so why not at the top level? I think it’s about time for some “digital laws and bills” in Washington. This is exactly what we are trying to to with medical records going digital when you think about it, so why not at the top level of government too.

“Department of Algorithms – Do We Need One of Those?

This is a great start, but if we do not begin to have data audit trails somewhere along the line in areas of government, we are fighting a losing battle all the way. Our government was built on checks and balances and right now we have checks, but no balances of any means, just a lot of fighting and arguing, and it’s the algorithms that run 24/7 and do the real work or dirty work in some cases. Hats off to Representative Culberson for making some big strides here by all means, it’s more than I have seen anywhere else in Congress and others could certainly pay attention here and perhaps learn from their peers, that’s how it all happens today. BD

John Culberson, a Texas Republican Congressman, says if people actually knew what was in the healthcare bill, they'd oppose it. So he posted the entire text of the bill to the Internet, using a Web 2.0 tool that allows people to annotate the document and comment on it.

"It's incumbent on me as a representative to make the process the most transparent and open to the public, so people can actually see what Pelosi and Obama are prepared to do with their healthcare, and their relationship to their doctor," Culberson said in a phone interview with InformationWeek Thursday, hours after the document went live.

SharedBook, the platform Culberson is using to host the healthcare bill, is the product of a six-year-old company of the same name, used for personalizing and customizing documents and books.

"The SharedBook software allows my constituents to log on and analyze the healthcare bill word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, and have a realtime debate about what the healthcare bill means," Culberson said. "I'm crowdsourcing the healthcare bill in order to make it as transparent as possible to make it easy to see what Obama and Pelosi are proposing."

The bill (H. R. 3200) is also available on the Congressional Thomas Web site, but can't be annotated there.