The visit of President Obama in Ghana has given an opportunity of the US administration to reach out to people all over the world via mobile technology. This is an exciting attempt at participatory government and inclusion of members of the public in policy-making via mobile technology. Even though the concept has existed among mGovernment practitioners and academics for quite a while now, its successful implementations are few and far between. I hope that the enthusiasm which Mr. Obama is able to harness wherever he appears will give prominance to the idea, and encourage polititians elsewhere to seek its replication.
by Mike Grenville
Fri, 10 Jul 2009
The US Department of State is offering highlights from the speech by President Obama in Ghana on Saturday 11th July by SMS.Working with Clickatell the US Department of State is reaching out to citizens around the world by SMS during an important speech to be given by President Barack Obama tomorrow, July 11, 2009 from Accra, Ghana.
Anyone around the world can sign up to receive live speech highlights in English or French via SMS. In addition, enrolled participants can send their text message speech comments via their mobile phone back to the US Department of State, where selected responses will be posted online. President Obama will also answer selected questions directly by radio broadcast in Africa.
It will also be possible to send back comments to the Obama Speech SMS highlights – via standard 2-way mobile SMS reply with selected comments posted online: http://www.america.gov/ghana_comments.html
International/Non-US citizens can enroll now online at: http://www.america.gov/sms.html
In Africa sign up can be directly by
mobile: To send a text message to President Obama from anywhere in Africa except Burundi, the Central African Republic and Togo, simply text ‘English’ or ‘French’ to +61418601934. If you do not receive a confirmation of your enrollment within 10 minutes, please send again to +45609910343. For Burundi and the Central African Republic, text ‘English’ or ‘French’ to +46737494514. For Togo, text ‘English’ or ‘French’ to +4915705000946 For Kenya use short code 5683; for Ghana use short code 1731; for Nigeria use short code 32969; and for South Africa use short code 31958.
MMD4D 