Gavin Newsom the Mayor of San Francisco has started putting his State of the City addresses on You Tube. You can go his You Tube page, which is branded and integrated really well with the City of San Francisco’s government page, and watch the whole speech or specific topics.  Unlike Obama’s You tube broadcast the mayor of San Francisco allow users to respond with comments or a video response. This is definitely a great way to give people a chance to learn about the city on their own time and gives them a chance respond to the Mayor in a public forum. I hope the responses are monitored by Mayor Newsom’s staff and are addressed by the Mayor.  If that happens a real interactive relationship between citizens and their local government will be created.

This is of course not perfect. The videos are under a restrictive copyright and they are not downloadable.  I hope with public pressure these issues can be solved.  If citizens want more openness they should get it and the Mayor should respond to what his citizens want.