If there’s one thing that has been an absolute stand-out in Barrack Obama’s presidency, it has been this awesome use and embracement of technology. Giving yet another example of the same yesterday, the White House has one-sourced President Obama’s messenger bot on Github.
The same was done via an announcement by the Chief Digital Officer for the White House, Jason Goldman. Talking on why this is being done, the White House says,
We’re open-sourcing this White House technology, with the hope that other governments and developers can build similar services—and foster similar connections with their citizens— with significantly less upfront investment.
The very popular President Obama messenger bot was released in August last year, to listen to governance feedback from American citizens. These messenger messages are read alongside the usual letters which the President receives. To lay down how successful this bot has been, it has received over one and a half million Facebook messages, sent from people based all around the world.
To be specific, White House is open-sourcing a Drupal module, complete with easy steps and boiler plate code. This will enable Drupal 8 developers to quickly launch a Facebook Messenger bot. Goldman further adds,
We also left a few lines in the repository describing our hopes for the future of the code and encouraging members of the developer community to get involved.
While Drupal may not be the platform others would immediately consider for building a bot, this new White House module will allow non-developers to create bot interactions (with customized language and workflows), and empower other governments and agencies who already use Drupal to power their digital experiences.
President Obama’s Facebook messenger bot has been a huge success. While it was of course a first for any president globally, it also paved the way for other world leaders to be actively involved with citizens via social media. Our own PM is a fine example of how effectively, social media can go a long way in effective, efficient redressal of citizen grievances.
The open source Drupal module for the president’s bot is available to download on Github.
