How We’re Changing the Way We Respond to Petitions

In 2011 (years before I arrived at the White House) the team here developed a petitions platform called We the People. It provided a clear and easy way for the American people to petition their government  --  along with a threshold for action. Namely  -- once a petition gains 100,000 signatures. We’re going to be changing a few things about We the People:

First, from now on, if a petition meets the signature goal within a designated period of time, we will aim to respond to it  --  with an update or policy statement -- within 60 days wherever possible.

Second, other outside petitions platforms are starting to tap into the We the People platform. We're excited to announce that Change.org is choosing to integrate with the We the People platform, meaning the future signatures of its 100 million users will count toward the threshold for getting an official response from the Administration. We’re also opening up the code behind petitions.whitehouse.gov on Drupal.org and GitHub, which empowers other governments and outside organizations to create their own versions of this platform to engage their own citizens and constituencies.

Third, and most importantly, the process of hearing from us about your petition is going to look a little different. We’ve assembled a team of people responsible for taking your questions and requests and bringing them to the right people  --  whether within the White House or in an agency within the Administration  --  who may be in a position to say something about your request.

You might not always be happy with what you hear from us, but we’ll be upfront with you about why we can’t take action on a given issue if we can’t --  or about why we’re choosing not to. If there’s genuinely nothing we can do, we’re going to let you know. If we agree with you, we’ll let you know. If we’re working on it, we’ll tell you that. And we’ll keep you posted with additional details and related content that we think you might be interested in along the way. After several years, we know that We the People is an exciting tool for transparent democracy. We’ve cleared up the backlog, opened the code, and opened our platform to third-party services. And the Administration is going to keep taking petitions seriously.