What is open government? In the most basic sense, it’s the notion that the people have
the right to access the documents and proceedings of government. The idea that the
public has a right to scrutinize and participate in government dates at least to the Enlightenment,
and is enshrined in both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S.
Constitution. Its principles are recognized in virtually every democratic country on the
planet.
But the very meaning of the term continues to evolve. The concept of open government
has been influenced—for the better—by the open source software movement, and taken
on a greater focus for allowing participation in the procedures of government. Just as
open source software allows users to change and contribute to the source code of their
software, open government now means government where citizens not only have access
to information, documents, and proceedings, but can also become participants in a
meaningful way. Open government also means improved communication and operations
within the various branches and levels of government. More sharing internally can
lead to greater efficiency and accountability.
The subtitle of this book is “Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration in Practice.”
The terms were borrowed from President Barack Obama’s memorandum on transparency
and open government, issued his first day in office. In it, he committed the U.S.
government to “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”
(See the Appendix A.)
Obama’s memo was a signal moment in the history of open government, issued by a
president who gained office in part by opening his campaign to allow his supporters to
shape its message, actions, and strategy using online tools. The movement to make this
happen, which goes back to the earliest days of the World Wide Web, is now generally
called “Government 2.0” (Gov 2.0 to its friends).
Just as the Web has fundamentally altered retail, real estate, media, and even manufacturing,
Gov 2.0 advocates seek to redefine the relationship between citizens and government
officials. It’s not about replacing representative democracy with some kind of
online poll, but instead engaging the citizen as a full participant rather than an observer
of their government.
Take San Francisco, where the city has created an API (application programming interface)
to distribute information from its 311 system about city services to developers
in a way that they can integrate and distribute that information into new software and
web applications (click HERE to check it out).
Everyone will be able to get information about citizen requests and issue new requests
(such as reporting potholes) directly to city departments via their own web software.
The concept breaks down the line between citizens and government—letting someone other than
a government official determine how to route citizen requests.
As if this radical transformation were not enough, the Gov 2.0 movement seeks to make
a similar transformation within government itself: empowering employees inside governments
to go beyond the traditional boundaries and limitations of bureaucracy to act
across organizational lines and move from top-down to bottom-up structures of management
and decision making.
In this book we have found leading visionaries, thinkers, and practitioners from inside
and outside of government who share their views on what this new balance looks like,
how to achieve it, and the reforms that are needed along the way.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
PREFACE
HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED
Matthew Burton proposes a new project to recruit top technologists into government
temporarily and harness their knowledge to transform the way government
information technology operates. Burton, himself a federal contractor and Web 2.0
technologist, opens this provocative piece by urging the government to fire him.
Tim O’Reilly examines how the philosophy of the open Web applies to transforming
the relationships between citizens and government. O’Reilly uses open software
platforms as a model for reinventing government.
Carl Malamud addresses the third wave of government transformation—the Internet
wave—that is now upon us.
Beth Simone Noveck tackles the issue of closed decision making and open deliberation
in this excerpt from her 2009 book, Wiki Government: How Technology
Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful
(Brookings Institution Press).
Howard Dierking explores applying software design patterns to government. Dierking
covers blobs, antipatterns, and the shrinking space between government and
citizens.
David G. Robinson, Harlan Yu, and Edward W. Felten argue for releasing data in
bulk to empower citizens to better connect with their government.
Douglas Schuler proposes a new model for online discussion and decision making,
modeled on the famous Robert’s Rules of Order. Schuler goes on to ask whether we
will be smart enough, soon enough, to use online—as well as _offline_—deliberation
to help tackle the massive problems that we’ve created for ourselves.
Archon Fung and David Weil argue that transparency must be applied across all of
society, not just government.
Micah L. Sifry looks at the open government promises of the Obama administration
and places it in the context of broader notions that underlie the philosophy of open
source technology and Web 2.0.
Mark Drapeau examines how and why those who favor open government need to
provide outside pressure if those inside government who desire change are to able
to make it happen.
Brian Reich sketches out what reforms must achieve for regular citizens in order to
be effective. Reich reminds Government 2.0 evangelists that, at the end of the day,
their reforms must produce definitive benefits to be successful.
David Eaves take a look at open government and the civil service and argues for
experimentation and accepting the inevitable technological shift that is upon government.
Sarah Schacht asks what citizens need to do to be full participants in government.
Schacht gives prescriptions for both policy makers and regular citizens to solve
political gridlock.
Charles Armstrong outlines a new kind of digital democracy in which decisions
bubble up from citizens rather than coming down from e-leaders. Armstrong hypothesizes
that this new kind of democracy is already coming to businesses and
other nongovernmental players, where it will inevitably take hold before being
adopted by nation-states.
Wynn Netherland and Chris McCroskey map the success of Tweet Congress in
getting members of Congress to use Twitter and the role of activism-by-webapplication
in the new ecosystem.
Nick Schaper describes the social media strategy the Republican minority in the
U.S. House uses to outfox the Democrats who control the chamber. In doing so, this
top Republican strategist teaches lessons on how social media can be used by anyone
to mobilize citizens.
Ellen S. Miller explains why radical transparency in government will act as a counterweight
to the influence of monied interests in shaping government policy.
Joshua Tauberer looks at the phenomenal success of his website, which provides
public access to data about bills and votes in the U.S. Congress.
Edwin Bender examines the past, present, and future of online tracking of money
to politicians and political parties. Bender gives unsurpassed insight into the good,
bad, and ugly of transparency in campaign contributions.
Daniel Newman looks at how a website has been able to use open web technology
and hard work to shed a new kind of light on the relationship among money, power,
and legislation.
Sheila Krumholz tells the story of why the not-for-profit Center for Responsive
Politics released its data about government corruption to the public and embraced
the Gov 2.0 movement.
Jerry Brito calls on hackers—in the sense of brilliant programmers rather than
computer criminals—to liberate government data for the masses. If the government
won’t make data available and useful, it is up to technologists to do it for them.
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg look at the ways Many Eyes, an online
suite of visualization tools from IBM, has been and can be used to examine government.
Among other insights, these brilliant scientists propose the radical approach
to treat all text as data.
Bill Allison looks at the problems with government data collection. Allison, an
investigative reporter and open government advocate at the Sunlight Foundation,
proposes making those data more useful for citizens.
Aaron Swartz proposes a new paradigm for watchdogging the government. Swartz
provides a cogent argument that transparency alone is not enough.
Tim Koelkebeck looks at the need for the federal government, which he describes
as a country within a country, to become internally transparent before it can be
anything but opaque to regular citizens.
Gary D. Bass and Sean Moulton identify the top obstacles to increased open government
that the Obama administration faces and propose solutions. Bass and
Moulton give an inside-the-Beltway view on how to make reform take hold.
Bill Schrier looks at what he has learned as CIO of Seattle, Washington, about the
practicalities of implementing open government reforms and the problems reformers
face.
Jeff Jonas and Jim Harper shine a light on the serious issues of privacy and the brave
new world we live in.
Brant Houston looks at the history and problems of the Freedom of Information
Act and similar state laws. Houston goes on to provide a prescription for updating
those laws.
Dan Gillmor tackles the thorny issue of the relationship among the government,
the press, and the citizenry in the open government universe brought around by
the Web.
Carlo Daffara and Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona argue that government must adopt
open source software in order to achieve true open government, and that doing so
has many social, societal, and economic benefits.
Marco Fioretti argues for government adopting open standards in its technology
that eschew the lock-in from vendor-specific technologies.
David Fletcher takes a tour through the most transparent state in the United States
and explores the history as well as the future of Utah. As Utah’s CIO, Fletcher is in
the thick of making government open.