New Report by the European Public Sector Information Platform: “While there has been a proliferation of open data portals and data re-using tools and applications of tremendous speed in the last decade, research and understanding about the impact of opening up public sector information and open government data (OGD hereinafter) has been lacking behind. Until now, there have been some research efforts to structure the concept of the impact of OGD suggesting various theories of change, their measuring methodologies or in some cases, concrete calculations as to what financial benefits opening government data brings on a table. For instance,... (More >)
Open Government in a Digital Age
An essay by Jonathan Reichental (Chief Information Officer of the City of Palo Alto) and Sheila Tucker (Assistant to the City Manager) that summarizes work done at the City that resulted in the Thomas H. Muehlenback Award for Excellent in Local Government: “Government is in a period of extraordinary change. Demographics are shifting. Fiscal constraints continue to challenge service delivery. Communities are becoming more disconnected with one another and their governments, and participation in civic affairs is rapidly declining. Adding to the complexities, technology is rapidly changing the way cities provide services, and conduct outreach and civic engagement. Citizens... (More >)
White House: "We Want Your Input on Building a More Open Government"
Nick Sinai at the White House Blog:”…We are proud of this progress, but recognize that there is always more we can do to build a more efficient, effective, and accountable government. In that spirit, the Obama Administration has committed to develop a second National Action Plan on Open Government: “NAP 2.0.” In order to develop a Plan with the most creative and ambitious solutions, we need all-hands-on-deck. That’s why we are asking for your input on what should be in the NAP 2.0: How can we better encourage and enable the public to participate in government and increase public... (More >)
The Other Side of Open is Not Closed
Dazza Greenwood at Civics.com: “Impliedly, the opposite of “open” is “closed” but the other side of open data, open API’s and open access is usually still about enabling access but only when allowed or required. Open government also needs to include adequate methods to access and work with data and other resources that are not fully open. In fact, many (most?) high value, mission critical and societally important data access is restricted in some way. If a data-set is not fully public record then a good practice is to think of it as “protected” and to ensure access according... (More >)
A Modern Approach to Open Data
Eric Mill at the Sunlight Foundation blog: “Last year, a group of us who work daily with open government data — Josh Tauberer of GovTrack.us, Derek Willis at The New York Times, and myself — decided to stop each building the same basic tools over and over, and start building a foundation we could share. We set up a small home at github.com/unitedstates, and kicked it off with a couple of projects to gather data on the people and work of Congress. Using a mix of automation and curation, they gather basic information from all over the government —... (More >)
How the Internet Can Open Government
Ben Rooney in the Wall Street Journal: “Given the response to previous attempts at opening up democracy, maybe his distrust in participatory democracy isn’t unreasonable. On coming to power in 2010 the coalition government launched a website to ask the public to nominate what laws it wanted repealed. But there was no promise that its choices would be enacted. Perhaps as a consequence there was a campaign to demand the overturning of the second law of thermodynamics. The website has since closed…. There is a precedent for this, according to Beth Noveck, who led President Obama’s Open Government Initiative.... (More >)
Open Government XIP (video)
“Synthesis of the principles and concepts that interact in open government: participation, collaboration and transparency. This document is the result of the collective work of the members of the Xarxa d’Innovació Pública www.xarxaip.cat” ... (More >)
What should we do about the naming deficit/surplus?
Tom Steinberg in mySociety Blog: “As I wrote in my last post, I am very concerned about the lack of comprehensible, consistent language to talk about the hugely diverse ways in which people are using the internet to bring about social and political change….My approach to finding an appropriate name was to look at the way that other internet industry sectors are named, so that I could choose a name that sits nicely next to very familiar sectoral labels…. Segmenting the Civic Power sector Choosing a single sectoral name – Civic Power – is not really the point of... (More >)
Eduardo Paes on Open Government
Eduardo Paes, Mayor, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the Huffington Post: “The Internet revolution has transformed the way knowledge is disseminated and how people unite over causes. Social networks are playing a key role in this movement, just as books and the press have done over the last six centuries. During the recent demonstrations in Brazil, approximately 62 percent of the people were informed of the event via Facebook, a much higher rate than TV, which was first source of information to 14 percent of attendees, according to Ibope Institute. Three out of four agitators used social networks to... (More >)
Index: Participation and Civic Engagement
The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on participation and civic engagement and was originally published in 2013. Percent turnout of voting age population in 2012 U.S. Presidential election: 57.5 Percent turnout in 2008, 2004, 2000 elections: 62.3, 60.4, 54.2 Change in voting rate in U.S. from 1980 to most recent election: –29 Change in voting rate in Slovak Republic from 1980 to most recent election: –42, the lowest rate among democratic countries surveyed Change in voting rate in Russian Federation from... (More >)
