Dear Mr. President

From: danengber@yahoo.com Sent: Wed 11/5/2008 07:22 AM Subject: Be the first e-President (not spam!)

By Daniel Engber Posted 10.27.2008 at 12:00 pm 5 Comments

OPEN IT UP

A Webby White House could go much further than this "ask a question, get an answer" approach. Your administration can become the first to post its data and documents online in a way that truly encourages transparency and accountability. For Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the holy grail of Internet-based government would be the wholesale shift of public documents into a searchable and structured database. Instead of having bureaucrats scan paper forms into PDFs or post Microsoft Word files, every public document would be converted into a browser-readable format that's accessible to search engines. And all that data would be presented in a standardized and widely used data format, like XML, so that anyone -- in or out of government -- could use and reconfigure it however they pleased.

Among the many benefits of this approach is the possibility that government agencies could set up automatic feeds for specific information. For example, you might subscribe to an RSS feed that updates whenever a new comment is posted on the FDA's sunscreen rules.

A system like that would do more than satisfy the curiosity of casual users. The release of structured data would allow people to recombine information in meaningful ways. That's the true innovation, as far as Brito is concerned. "Subscriptions are great," he says, "but XML also provides the ability to mix and mash and remix data." In other words, a citizen would be able to combine information from different offices to offer a clearer picture of how the government is working. He might merge cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office with actual spending data, to see how often the government is shelling out more than it had planned. Or he could create a Web site that merged campaign contributions with congressional votes, to see how and where lobbyists are having an influence. (Some industrious people are already developing these tools, often with great difficulty, by "scraping" government Web sites for whatever usable data they can find.)

Sure, that level of transparency might cause some inconvenience for even a well-intentioned administration that's relatively free of corruption. But in the long run, a push toward open government will build faith and support among your voters. And it will promote better decisions and more effective policies.

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5 Comments

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wzjx77

from clarkston, mi

10/27/08 at 12:14 pm

Seldom have I ever read anything less worthy of reading, so I quit after 1 of 2. Hide everything on line where the old folks that actually vote do not venture. Science is good and the internet is good, but sometimes old is better.

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Ophiguris

from Upsala, Ontario

10/27/08 at 12:39 pm

Is. . . anyone worried about hacking?

I mean, modern computer users can get in to even the Pentagon and such. Some hackers can take over whole computers even. I'm canadian, and also very inexperienced : P. But how fool proof /IS/ the government's system?

There was a quote from an ex-CIA agent;
"Bring me 50 of the world's best hackers, and I will bring this country to its knees"

In order to set up an interactive community, AND online as well, there will need to be several hundreds of layers of security precautions. More so, what about leaks? Getting a hold of a government operator would be easier, and you could be breaking into servers in and out easily. As well, you'd have hundreds of members in such a community, and I don't think the president can handle ALL of them. You'd need thousands of staff, all trained to best answer questions. And even then, it's not really average american-president interaction. It's like talking to Kid's Help Phone, trying to figure out your life.

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mythgarr

10/28/08 at 10:26 am

@Ophiguris:
Thankfully, most of the data they are talking about providing online is already publicly available. Voting records are already online, but they're only listed by the bill that was voted on - it's not currently possible (at least on the government website) to select a senator and see that PERSON'S entire voting record.
Additionally, providing online community tools to make suggestions for bills, provide feedback to posted suggestions and such would need no more security than facebook, myspace, or whatever. All of that correspondence to senators, governors, etc are available for public request via a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request.
This article is talking, primarily, about enabling easier communication between elected officials and their constituency.

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Mark Nowotarski

10/29/08 at 11:06 am

As a patent agent and active participant in Peer to Patent, I can say that this “crowdsourcing” approach to citizen government relations has merit. There’s a lot more work to be done, however. One of the challenges for the creative patent agent is to find a way to write a patent application that can be reviewed equally well by two very different audiences, the Peer- to-Patent reviewers, and USPTO patent examiners. This is no small feat, but for those that can master it, dramatically higher quality patents and much more efficient patent examination should result.

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