In this class, we looked at the efforts to open up government in the United States from within and without.

1. DPI-665
Politics of the Internet
April 2, 2012
Open Data,
Open Government
Micah L. Sifry
Audio: http://bit.ly/Js9xdG
CC-BY-NC-SA

2. Topics for discussion
• How far has the Obama Administration
taken the “open government” moment?
• “Sousveillance” (watching from below):
What is its potential? What are its
limits?

3. Principles of Govt 2.0
• Open by default
• Open to self-service
• Tap the wisdom outside of govt
• Let people experiment
• This is not necessarily “participatory
democracy” or “direct democracy” or
“deliberative democracy”

4. Govt 2.0 Requires Open Govt
• Open data (transparency) as a precondition
for participation, collaboration
• Malamud: “The first wave—the Founder’s wave
—established the principle that government must
communicate with the people. Next, the Lincoln
wave established the principles of documentation
and consultation. We are now witnessing a third
wave of change —an Internet wave—where the
underpinnings and machinery of government are
used not only by bureaucrats and civil servants,
but by the people.”

5. Obama, Day One
“Government should be transparent. Transparency
promotes accountability and provides information for
citizens about what their Government is doing.
Government should be participatory. Public
engagement enhances the Government's
effectiveness and improves the quality of its
decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society,
and public officials benefit from having access to that
dispersed knowledge.
Government should be collaborative. Collaboration
actively engages Americans in the work of their
Government.”

15. Obama’s Mixed Record
• Open Govt Directive led to release of OSHA
safety data, IRS migration data, NASA FOIA
docs, DOJ jail data, Hospital outcome of care
measures
• Data.gov central repository created
• White House visitor logs released (partially)
• “We the People” e-petition site
• Challenge.gov
• Many agencies using social media, but have
failed to comply or did little to open data

16. What Obama Didn’t Do
• Provide centralized ethics and lobbying
info
• Create a public “contracts and
influence” database
• Conduct more government business in
public
• Consistently post bills online before
signing

17. What Obama Made Worse
• Continued invoking “state secrets”
privilege
• Crackdown on government
whistleblowers
• More classification of documents
• Fewer FOIA responses

18. Recovery.gov
• “We’re actually going to set up something
called Recovery.gov…that gives you a report
on where the money is going in your
community…so that you can be the eyes and
ears…you’ll be able to get on that website
and say ‘You know, I thought this was
supposed to be going to school construction
but I haven’t noticed any changes being
made.’”
--Obama, Elkart, IN, Feb 9, 2009

19. Meanwhile, the culture is
changing faster…
• Sousveillance: watching from below
• Crowd-funding of live-blogging
(Firedoglake Libby trial coverage)
• Crowd-scouring of raw data (earmarks,
Parliament’s spending records)
• Platforms for reporting and checking:
Ushahidi, SwiftRiver and Crowdmap