Open government – PSleader

September 24, 2011

Launching the Open Technology Foundation with Dr Terry Cutler

On Wednesday the 14th September, we launched the Open Technology Foundation with the organisation’s new Chair, Dr Terry Cutler.

The Open Technology Foundation has been a couple of years in the making, and is an initiative about supporting the use of open technologies, methods and standards across governments. They have participation at federal and state level in Australia, as well as interest from governments overseas.

I think the OTF could be a really useful resource for Australian Governments at a federal, state and local level, not only with their use of ICT, but for the sort of cross-jurisdictional collaboration that will be vital in implementing the Gov 2.0 and open government agenda.

May 6, 2011

“Open government” – Public discussion of bills of the Government of Russian Federation

The trend of public online panel discussions is continuing its development. The relevantPresident’s decree has been released in February. Now media reports that on 1st of June the discussion system of legislative initiatives is going to be launched on the government.ru website – the program name is “Open Government”. Every citizen can be involved in legislative system via electronic voting.

The first bill under discussion will be “The bill on the basics of healthcare of Russian citizens”. The discussions are going to be coordinated by the Public Opinion Foundation. The biggest problem with national discussions is when they are not moderated the main thread will be buried under unnecessary noise.

All of the bills that could have social response are going to be submitted on online discussion.

Earlier, the Presidental Police Act was discussed at the similar special platform.

The “Open government program” could be useful in the elections season, so the opposition could not use unpopular initiatives for counter-agitation.

March 22, 2011

The coming open data battle – government versus commercial interests

case study, data, gov2.0, information architecture, information management, leadership, legal, open data

December 15, 2010

How Can U.S. Federal Agencies Use Social Media to Enhance Civic Participation?

Anna York and I have spent the last 6 months working on a report looking at how U.S. Federal Agencies can use social media to enhance civic participation. Our work focuses more on the civic participation side than the web 2.0 side, and we hope that this report will help agencies as they begin to implement their forthcoming Open Government Plans.

We would like to thank Kevin Bennett of the Federal Communication Commission’s Broadband Taskforce, without whose dedication and helpful direction this project would not have been possible.

Our advisors, Professor and Co-Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Archon Fung and the Institute of Politics Director, Mayor Bill Purcell were always encouraging and patient throughout this process, and provided helpful feedback during the year. Julie Wilson and Jee Baum were also generous in their assistance as we developed our methodological approach.

November 24, 2010

Open Gov West Recap: Change, Connect, Contribute

This week I took some time off and headed out to Victoria British Columbia so I could be a part of Open Gov West BC.

It was an absolutely amazing experience

I had the privilege of sharing the opening keynote with friend Walter Schwabe. Walter and I have an excellent rapport and wanted to shake things up a little bit, we wanted to try something different, we wanted to inspire immediate action. We didn’t just sit at the front of the room and talk down to audience from the riser. We walked among the crowd, armed with microphones, iPads, and a surprise.

Under the cover of darkness a few nights before the conference we created a group blog and invited everyone in the room, and those watching remotely to engage right now by changing, connecting, and contributing. We drove the theme home by telling everyone why we thought these things were so incredibly important.

November 18, 2010

Open data is data that delivers results

Image via Wikipedia

I struck a nerve around open data, as I mentioned in my earlier article, when I stated that “XML is simply a markup language, a container for data. Is it one of the most preferred containers? Absolutely. However, open government data is not synonymous with XML. Open government data is simply government-owned data that can be mined in order to create useful information. It can be in XML, PDF, text files, print outs, etc… The key point is that the data is being released for others to use to create value from it, not the format that it is released in”.

Initial comments on twitter argued that open data had to be XML, then opened up to being any open, non-proprietary format. For developers I would absolutely agree that this makes sense. It’s much easier for developers to work with open formats like CSV and XML vs. proprietary formats like PDF. Developers, however, are not the leaders of open government.