Open Government Blog
Open Government Laboratories of Democracy
Posted by on November 19, 2009 at 7:04 PM EST"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932, "that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." The Obama Administration is taking unprecedented strides toward creating the most open and accountable government in history. And in so doing, we’re learning from those states and municipalities, which are undertaking exciting experiments to bring transparency, participation, and collaboration to the way they work as well.
Inspired by the President’s call for more open government, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts launched its data catalogue, following in the footsteps of Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere around the country (as well as cities in Canada and the UK), to provide public access to information by and about government. What makes this exciting is not merely having transportation information available in machine-readable formats, but that professional and amateur enthusiasts can then get together, as they did last weekend, to create new software applications and data visualizations to better enable public transit riders to track arrival times for the next subway, bus, or ferry. Publishing government information online facilitates this kind of useful collaboration between government and the public that transforms dry data into the tools that improve people’s lives. (For another great example, check out what happened when we published the Federal Register for people to use.)
The National Association of State CIOs is helping to spur this movement toward greater data transparency at the state level by publishing “Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data.”
Just as the federal government is using online brainstorming with government employees and the public to generate ideas for saving money or going green, state and local governments are also using new technology to tap people’s intelligence and expertise. The City of Manor, Texas (pop. 5800) has launched “Manor Labs,” an innovation marketplace for improving city services. A participant can sign up to suggest “ideas and solutions” for the police department, the municipal court, and everything in between. Each participant’s suggestion is ranked and rewarded with “innobucks.” These innobucks points can be redeemed for prizes: a million innobucks points wins “mayor for the day” while 400,000 points can be traded for a ride-along with the Chief of Police.
Manor is also one of the few cities currently using bar codes (known as QR or Quick Response Codes) to label physical locations around town. These bar codes can be scanned with a mobile phone to communicate historical and touristic information, data about the cost of a municipal service, or emergency management information. Manor is experimenting with techniques for providing different information to different audiences. If a resident scans a QR code outside a home for sale, she gets the floor plan and purchase price; whereas the building inspector gets the inspection history; and the first responder gets information about the current occupant.
As more of these innovative projects that foster open government go live and achieve results, we look forward to showcasing some of them on our blog and eventually making details available on the Open Government Innovation Gallery. Developers with new tools to offer to facilitate open government – including free social media applications -- should also check out Apps.gov and list their products (here’s how) for others to use. Openness and accountability are the responsibility of government at every level. By getting out the word about innovations that help to realize open government in practice, we can both promote new experiments and help people find and re-use the best ones.
Beth Noveck is Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government
Learn more about TechnologyOpenness and Patent Reform: USPTO Launches Director’s Blog
Posted by on November 11, 2009 at 4:10 PM ESTDavid Kappos, the new Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), has taken on a tough mission that is critically important for the future of American innovation: fix our broken patent system and reduce the USPTO’s backlog of applications in order to foster job creation and economic growth. Mobilizing the skills and expertise of the USPTO’s staff, he has already begun to make noticeable progress towards reform.
On the open government front, we’re particularly excited to see Director Kappos’s new blog. In his first post, he lays out his priorities and goals, presents the results of some early reforms, dives right into the substantive debate around patent reform legislation, and invites input from stakeholders across the spectrum of IP interests. It’s a terrific start to a blog that we’ll be reading avidly.
A Washington that is More Reflective of All of America
Posted by on November 9, 2009 at 4:10 PM ESTJust a quick post to report on a meeting today with a group of lobbyists and others who currently chair Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITACs). The group had objected to the Administration's new policies barring the appointment (and reappointment) of federally registered lobbyists to agency boards and commissions. Although we have previously addressed their views here and here, we feel it important to meet with those with whom we disagree to discuss their concerns face to face. Much of the discussion focused on the arguments offered in the letter the group sent us (pdf) and our response letter (pdf). Click here (pdf) for the list of attendees.
We explained to the ITAC chairs that this issue is not about the few corrupt lobbyists or specific abuses by the profession, but rather concerns the system as a whole. For too long, lobbyists and those who can afford their services have held disproportionate influence over national policy making. The purpose of the President’s agenda to change the way business is done in Washington is to level the playing field to make sure that all Americans and not just those with access to money or power are able to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed by Washington.
We explained that in deciding to limit the ability of lobbyists to serve in government positions, including as members of agency advisory boards and commissions, we considered various arguments and counterarguments. We weighed the options, and considered the alternatives. In the end, we decided that while lobbyists have a right to petition the government, it would best serve the interests of a fairer and more representative democracy if we limited their ability to do so from special positions of privileged access within the government.
The result will be a Washington that is more reflective of all of America. We have already begun the process of recruiting new voices to advise the government through these agency boards. We believe small- and medium-sized business owners will be excited by the opportunity to help serve their country and advocate for their interests.
To make it even easier for those with valuable insight and expertise to offer to join this process from outside the Beltway, the Administration is working to develop tools to utilize internet technologies to make federal advisory committee proceedings accessible online. For example, the most recent meeting of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was watched online by 5000 people. This Administration is committed to seeking out those voices and bringing the change they represent into the decision making process in Washington.
We explained this to the ITAC chairs and asked for their help in reaching out to broaden and diversify these boards and commissions. We informed them that while we will always seek ways to improve good policies, we do not intend to rescind this decision. The ITAC chairs, although expressing their disagreement, are willing to assist in finding qualified replacements and we thank them for their commitment to working together to make the system work better for everyone.
Finally, we also replied to a letter from the American League of Lobbyists on this subject today-ALL's letter is here (pdf) and our reply is here (pdf).
Norm Eisen is special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform
Learn more about EthicsTED@State: New Ideas for a Better World
Posted by on October 6, 2009 at 9:38 AM ESTEd. Note: TED is a small nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading." It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.So much has happened since I last wrote about how the State Department is opening its doors to the private sector and civil society. Through the Global Partnership Initiative, we have been reevaluating not just the substance of our foreign policy but also how we conduct our foreign policy -- "tilting the balance away from a multi-polar world and toward a multi-partner world," to use Secretary Clinton’s words.
To learn more, be sure to check out the blog post that just went up on the State Department’s DipNote Blog. As you will see, we are working hard to implement the Secretary's vision around here. But I don’t think we would have made so much progress without the sparks that flew during TED@State back in June."Hands down it is the best event that I’ve attended in all of the years that I’ve been at State," one colleague wrote. The folks at BeDo expressed their thanks, saying, "It’s an honor to witness the transformation and experience the partnership embodied by TED@State." But I think the change of thinking TED brought to State was best exemplified in this blog, which said it was like "cats and dogs living together, my friends." I loved reading that.All told, over 800 people attended the first government sponsored TED Talks. Before the event, the line wrapped all the way up 23rd Street and around the building. Every single seat in Dean Acheson Auditorium was filled and people were sitting in the aisles. We’ve never seen anything like it.But what’s best about TED@State is that this wasn’t just a one-time event. Our Foreign Service Officers stationed across the globe have been watching the videos on the State Department intranet site and on our closed-circuit TV station. And with the videos free online at www.ted.com, TED@State has been popping up on laptops and mobile devices all around the world. One of my coworkers even watched Clay Shirky’s talk on an airplane. TED is the gift that keeps on giving.One of the TED folks told us about the amazing story of "The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind," William Kamkwamba, so we introduced him to Ambassador Peter Bodde in Malawi (and evidently they really hit it off). Coming up next week, we are going to get to hear his story firsthand at an event we are co-hosting with Andrew Natsios at Georgetown. I’ve even had conversations around town about spinning off TED@State to other agencies, so who knows what’s next.Ben Franklin had his kite. We had TED@State. And here are a few of the lightning strikes that we have been thinking about ever since:Clay Shirky: How social media can make history
NYU’s Clay Shirky kicked off TED@State with a stunning presentation about how cell phones, the internet, and social media tools have empowered everyday citizens. According to Shirky, consumers of information are becoming producers, generating "the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.""It’s as if when you bought a book they threw in the printing press for free," he explained. Then, less than two weeks later, Shirky provided insights on the TED Blog as events in Iran unfolded: "Someone tweeted from Tehran today that ‘the American media may not care, but the American people do.’ That's a sea-change."Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset
He has swallowed swords, debated with Fidel Castro, identified a disease (and named it konzo), and pointed a finger straight at his State Department audience and asked, "Does your mindset correspond with my data set? If not, one or the other of them needs upgrading."You’re just going to have to watch Hans Rosling for yourself (and you only have to catch the first ninety seconds to see him point at the screen with an "old fashioned laser pointer," as he put it: a microphone stand). You’ll be mesmerized by his moving bubble graphs as he dispels myths about social and economic development with a sportscaster’s flair, and you will probably even find yourself clicking over to www.gapminder.org to play around with the software on your own.Stewart Brand: Four environmental 'heresies'
Stewart Brand, author of The Whole Earth Catalog (which he first published forty years ago), previewed his new book, The Whole Earth Discipline, which comes out later this month. With his first book having sold 1.5 million copies, we were all at the edges of our seats to hear what he had to say (and thrilled that we would be the first to get a preview).Brand’s talk covered a wide range of topics, from his thoughts on why cities are actually greener than the countryside, to how nuclear power might provide answers to energy concerns, to why genetic engineering could be the key to crop and land management. You won’t want to miss the astonishing video clip from Bangkok that he shows at around the six-minute mark.Jacqueline Novogratz: A third way to think about aid
Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund made the case for impact investing in a masterful way: "So we need both the market, and we need aid. Patient capital works between and tries to take the best of both … [by investing] in entrepreneurs who know their communities and are building solutions to healthcare, water, housing, alternative energy."Novogratz’s TED Talk has galvanized all kinds of buzz, starting with the roundtable discussion on a potential Global Innovation Fund hosted by Aspen and continuing at SOCAP09 and elsewhere. Then a real game-changer was announced recently when USAID made a funding commitment to develop a set of standards that will rate the social and environmental return on financial investments. As Ambassador Bagley commented, "These shared metrics are just the start of our efforts to develop impact investing strategies that will ensure sustainable, responsible, and long-term growth."One day soon, if we do this right, investors could have the ability to double-click on their mutual funds and clearly see their social and environmental impacts – the number of well-paying jobs they’ve created in post-conflict areas, the number of daycare centers, hospitals, or schools they have retrofitted with green building technologies, or the number of women who have received microcredit loans to create income-generating opportunities for their families. Exciting stuff.Paul Collier: New rules for rebuilding a broken nation
People’s eyes widened as Paul Collier rattled off statistics about how forty percent of post-conflict situations reverted back within a decade, accounting for half of civil wars. To change the paradigm, he argued that we need to think differently about who leads recovery efforts, saying, "On the ground, you should use whatever works: churches, NGOs, local communities. Whatever works."Similar phrases were still fresh in my mind from a few weeks earlier: "We have to find new ways to fill that space that is unfortunately left to create vacuums in too many places around the world," Secretary Clinton stated at the Global Philanthropy Forum in April. "The problems we face today will not be solved by governments alone. It will be in partnerships – partnerships with philanthropy, with global business, partnerships with civil society."Great minds sometimes think alike, even if it is outside of the box.And TED@State’s "new ideas for a better world" were just the start, as we found out last week at the Clinton Global Initiative when President Obama issued this challenge:"We stand at a transformational moment in world history when our interconnected world presents us at once with great promise, but also with great peril … And just as no nation can wall itself off from the world, no one nation -- no matter how large, no matter how powerful -- can meet these challenges alone. Nor can governments alone. Today's threats demand new partnerships across sectors and across societies -- creative collaborations to achieve what no one can accomplish alone. In short, we need a new spirit of global partnership. And that is exactly the spirit that guides this organization; I hope that it is the spirit that guides my administration."You can answer the President’s call by submitting your partnership proposals to us online. Together, we can turn your ideas into the partnerships that really will create a better world.Rob Lalka is the Partnerships Liaison at the U.S. Department of StateLearn more about TechnologyFederal Register 2.0: Opening a Window onto the Inner Workings of Government
Posted by on October 5, 2009 at 8:14 AM ESTEvery weekday the National Archives and Records Administration publishes the Federal Register, a detailed description of the Executive branch’s doings, including 150 daily policy decisions of President and Federal agencies, such as proposed and enacted changes to federal regulations. Most Americans don’t look for it on their doorsteps in the morning, and you don’t see a lot of people perusing it on their daily commutes, but the Federal Register is nothing less than the "newspaper of our democracy," providing the most comprehensive overview (80,000 pages a year!) of how federal agencies are dealing with issues ranging from clean air and water to highway safety to science policy.When it was created 73 years ago, the Register was a tremendous advance in making government more open and accountable to the American people. But this "newspaper" is heavy reading. The text is dense and detailed and organized chronologically in a Department-by-Department and Agency-by-Agency format, making it more accessible in practice to avid government-watchers and experienced interest groups than the general public.
That’s why we're pleased to announce that as of today the National Archives and Records Administration and the U.S. Government Printing Office will publish the Federal Register in "XML." XML is a simple and flexible, machine-readable form of text that is easy to manipulate with software. By putting the Federal Register in XML, the federal government is for the first time allowing individuals to take control over how they want to read the Federal Register.
With an XML edition, independent organizations can reorganize the Register’s contents in ways that are more meaningful to you and address your personal interests; track issues that are likely to affect your community or your profession; and even engage in real-time public discussions about its contents with others across the country and around the world.
For example, Princeton's Center for Information Technology is today set to launch Fedthread.org, which allows users to annotate the Federal Register and comment in its margins. Another organization, Public.Resource.org, has created a software application that makes it simpler to search the Federal Register. And GovPulse makes it possible to visualize the Federal Register by topic or by location so the reader can see how particular government actions affect different local communities.
In these new formats, more people can read about what their government is doing and, even more significantly, can participate and get involved. We anticipate that, with this rich storehouse of government information now freely available in a 21st Century electronic format, we'll proliferate new software tools that greatly enhance the Federal Register’s readability and relevance. As United States Public Printer Bob Tapella has said: "By updating the Federal Register for the 21st century we are providing the American people the tools to access the documents of our democracy."
You can find the Federal Register in XML each day at www.gpo.gov or on data.gov. We encourage enterprising readers to take advantage of this new format and turn their creativity to the task of making the Register even more readable, accessible, and user-friendly. We'll be looking for the best ideas to incorporate in how we publish this newspaper of our democracy.
UPDATE: To comment on this post, visit the OSTP blog.
Ray Mosley is the Director of the Federal Register at the National Archives and Records Administration
Learn more about Technology"CPSC 2.0"
Posted by on September 24, 2009 at 4:00 PM ESTThis week, the nation's safety agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, launched a comprehensive social networking initiative that will make life-saving information more accessible to millions of consumers. Moms, dads, grandparents and others can find the latest safety information on CPSC's blog "OnSafety", which has articles, videos, podcasts and other information that can keep kids and families safe from a variety of product-related hazards. The site features a "Recall Search" tool that provides the latest updates on recalls and other news. CPSC has also launched its official presence on YouTube, FlickR and Twitter, with more social networking sites to come in the near future.CPSC's social media launch coincides with their Furniture and TV Tip-over Education Campaign. For young children, the home is a playground, and while many parents childproof to ensure that their home is the safest place, some may not be aware that TVs, furniture and appliances are hidden hazards lurking in every room. By educating parents on the dangers of unstable furniture by utilizing dramatic video, blogging and podcasting, CPSC hopes to raise the awareness of tip-over dangers in the home.Future content will address other safety issues in and around the home in engaging, consumer-friendly ways. The Administration and CPSC urge all consumers to use this vital information in their homes, and to share it with friends, family, schools, daycare centers, and others. We encourage everyone to subscribe to CPSC's channel on Youtube, to stream pictures on Flickr, and receive tweets on Twitter – it's the information you need to save the life of a loved one.Ed Kang is New Media Project Lead at the Consumer Product Safety Commission
