Yearly Archives: 2011

The US CIO goes to the white board to describe good government

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Earlier this week, United States CIO Vivek Kundra turned to the White House whiteboard to talk about sunshine, savings and service. If you’re unfamiliar with Kundra, he’s the man who has proposed and now is entrusted with implementing sweeping federal IT reform. One of the tools he’s been applying to the task is the so-called IT dashboard, which helps the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he serves to track IT spending. He claims to have reduced federal IT spending by some $3 billion dollars over the past two years with increased tracking and scrutiny.The federal CIO explains more about the results from that work, below.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/all/modules/swftools/shared/flash_media_player/player5x2.swf

UPDATE: As open data consultant Dan Morgan pointed out, however, the Government Accountability Office reported that while OMB has made improvements to its dashboard, “further work is needed by agencies and OMB to ensure data accuracy.”

…inaccuracies can be attributed to weaknesses in how agencies report data to the Dashboard, such as providing erroneous data submissions, as well as limitations in how OMB calculates the ratings. Until the selected agencies and OMB resolve these issues, ratings will continue to often be inaccurate and may not reflect current program performance. GAO is recommending that selected agencies take steps to improve the accuracy and reliability of Dashboard information and OMB improve how it rates investments relative to current performance and schedule variance. Agencies generally concurred with the recommendations; OMB did not concur with the first recommendation but concurred with the second. GAO maintains that until OMB implements both, performance may continue to be inaccurately represented on the Dashboard.

One question left unanswered: Is /good the new /open? Decide for yourself at the new “Good Government” section at WhiteHouse.gov.

Improving open government oversight through FOIA reform

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The Freedom of Information Act is one of the primary levers by which journalists, government watchdogs and other organizations can hold the United States government accountable. Today in Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on “The Freedom of Information Act: Crowd-Sourcing Government Oversight.
Full House Oversight and Reform Committee

The testimony of the witnesses made it clear that major issues persist with the cost, mechanism and compliance with FOIA requests made to government agencies.

Public information should be online in real time, said Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) (@DarrellIssa), chairman of the committee.

His prepared statement provided context for the focus of the hearing:

The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) is one of the most important tools for government transparency and accountability. It permits the private-sector, the media, watchdog groups, and the general public to scrutinize the activities of federal agencies – from the telephone logs and email correspondence of federal employees to internal memoranda, transcripts, and meeting minutes.

Minus a few specific exemptions designed to protect narrowly-defined privacy concerns, national security and law enforcement matters, claims of executive privilege and trade secrets, information about the government’s work is required by law to be publicly accessible. Indeed, every federal agency, commission, department and corporation – as well as the White House itself – falls under FOIA’s expansive authority.

Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) defended the record of the Obama administration on open government and quoted President James Madison in his opening statement:

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, , and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselve with the power knowledge gives.”

Rep. Cummings introduced a new bill today, entitled the “Transparency and Openness in Government Act.” (As of the time this post went live, it was not in Thomas.gov yet.) According to Rep. Cummings, the bill would make federal commissions more transparent, increase access to records, ensure government email records were preserved and improve GAO access to govt records. The legislation includes five bills that passed the House during the 111th Congress:

  • The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires agencies to disclose more information about advisory committees and closes existing loopholes;
  • The Presidential Records Act increases public access to White House records by establishing statutory procedures prior to FOIA releases;
  • The Presidential Libraries Donation Reform Act mandates greater public disclosure of library donor information;
  • The Electronic Message Preservation Act modernizesthe Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act to ensure that White House and agency e-mail records are preserved;
  • The GAO Improvement Act strengthens the authority of the Government Accountability Office to access agency records.

Transparency shouldn’t be a partisan issue, emphasized Cummings.

Miriam Nisbit of OGIS

The committee heard from a distinguished panel of witnesses, including Miriam Nesbit, the director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration. OGIS opened in September 2009 and acts as an ombudsman for FOIA request. “OGIS encourages a more collaborative, accessible FOIA for everyone,” said Nisbet.

While both witnesses and congressmen recognized that the Department of Justice launched FOIA.gov at the outset of Sunshine Week, “there is the awkward fact the Justice Department’s own FOIA backlog has not been reduced in the past year,” observed Daniel Metcalfe, executive director of Collaboration on Government Secrecy.

The costs of FOIA are part of that story. “In 2010, agencies reported nearly $400 million to process FOIA requests,” testified Rick Blum of SunshineInGovernment.org.

There’s also the issue of agencies and officials claimed exemptions to requests. Blum noted that for Sunshine Week, ProPublica created a searchable database of FOIA exemptions.

These claimed exemptions extend to the White House. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch challenged the Secret Services’ contention that visitor logs are not subject to FOIA.

While the Project of Government Oversight’s Angela Canterbury gave the administration credit for proactive information release at USASpending.gov, Data.gov, Recovery.gov and FOIA.gov, she acknowledged that “if FOIA is the yardstick for openness, then we haven’t gotten very far yet.”

The issue lies is in the default towards secrecy versus openness. “Too often, overt secrecy has not only impaired the promise of FOIA but also has put the American people at risk,” said Canterbury.

That said, Daniel Metcalfe did offer recognition of President Obama’s elevation of open government in his administration, including a speech at the United Nations where openness was highlighted in an “unprecedented” way.

The written testimony of the witnesses is linked below. Video of the hearing will be available through the tireless efforts of citizen archivist Carl Malamud at House.Resource.org later in the week.

Ghonim: Egypt launches first official website that uses open source

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The Supreme Judicial Commission has put up a new website in Egypt that offers its citizens the ability to read amendments to its constitution. Referendum.eg offers information about voting and the rights and duties of citizens.

Notably, the site is buit upon an open source content management system, Joomla. Wael Ghonim, the Google employee who played a role in Egypt’s revolution, shared the news on Tuesday.

Pew: More than half of US adults went online to get election news in 2010

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The Pew Internet and Life Project released new research today on the Internet and Campaign 2010 that 73% of adult internet users went online to get news, information or otherwise be involved in last year’s elections. That represents some 54% of all US adults, or a majority of the population, now are turning to the Internet when election season comes around. Expect that to grow further in the presidential season next year.

“As the Internet has developed as a tool for political engagement and information-seeking, the audience for online political content has also changed,” said Aaron Smith, Pew Internet senior research specialist in a prepared statement. Smith authored the report. “These online spaces are a meeting place where politically engaged Americans of all stripes—young and old, conservative and liberal—can come to catch up on the latest events, share their thoughts on the political news of the day, and see what their friends have to say about the issues that are important to them.”

Online

Mainstream media websites occupy the top 5 spots in the list of the main sources of news cited by respondents, next to Yahoo and Google. Only 2% of those surveyed said that they visited a candidate’s website, setting a low bar for that number to explode in the 2012 cycle as both incumbents and those wishing to oust them turn to the Web to “go direct” to citizens.

For some, where they’re visiting is a little less clear. 29% of those surveyed chose “other” for their main sources of news, which could mean any number of sources in the blogosphere or the rest of the Internet.

http://widget.icharts.net

Social

Social networking is an increasingly important factor in American consumption of political news. According to eMarketer, in 2011 half of all US Internet users log in monthly to Facebook.

There are now well over than tens of million American Twitter users, though a small percentage of those users account for the bulk of the tweets. According to Pew, one in five online adults (22%) used Twitter or a social networking site for political purposes in 2010. Twitter has some 200 million users worldwide, approximately 60 million of them of which are in the United States.

Video

With more broadband access, Internet-connected flatscreen televisions, set-top boxes and an explosion of video-capable smartphones and tablets, people are also watching in more places, spaces and times than ever before. Timeshifting stopped being a science fiction phenomenon years ago with the introduction of digital video recorders, familiar now as “DVRs”, but on-demand video from Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Netflix and a host of other sites are available to those able to pay the toll for broadband Internet access.

http://widget.icharts.net

Polarized?

According to the report, some “55% of all internet users feel that the internet increases the influence of those with extreme political views, compared with 30% who say that the internet reduces the influence of those with extreme views by giving ordinary citizens a chance to be heard.”

Is the Internet polarizing? Micah Sifry of techPresident wasn’t so sure.

This could be true, or it could be a false positive. What if people are conflating things? Arguably politics in America is more polarized, but cable TV and talk radio and paid negative political advertising are driving that shift, while the Internet is just an overall disruptive force that is enabling lots of more people to speak up and connect with the like-minded and unlike-minded alike.

Groups

Polarization can express itself in how people group online and offline. As with so many activities online, political information gathering online requires news consumers to be more digitally literate.

In 2011, that may mean recognizing the potential for digital echo chambers, where unaware citizens become trapped in a filter bubble created by rapidly increasing personalization in search, commercial and social utilities like Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Pew’s research found that some of the people surveyed at least recognized the complexity of the political landscape online. With a few clicks of the mouse, keystrokes or finger taps, a news consumer can find the best and worst of humanity is mirrored online. The open platform of the Internet allows extremist views to co-exists alongside moderate perspectives. It also provides means for like-minded citizens to find one another, using the Internet as a platform for collective action.

http://widget.icharts.net

While the diversity of sources may have radically expanded and the delivery systems for them may have multiplied, finding and establishing the truth of what’s out there can be be challenging.

Caveat lector.

You can download the full report as a PDF here. For digital politicos, it’s a must read.

At the @NASATweetup, @Astro_Wheels shares the view from space

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http://storify.com/digiphile/nasa-tweetup-with-astrowheels-shares-the-view-from.js

The Smithsonian goes virtual at SXSWi

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In the face of adversity, Gov 2.0 will find a way. This morning, the Smithsonian’s director of Web and new media strategy, Michael Peter Edson, was unable to attend the Innovating and Developing with Libraries, Museums, and Archives panel at SXSW Interactive, 2011. Instead of leaving a hole in the program, he created a video about his work, below, and tweeted out links to the Smithsonian Commons, the Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy and a presentation on prototyping. Enjoy.

Michael Edson: Prototyping the Smithsonian Commons

:

Michael Edson: Prototyping the Smithsonian Commons http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=20100413cilsmithsoniancommons-long-100412201253-phpapp01&stripped_title=michael-edson-prototyping-the-smithsonian-commons&userName=edsonm

View more presentations from Michael Edson

Making open government data visualizations that matter

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Every month, more open government data is available online. Local governments are becoming data suppliers. Open healthcare data is spurring better decisions. There’s a tremendous amount of activity in open data – but there’s a long road ahead for open government. At the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, Jeremiah Akin and Michael Castellon made a case for “why visualizing government data makes taxpayers happy.”

The expectation of transparency is creating demand for government agencies to develop new ways to communicate complex data and trends to the public in easy-to-access and easy-to-understand formats.

Some agencies are turning to Google Maps and KML data to visualize raw information online and on mobile devices. Delivering data in more easily understandable formats not only boosts trust and confidence between government agencies and their publics, but also streamlines workloads among Data, Web, Editorial, and Customer Service teams.

The two men talked about how the Texas Comptroller is using public-facing maps to communicate with the public, including to the rapidly increasing numbers of citizens accessing government websites from mobile devices.

The utility of open government data can be quite concrete, as when live tsunami data is used to help save lives. It can also help people to understand more about the virtual lines in their towns and cities. In Texas, ClaimItTexas.org shows unclaimed property in Lone Star State.

Mobile transparency

The Texas Transparency Map is also available for touchscreen mobile devices and for tablets. That’s no accident: Akin said that mobile traffic to the site up four-fold since lat year.

“We’re seeing a lot more mobile access,” he said. “If we want to make it available on multiple devices, we need to create in a way that can be displayed.” That insight is a crucial one, and reverberates far beyond the government sphere. By choosing to develop non-native Web applications written in HTML5, Javascript and JSON, this cohort of Texas government avoided “Shiny App Syndrome.” Next steps include support for street level detail, Google Fusion tables, and geolocation.

Putting open government data to work

“Open government data has been used for a long time,” said Akin, citing the use of census data in newspapers. A new class of new media journalism is putting data to use in innovative ways, pointed out Castellon. “The Texas Tribune is one of the leaders in data visualization,” he said, which helps citizens to make sense of government data.

The key here, emphasized Akin, is that is not just enough to simply dump data. You need ways to visualize it and make it meaningful as information. “There’s a lot of resistance – people have been there, and that’s not how they’ve done things,” he said. “If you make a visualization that makes someone’s job easier pretty soon they start coming back to you.

With better data visualizations and more information, Castellon posited that more problem solving can take place. “When you release data, especiallly with science, education or research, there are stories embedded in that data,” he said.

In this narrative, it’s up to governments to release better, clean data in consumable formats and the evolving art of data journalism to make stories from it that give citizens, businesses and elected officials insight into the complexities of modern life.

Visualizing the future of programmable cities

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Technology is fueling new visions for the future of cities. Today at the South by Southwest Interactive festival, a panel considered “Web Mashup Platforms and Future Programmable Cities“. NYC chief digital officer Rachel Sterne (@RachelSterne) joined Christine Outram (@cityinnovation), Vlad Trifa (@vladounet) and Dominique Guinard (@domguinard) in exploring how open data, mobile platforms and citizen engagement will shape what comes next in urban life.

Below, visual notes by OgilvyNotes and ImageThink capture the conversation.

n Web Mashup Platforms and Future Programmable Cities

For more on how cities are embracing new platforms and technologies, learn about citizensourcing smarter government in New York City.

[Hat Tip: Rachel Sterne]

Open government scrutinized before the House Oversight Committee

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This morning, the Oversight Committee in the United States House of Representatives held a hearing on the Obama administration’s open government efforts. The “Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives hearing was streamed live online at oversight.house.gov.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked his Twitter followers before the hearing a simple question “Have you tried to get facts on how gov’t spends your $ on USASpending.gov?” He received no answers.

The oversight committee did, however, hear extensive testimony from government IT executives and open government watchdogs. As Representative Issa probes how agencies balance their books, such insight will be crucial, particularly with respect to improving accountability mechanism and data. Poor data has been a reoccurring theme in these assessments over the years. Whether the federal government can effectively and pervasively apply open data principles appears itself to be open question.

The first half of the hearing featured testimony from Dr. Danny Harris, chief information officer for the Department of Education, Chris Smith, chief information officer for the Department of Agriculture, Jerry Brito, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation.

Alice Lipowicz of Federal Computer Week tweeted out a few data points from the hearing.

  • A Sunlight Foundation audit found that the USDA spent $12.7B on school lunches but only reported $250,000 on USASpending.gov
  • According to Brito, “half of 3000 datasets on Data.gov are on EPA toxic releases, with only 200 to 300 datasets are on fed gov activity.” Lipowicz also tweeted that Brito testified that federal agencies need outside auditors and “ought to report ‘earnings’ similar to private sector.”
  • USDA CIO Chris Smith said that the agency did not report school lunch payments below $25,000 to USASpending.gov; will report in FY2012

In her testimony before the House committee on clearspending, Miller reiterated the position of the Sunlight Foundation that the efforts of the administration to make government spending data open, accurate and available have been insufficient, particularly when the data is wrong.

The Sunlight Foundation has been excited about the new promises of data transparency, but sometimes the results are nowhere near the accuracy and completeness necessary for the data to be useful for the public.

Sunlight’s Clearspending analysis found that nearly $1.3 trillion of federal spending as reported on USASpending.gov was inaccurate. While there have been some improvements, little to no progress has been made to address the fundamental flaws in the data quality. Correcting the very complicated system of federal reporting for government spending is an enormous task. It has to be done because without it there is no hope for accountability.

Miller made several recommendations to the committee to improve the situation, including:

  • unique identifiers for government contracts and grants
  • publicly available hierarchical identifiers for recipients to follow interconnected entities
  • timely bulk access to all data.

Her remarks ultimately reflect the assessment that she made at last year’s Gov 2.0 Summit, where she made it clear that open government remains in beta. Our interview is below:

Tracking the progress of the Open Government Directive requires better data, more auditors and improved performance metrics. That said, this looks like the year when many of the projects at agencies will move forward towards implementation.

Last month, the U.S. moved forward into the pilot phase of an open source model for health data systems as the fruits of the Direct Project came to Minnesota and Rhode Island. The Direct Project allows for the secure transmission of health care data over a network. Some observers have dubbed it the Health Internet, and the technology has the potential to save government hundreds of millions of dollars, along with supporting the growth of new electronic health records systems .Open source and open government have also come together to create OpenStack, an open cloud computing platform that’s a collaboration between NASA, Rackspace, Cisco and a growing group of partners.

It’s too early to judge the overall effort open government as ultimately a success or failure. That said, the administration clearly needs to do more. In 2011, the open question is whether “We the people” will use these new participatory platforms to help government work better.

Video of the hearing will be posted here when available. Testimony from today’s hearing is linked to PDFs below.

Dr. Danny Harris

Chris Smith

Jerry Brito

Ellen Miller

The Honorable Danny Werfel

Note: Video of the hearing was provided through the efforts of citizen archivist Carl Malamud at house.resource.org, the open government video website that he set up in collaboration with Speaker Boehner and Congressman Issa. While the open government efforts of the federal government have a long way to go, in this particular regard, a public-private collaboration is making the proceedings of the House Oversight committee available to the world online.

White House dCTO Chris Vein on innovation and open government

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Chris Vein is the newly minted deputy United States chief technology officer for government innovation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As reported by Fast Company last month, Vein headed to the White House from San Francisco, where he served as the city’s chief information technology officer. Vein takes on the portfolio from now departed deputy CTO for open government Beth Noveck, along with the @OpenGov Twitter account. Vein was a supporter of both open source and open data while at San Francisco; it’s reasonable to expect that will continue in his new role.

As Nick Judd reported at techPresident, Vein talked to open government advocates at the recent Transportation Camp in New York City. You can watch his talk below.

Transportation Camp East: Chris Vein from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

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