Monthly Archives: November 2013

Map of open government communities generated by social network analysis of Twitter

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Graph-12287

The map above was created on November 20 by researcher Marc Smith using a dataset of tweets that contained “opengov” over the past month. You can explore an interactive version of it here.

The social network analysis is, by its nature, a representation of only the data used to create it. It’s not a complete picture of open government communities offline, or even the totality of the communities online: it’s just the people who tweeted about open gov.

That said, there are some interesting insights to be gleaned.

1) The biggest network is the one for the Open Government Partnership (OGP), on the upper left (G1), which had its annual summit during the time period in question. That likely affected the data set.

2) I’m at the center of the U.S. open government community on the bottom left (G2) (I’m doing something right!) and am connected throughout these communities, though I need to work on my Spanish. This quadrant is strongly interconnected and includes many nodes linked up to OGP and around the world. (Those are represented by the green lines.)

3) Other communities include regional networks, like Spain (G4) and Spanish-speaking (G11) open government organizations, Germany (G3), Italy (G12), Canada (G7), Greece (G5) and Australia (G9), and ideological networks, like the White House @OpenGov initiative (G8) and U.S. House Majority Leader (G6). These networks have many links to one another, although Mexico looks relatively isolated. Given that Indonesia has a relatively high Twitter penetration, its relative absence from the map likely reflects users there not tweeting with “opengov.”

4) The relative sparseness of connections between the Republican open government network and other open government communities strongly suggests that, despite the overwhelming bipartisan support for the DATA Act in the House, the GOP isn’t engaging and linked up to the broader global conversation yet, an absence that should both concern its leaders and advocates in the United States that would like to see effective government rise above partisan politics. This community is also only tweeting links to its own (laudable) open government initiatives and bills in the House, as opposed to what’s happening outside of DC.

5) You can gain some insight into the events and issues that matter in these communities by looking at the top links shared. Below, I’ve shared the top links from Smith’s NodeXL analysis:
Top URLs in Tweet in Entire Graph:

https://healthcare.gov/
http://www.opengovguide.com/
https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/open-government-partnership-summit-2013
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/get-involved/london-summit-2013
https://govmakerday.eventbrite.com/
http://blogs.worldbank.org/youthink/can-young-people-make-your-government-more-accountable
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/london-summit-2013
http://paper.li/DGateway/1350366870
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/5907-more-open-government-ogp13
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=edit_ok&list=PLMDgGB-pYxdFNupM0kiHFPjwv8by2alxY

Top URLs in Tweet in G1 (Open Government Partnership):

https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/open-government-partnership-summit-2013
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/5907-more-open-government-ogp13
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/london-summit-2013
http://www.thunderclap.it/tipped/5907/twitter
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/get-involved/london-summit-2013
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=edit_ok&list=PLMDgGB-pYxdFNupM0kiHFPjwv8by2alxY
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/5907-more-open-government-ogp13?locale=en
http://www.opengovguide.com/
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/open-government-partnership-uk-national-action-plan-2013
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/open-government-awards-launched-reward-transparent-accountable-and-effective-public-programs#sthash.xl5Bwn5D.dpuf

Top URLs in Tweet in G2 (US OpenGov Community):

http://www.usgovernmentmanual.gov/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-brian/in-wake-of-snowden-us-mus_b_4192804.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
http://e-pluribusunum.com/2013/11/05/farm-bill-foia-open-government-epa/
http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2013/10/28/new-project-aims-connect-dots-open-data/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/lWV7k
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/11/15/opengov-voices-pdf-liberation-hackathon-at-sunlight-in-dc-and-around-the-world-january-17-19-2014/
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/11/14/recent-developments-show-desire-for-trade-talk-transparency/
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/22/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-actually-cost/
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/making-regulations-easier-to-use/
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/11/19/house-keeps-data-act-momentum-moving/

Top URLs in Tweet in G3 (Germany):

http://paper.li/DGateway/1350366870
http://oknrw.de/
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/christian-heise/2013/11/18/german-grand-coalition-might-agree-joining-ogp
http://dati.comune.bologna.it/node/962
http://www.globalhealthhub.org/thehive/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1431657647046016
http://aiddata.org/blog/this-week-open-data-for-open-hearts-and-open-minds
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/get-involved/london-summit-2013
http://www.freiburg.de/pb/,Lde/541381.html
http://digitaliser.dk/resource/2534864

Top URLs in Tweet in G4 (Spain):

http://www.opengovguide.com/
http://www.cepal.org/cgi-bin/getprod.asp?xml=/ilpes/capacitacion/0/50840/P50840.xml&xsl=/ilpes/tpl/p15f.xsl&base=/ilpes/tpl/top-bottom.xsl
https://vine.co/v/hpZErXPd6rq
http://thepowerofopengov.tumblr.com/
http://es.scribd.com/collections/4376877/Case-Studies
https://vine.co/v/hpZiw7TXanI
https://vine.co/v/hpZIV002zar
http://aga.org.mx/SitePages/DefinicionGob.aspx
http://www.opengovpartnership.org
http://inicio.ifai.org.mx/Publicaciones/La%20promesa%20del%20Gobierno%20Abierto.pdf

Top URLs in Tweet in G5 (Greece):

https://healthcare.gov/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/23/so-much-for-opengov-quantcast-traffic-on-healthcare-gov-hidden-by-the-owner/
http://elegilegi.org/
http://opengov.seoul.go.kr/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/23/so-much-for-opengov-quantcast-traffic-on-healthcare-gov-hidden-by-the-owner/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/about/blog/biases-open-government-blind-us?utm_source=as.pn&utm_medium=urlshortener
http://www.opengov.gr/consultations/?p=1744
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/about/blog/biases-open-government-blind-us
http://www.opengov.gr/minfin/?p=4076
http://OpenGov.com

Top URLs in Tweet in G6 (GOP):

http://houselive.gov/
https://www.cosponsor.gov/details/hr2061
http://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-leaders-introduce-bipartisan-data-act/
http://instagram.com/p/g3uvs_sYYr/
http://cpsc.gov/live
https://cosponsor.gov/details/hr2061-113
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnn3IsOhulE&feature=youtu.be
http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Regulations-Laws–Standards/Rulemaking/Final-and-Proposed-Rules/Hand-Held-Infant-Carriers/
http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/opengov-house-representatives-makes-us-code-available-bulk-xml
http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20131118/BILLS-113hr2061XML.xml

Top URLs in Tweet in G7 (Canada):

https://govmakerday.eventbrite.com/
http://www.ontario.ca/government/open-government-initial-survey
http://govmakerday.eventbrite.com
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/10/29/the_promise_and_challenges_of_open_government.html
http://www.marsdd.com/2013/10/31/open-government-three-stages-for-codeveloping-solutions/
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/11/09/rob_ford_and_the_emerging_crisis_of_legitimacy.html
https://www.ontario.ca/government/open-government-initial-survey
http://govmakerday-estw.eventbrite.com
http://www.ontario.ca/open
http://gov20radio.com/2013/10/gtec2013/

Top URLs in Tweet in G8 (@OpenGov):

https://healthcare.gov/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/lWV7k
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/making-regulations-easier-to-use/
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/01/economy-hasnt-stalled-for-members-of.html
http://www.commonblog.com/2013/10/23/eagle-tribune-editorial-public-records-need-to-be-available-to-its-citizenry/
http://mobile.twitter.com/OpenGov
http://blogs.state.gov/stories/2013/10/31/making-governments-more-open-effective-and-accountable
http://open.dc.gov/
http://www.sielocal.com/SieLocal/informe/1025/Ingresos-por-el-concepto-de-multas
http://mei-ks.net/?page=1,5,787

Top URLs in Tweet in G9 (Australia):

http://paper.li/cortado/1291646564
http://icma.org/en/icma/knowledge_network/documents/kn/Document/305680/Transparency_20_The_Fundamentals_of_Online_Open_Government
http://www.oaic.gov.au/about-us/corporate-information/annual-reports/oaic-annual-report-201213/
https://controllerdata.lacity.org/
http://cogovsnapshot.cofluence.co/
https://info.granicus.com/Online-Open-Gov-October-29-2013.html?page=Home-Page
http://www.oaic.gov.au/news-and-events/subscribe
https://oaic.govspace.gov.au/2013/10/30/community-attitudes-to-privacy-survey-results/
http://www.cebit.com.au/cebit-news/2013/towards-open-government-esnapshot-australia-2013
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/digital-democracy/government-transparency-conflicts-public-trust-privacy-recent-research-ideas

Top URLs in Tweet in G10:

http://on.undp.org/pUdJj
http://europeandcis.undp.org/blog/2013/10/17/a-template-for-developing-a-gov20-opengov-project/?utm_source=%40OurTweets
http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/12-favorite-quotes-from-code-for-america-summit
http://www.accessinitiative.org/blog/2013/10/east-kalimantan-community%E2%80%99s-struggles-underscore-need-proactive-transparency-indonesia
http://www.scribd.com/doc/178983441/Montenegro-Inspiring-Story-open-government
http://www.scribd.com/doc/178988676/Indonesia-case-study-open-government
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2013/10/18/feature-01?utm_source=%40OurTweets
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/summary-london-summit-commitments
http://feedly.com/k/1arGpdC
http://slid.es/kendall/open-records

ODNI declassifies more intelligence documents after White House order, ACLU, EFF suits

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I’m still digesting the additional documents the U.S. director of national intelligence released last night. The New York Times’ coverage of the latest documents released notes that they include a 2006 “ruling in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first approved a program to systematically track Americans’ emails during the Bush administration.”

The opinion, signed by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, permitted the NSA to gather email addresses and other forms of Internet communication in bulk  — but not the content of those communications. Law professor Orin Kerr has “major problems” with the FISC opinion:

“By imagining that the statute provides more protection than it does, and by then construing the ambiguity in the statute in the government’s favor, the FISC’s opinion ends up approving a program that Congress did not contemplate using privacy protections Congress did not contemplate either,” he wrote, at his blog. “The resulting opinion endorses a program that appears to be pretty far from the text of the statute.”

Taken in sum, the Guardian holds that these FISA court opinions show that the NSA demonstrated disregard for the privacy protections that are constitutionally afforded to American citizens under the Fourth Amendment.

Transparency, at last?

On the one hand, the intelligence community’s Tumblr blog and Twitter account have been an effective means of distributing and publicizing the document releases it is publishing on odni.gov, its website. That’s a measure of transparency, although the redacted, scanned documents are not “opening the kimono” all the way.

On the other hand, if you only read the ODNI’s press release and posts at that tumblr (which are quite similar,) you wouldn’t know that the documents released are not only pursuant to President Barack Obama directive to DNI Clapper to declassify information relevant to NSA bulk data collection.

aclu icontherecord

As Cyrus Farivar reported for Ars Technica, “the documents, which include annual reports from the Attorney General to Congress, memos, presentations, and training documents, were released in relation to an Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union [Freedom of Information Act] lawsuit.”

The overarching context for the release of nearly 2000 documents are the leaks of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, whose disclosures to The Guardian and Washington Post prompted President Barack Obama’s directive to ODNI.<

So, this is what "open government" looks like in 2013: networked, nuanced and opaque. Official documents are released in response to the reports of whistleblowers,  and then distributed through the government's official channels online and reported, factchecked and through the 4th and 5th Estates.

This dynamic only bound to get more interesting from here on out.

DATA Act passes U.S. House of Representatives, 388-1

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One of the most important bills for open government in the U.S. since the Freedom of Information Act of 1967 has passed the House. Now, attention goes back to the Senate.

In September, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told me that he would bring the DATA Act to the floor for a vote.

Today, he did.

The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives 388-1 this evening.

20131118-213153.jpg

“The American people deserve a functioning government that is both open & transparent,” said Mr. Cantor.

“The DATA Act is an important step to achieving this goal because it will publish federal spending data and transform it from disconnected documents into open, searchable data for people to see and read through online.”

The bill that passed the House is the same version that a coalition of open government advocates supports. The one that passed the Senate HSGAC Committee was modified.

We’ll see what the full Senate votes on, if it’s brought to the floor, and what comes out of committee if it is passed.

“We are hopeful that the Senate will answer this call from the House of Representatives to reap the rewards from greater accountability and tech-sector innovation that real spending transparency can provide,” said Hudson Hollister, the Executive Director of the Data Transparency Coalition, in a statement.

“President Obama should put the goals of his Open Data Policy into action by publicly endorsing the DATA Act. As Comptroller General Gene Dodaro testified in July, without this legislative mandate, spending transparency won’t happen.”

Russian Minister Nikolay Nikiforov: more open data on budgets and contracts to come

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Today at the World Bank, Nikolay Nikiforov, Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, answered two of my questions about providing access to data about government operations in response to requests from the media. While he didn’t directly answer my query regarding media request, he did say that the Russian government will be making more data available regarding government contracts available.

For more context on Russia, open data and digital government, read my post at Global Integrity.

Why HealthSherpa.com is not a replacement for Healthcare.gov [UPDATED]

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UPDATE: In June 2014, Ning Liang, one of the founders of HealthSherpa, wrote in about updates to the site. Ling said that they can now enroll people in ACA marketplace plans, including subsidies. According to Liang, “we are the only place besides Healthcare.gov where this is possible. We have signed an agreement with CMS as a web based entity to do this. We are directly integrated with the federal data hub, so going through us is identical to going through Healthcare.gov.”

Earlier tonight, Levick director of digital content Simon Owens discovered HealthSherpa.com, thought it was cool, and read a Daily Dot post about it that framed it as 3 20-something San Francisco Bay-area resident coding up an alternative to Healthcare.gov.

Could it be that easy, wondered Owens? Could these young coders have created a simpler, better way to shop for health insurance than the troubled Healthcare.gov?

healthsherpa

Well, yes and no. As is so often the case, it’s not quite that simple, for several reasons.

1) As always, note the disclaimer at the bottom of HealthSherpa.com: “The information provided here is for research purposes. Make sure to verify premiums and subsidies on your state exchange or healthcare.gov, or directly with the insurance company or an agent.”

Why? The site is based upon the publicly available data published by the Department for Health and Human Services, individual state exchanges and Healthcare.gov for premium costs, like this dataset of premiums by county at data.healthcare.gov.

Unfortunately, there appear to be data quality issues, as CBS News reported, that may be an issue on both sites.

When I compared searches for the same zipcode in Florida for a 35 year old, single non-smoking male, I found the same 106 plans but was quoted different premiums: $128.85 on HC.gov vs $150.24 on HealthSherpa. Hmm.

That could be user error, but… it looks like Healthcare.gov continues to underestimate costs.

Healthsherpa may actually be doing better, here. Good job, guys.

2) Regardless, this is not a replacement for everything Healthcare.gov is supposed to do.

The federal and state exchanges aren’t just about browsing plans and comparing premiums for options in a given zipcode in the “marketplace.” After a user knows decides which plan he or she want, the software is supposed to:

1) Register them as a user (registration was up front initially, which was a controversial, important choice, relevant to the site crashing at launch)
2) Authenticate them against government data bases
3) Verify income against government data bases
4) Calculate relevant subsidies, based upon income
5) Guide them through the application process
6) Send that form data on to insurance companies for enrollment.

The tech that underpins the test and graphics website on the front end of those process continues to hold up well.

The rest of the software that is supposed to enable visitors to go through steps 1-6 software, not so much. 16 state exchanges and DC are having varying degrees of success, with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius acknowledging issues with data quality in Step 6 in her testimony to Congress.

3) While it has a subsidy calculator, otherwise Healthsherpa doesn’t replace Healthcare.gov.

Healthsherpa enables you to find a relevant plan and then gives you contact info for the relevant insurer.

For instance:

“Call Humana Medical Plan, Inc. at (800) 448-6262.
Use their menu or ask the operator to speak to someone about purchasing coverage.
Tell them you would like to purchase health exchange coverage, specifically the Humana Connect Basic 6350/6350 Plan for Hillsborough County, FL.
Follow their instructions to complete the application process.”

It does not place calls to the data hub to calculate steps 1-6.

That limited functionality, however, has been good enough for U.S. Senator Angus King to recommend HealthSherpa as a temporary alternative to Healthcare.gov.

“HealthSherpa offers a user-friendly platform to quickly browse through available health insurance plan options, including monthly premium costs, coverage plans, and possible premium subsidies,” Senator King said. “I recommend that Mainers who are having trouble with Healthcare.gov use HealthSherpa as a temporary alternative until the federal website functions properly.”

4) There are OTHER private healthcare insurance brokers that could be doing this.

Back in May 2013, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued official guidance for private sector brokers in online health insurance marketplaces. (PDF)

Former U.S. chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra said that these “Web-based entities” will be online this fall, operated by entities like eHealthInsurance.com and GetInsured.

For some reason, however, private sector insurance brokers have been stymied by the federal government from selling ACA insurance policies.

That’s unfortunate, given that the Obama administration could use a Plan B, just in case the progress on Healthcare.gov doesn’t lead to a functional federal health insurance exchange twenty days from now.

Update: Jonathan Cohn, writing for the New Republic, looked into Healthcare.gov’s backup plan and comes up with an interesting detail: issues with the so-called data hub could be holding back deployment of private online health insurance brokers.

…administration officials have been huddling with insurers about how to make more use of direct enrollment. Step one is to make sure that “side door” enrollment works smoothly. It doesn’t function well right now, because—you guessed it—it relies on the same information technology system that powers healthcare.gov. Fixing that portal, which techies tell me is called an “application programming interface,” is high on the administration’s to-do list. But it’s not clear (to me) whether improving the portal might require design modifications—or to what extent its success depends upon other, ongoing repairs to the federal website.

So, here’s some speculation: While it’s hard to know for sure, but it’s quite likely that that “portal” is the data hub that’s behind Healthcare.gov, and that it may not be up to additional volume from private sector demand.

The federal exchange and state exchanges both rely upon it, and, while federal officials have said that it’s working, a report by the New York Times yesterday that some state health insurance exchange are continuing to battle tech problems indicated that it’s not holding up under demand:

Even states whose websites are working well say they are hampered by a common problem: the federal website, particularly the data hub that checks every applicant’s identity and eligibility. That hub has stopped working on several occasions, preventing applications in the states from being completed.

If that’s happening now, concerns about the ability of the hub to hold up under the pressure of private sector online insurance brokers could well be justified. If I learn anything more definitive, I’ll share it.

Farewell, Thomas.gov. Hello, Congress.gov.

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THOMAS-redirecting-to-Congress.gov_

On November 19th, Thomas.gov, the venerable website of the United States Congress, will begin to redirect visitors to Congress.gov. The new site, which launched in beta in September 2012, will become the primary governmental resource for the text of legislation, past, present and future, along with reports from committees, speeches from the floor of Congress and cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

While the official announcement was made today by the Library of Congress, Thomas.gov’s custodian, leading headlines about Congress trading in the new Congress.gov and a note in Roll Call, the transition from THOMAS.gov to Congress.gov has been going on all fall, including updates to the new site and launching the Constitution Annotated and associated app.

THOMAS is centuries old, at least as measured in terms of Internet time. Launched in January of 1995, Thomas.gov was one of the first 23,000 websites to go online. When it went live the Internet had a worldwide user base of less than 40 million people, the majority of whom surfed the young World Wide Web using Mosaic and Netscape, checked their email on Eudora and dialed in on America Online. Watch the video below to get a sense of what life was like online nearly two decades ago.

Today, Thomas.gov receives, on average, 10 million visits every year, although I suspect many of those visits come from wonky repeat customers in or around the District of Columbia. I have no servers logs to prove that one way or another, but THOMAS has long been alternately beloved of or bemoaned by Congressional staffers and correspondents, all of whom have had to rely upon its increasingly creaky infrastructure for nearly two decades as the national repository of legislation and reports. So, too, have millions of Americans around the rest of the country who want to read proposed bills.

While incremental improvements to search and sharing in recent years have improved the site, for a decade people interested in tracking Congress have increasingly turned to sites like Govtrack or the New York Times for data created by scraping THOMAS. What does that mean, in practice? While Congress.gov will be official source of information, until its operators move to act as a platform for legislative data instead of a portal for legislative information. Open government advocates have been calling for the release of bulk legislative data for many years, culminating in frustration this September when a Library of Congress cost estimate acknowledged that Congress.gov “was not designed specifically to facilitate the extraction of the data as XML documents for bulk download.”

Putting the issue of bulk data aside, the new Congress.gov is an immense improvement on THOMAS in every way, as I reported last year:

Tapping into a growing trend in government new media, the new Congress.gov features responsive design, adapting to desktop, tablet or smartphone screens. It’s also search-centric, with Boolean search and, in an acknowledgement that most of its visitors show up looking for information, puts a search field front and center in the interface. The site includes member profiles for U.S. Senators and Representatives, with associated legislative work. In a nod to a mainstay of social media and media websites, the new Congress.gov also has a “most viewed bills” list that lets visitors see at a glance what laws or proposals are gathering interest online.

Since September 2012 digital staff at the Law Library of Congress have been busy since the Congress.gov launched in beta, adding new features and context at a steady pace, including adding the Congressional Record, committee reports, standing committee pages, and the ability to “Search within results.”

On November 19th, when THOMAS is retired, the social media outposts of the site will also transition. @THOMASDotGov will transition its more than 15,500 followers to a new identity.

In a press release, the Library of Congress indicated that the old site will remain accessible from the Congress.gov homepage through late 2014. After that, historians may have to hope that the National Archives adopts whatever code or data retains historical interest into its servers, lest it moulder and succumb to bitrot — unfortunately, the configuration of the robots.txt file for Thomas.gov appears to have prevented the Internet Archive from preserving its iterations over the years.

If you’re interested in learning how to use the new Congress.gov, you can register at beta.congress.gov/help for training sessions scheduled for November 14, January 16, March 11 and March 16.

When digital government supports open government

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photo (17)

As I looked back at the annual Open Government Partnership Summit in London, I was struck by how much technology continues to dominate discussion, particularly when many of the issues that confront people and governments around the world are political or systemic, and thus resistant to simply “fixes.”

Given that so many of the new country commitments for the partnership either involve improving the use of technology or are enabled by technology, it’s tempting to frame the release of government data and other digital efforts as efforts that will primarily serve elites, not the poor, and to warn of the encroachment of commercial interests in that delivery.

The years ahead will be messy, full of anger, violence, ignorance and the worst of human nature, expressed in political conflicts and entrenched institutions and industries fighting against a rising tide of populism and industrial disruption fueled by an explosion of connection technologies.

Near the end of 2013, the majority of humanity is living through the consequences of wars, natural disasters, disease, food shortages or inequality in access to resources. On many days, access to healthy food, electricity and clean water are critical needs. Access to information, however, has rapidly become critical in this new millennium.

That such information will be delivered through the Internet and mobile devices is clearly one of the megatrends of this decade. Similarly, access to one another through those same devices, mediated by social media and video, is shifting how we all can understand, document and experience the world.

While 56% of American adults now own a smartphone, the rest of the world hasn’t hasn’t caught up yet. That’s changing quickly, however, as the cost of mobile hardware continues to drop. There have now been over 1 billion Android activations worldwide. As cheaper smartphones and tablets become available, and more wireless Internet access rolls out through ISPs, mesh networks and perhaps even Google blimps, the pressure to provide digital services will only increase.

Why all the hullabaloo? Isn’t this just “e-government redux,” with phones? It would also be a gross mistake to view digital government as simply rebranding or scaling the existing approaches to buying, building and maintaining government IT.

Unfortunately, the bad news here is that government technology around the world is dominated by regulations, tangled hiring practices and procurement policies that get in the way of building important software, along with politics and poor management. The good news is that the example of the United Kingdom’s new Government Digital Services team shows a potential way forward for building a digital core for 21st century government online.

Adopting a digital government strategy is not the same as moving to a system of government more open and accountable to the people, as a comparison of the democratic accountability in countries as diverse as Singapore, Denmark, Iran and Brazil demonstrate.

Given that technology can and will underpin many efforts to reduce corruption, improve accountability and empower citizen activism and public engagement, dismissing the importance of public-private partnerships or digital government initiatives as inherently “ephemeral” would be a mistake in this young century.

As the DATA Act goes up for markup in Senate, will its Recovery.gov model survive?

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rotunda-dome-capital (1)

There will be a markup for the DATA Act (S.994) in U.S. Senate today. The bill, which passed the House, would standardize federal spending and publish it in a similar way as the Recovery Act, which proved to be a successful test case for open data. A proposed amendment to the DATA Act, however, is facing opposition from the same good government groups that supported its passage in the House of Representatives.

Update: The DATA Act passed markup with the amendment.

The amendment, which removes the “accountability platform” from the legislation, faced criticism from the author of the original bill, Hudson Hollister. Hollister emailed the following comment to Federal News Radio:

“Without the accountability platform, there will be no mechanism for inspectors general to use the newly-standardized federal spending data, combined with public and private data sources, to suss out waste and fraud. If the final version of the bill fails to expand the Recovery Operations Center to cover all federal spending, taxpayers’ interests will be hurt in two ways. First, waste and fraud that could have been illuminated and eliminated will go undetected. Second — and perhaps more important — without any internal government effort to use the newly-standardized spending data for any purpose, there will be no internal pressure to improve the quality of data published on USASpending.gov. We recognize that the accountability platform was removed in order to reduce the bill’s Congressional Budget Office score. We hope that an offset large enough to restore those provisions can be included in the bill at a later stage.”

A coalition of good government groups are calling for the the DATA Act to be passed as introduced, not “as amended,” submitting a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to that effect. (Below.)

DATA Act – Letter of Support to Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee – 11-05-2013

Prospects for the DATA Act’s passage in the Senate do appear improved over last year, where it foundered in committee, but the form it will emerge from today’s markup in is unclear.

Hollister is warning that the removal of the requirement for a data analytics platform from the bill, modeled on Recovery.gov, would be a mistake and lead to same kinds of data quality issues that exist at the SEC.

Citing a study from Columbia Business School which evaluates the state and future of interactive data at the SEC, Hollister says the platform is a key tool for government inspectors general to examine spending data, which then creates an internal incentive to correct errors. Given the reality that “armchair auditors” have yet to emerge in the United Kingdom to look at similar data, improving the capacity of the IGs to find fraud, waste and abuse is critical.

In advocating for retention of the platform (the “accountability hub”), Hollister suggested that its estimated $20 million dollar cost will be more than balanced by the amount of fraud detected.

“Open data is no good unless it’s accurate,” writes Hollister. “The SEC’s experience shows that the only way to generate internal pressure for accurate spending data will be if the federal government is actively using that data.”

Congressional bills could cripple FOIA requests for feedlot data from the EPA

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UPDATE: The final version of the Farm Bill that passed both houses of Congress did not contain this amendment.

On the one hand, the White House is committing (again) to modernizing the administration of the Freedom of Information Act  and touting a new effort to open up agricultural data:

On the other, there are now multiple efforts to bar access to agricultural information sprouting on Capitol Hill. Open government advocates successfully stalled an amendment on farm bill secrecy this spring. The amendment is back, in multiple places.

The Farm Bill poses a great threat to the public’s right to know about agricultural and livestock operations.

farm-bill-foia-575

OpentheGovernment.org is warning that multiple bills could limit the EPA from releasing data relevant to the public interest:

The Senators who proposed the Farm Bill amendment, Senators Grassley and Donnelly, recently introduced an identical bill, and similar language appears in the House-passed version of the Farm Bill (Sec. 450) and the House Appropriations Committee’s version of the 2014 Interior spending bill (Sec. 11325). The sponsors say the language is intended to address the EPA’s release of information related to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to environmental groups earlier this year. After hearing concerns about the amount of private information included in the release, EPA requested the groups return the original information (which the groups did) and committed to redacting all private information from similar releases in the future.

The language some Members of Congress are trying to make a part of the law goes well beyond the stated objectives. Rather than appropriately protecting private information, the language cuts off all public access to any information the EPA has collected on any owner, operator, or employee of a livestock operation (the language in the House-passed farm bill is even broader — barring the release of information on agricultural operations as well as livestock operations). In other words, the language would not just prevent the EPA from releasing private information about a local farmer with a few pigs or heads of cattle, it would broadly shield the information of corporate operations. The language also ignores the possible public interest in release of the information. If passed, the language would completely cut off access to information that is especially critical for people who live near or share waterways with CAFOs.

To be clear, these are not minor exceptions.

The authors of the Senate bill are “trying to create a huge hole in the FOIA by blocking the EPA from releasing any information it has collected on any owner, operator, or employee of a livestock operation,” writes Scott A. Hodes at the FOIA Blog.

“The language in the House-passed farm bill is even broader, barring the release of information on agricultural operations as well as livestock operations. …There may be a valid reason to not release information about small family farms, but the language in some of these proposals go way past that point and would create a huge Exemption 3 statute that blocks information that the public deserves to be known from being released via the FOIA.

According to OpenSecrets.org, the campaign committees and leadership PACs of the sponsors of the bill, Senator Charles Grassley and Senator Joe Donnelly, have received $458,750 and $104, 891 from agribusiness, respectively.

To date, S.1343 hasn’t garnered much attention in the press or online at POPVOX and OpenCongress. That’s unfortunate. While the repeated release of personally identifiable information in FOIA documents by the Environmental Protection Agency clearly merits Congressional attention and oversight, these amendments are a gross overreaction to the disclosures and stand to damage the public interest.

Given the importance of public access to information about agriculture, particularly the large feedlots that provide the majority of the beef Americans consume and attendant food safety issues, limiting broad disclosure from the EPA would be a huge step backwards for open government in the United States.

Update: More than 40 organizations have joined OpenTheGovernment.org to urge Congress not to include language that cuts off public access to this information, sending a letter (embedded below) to the committee.

As the letter points out, people who live near agricultural and livestock operations – particularly people who live near concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – need access to information about these operations in order to ensure their health and safety. The law already requires federal agencies, when responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information about these operations, to protect personal privacy, including email addresses, phone numbers, and other similar information of non-government individuals. Indeed, after determining that it improperly released personal information related to CAFOs earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked requesters who had received the information to return it to the agency. The requesters complied.

Beyond being unnecessary to protect personal privacy, language included in the House-passed version of the Farm Bill is exceedingly broad and vague. Because it does not define the terms “owners” or “operators,” it would extend FOIA’s personal privacy protections to corporate farms. In FEC vs. ATT, the Supreme Court found that Congress never intended to extend the FOIA’s personal privacy protections to corporations, and Congress must not do so now.

[Image Credit: POGO]