Monthly Archives: February 2015

Mexico’s commitment to open government questioned by civil society

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CommitmenttoAction

The ability of the government of Mexico to lead the Open Government Partnership is now being questioned by multiple parties, leading to one of the most serious challenges for the international multilateral initiative since its historic launch in 2011. In January, civil society organizations demanded that the scope of the Open Government Partnership be expanded in Mexico. This week, a series of statements further heightened the tension.

On February 17th, the civil society organizations that participate in the Open Government Partnership in Mexico issued a serious warning regarding possible regressions on access to information:

In the upcoming days, the Mexican Senate is scheduled to vote for a General Transparency Law initiative that has been co-constructed in an unprecedented act of open parliament, where the voice of Civil Society was actively heard and incorporated.

However, this best practice of co-creation is being hindered by petition of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government; the modifications it proposes, above all, are contrary to the recent Constitutional Reform.

There are three main concerns with these modifications to the initiative. First and foremost, they will produce a great regression in what Mexico has gained regarding transparency and access to information; gains that the Civil Society and relevant stakeholders have pro-actively defended for the past twelve years.

Second, they blatantly weaken the Federal Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection (IFAI) by constraining its independence and authority.

Third, there are a series of small adjustments that limit the right of access to information and transparency, the obligations towards transparency and accountability of public servants, and broaden the number of criteria to withdraw information from the public and the number of years it must remain undisclosed.

Should this initiative pass with these modifications, the most likely scenario will be one where public servants will be able to act with no accountability, and with an extraordinary ease to wash their hands of any omission on their part.

On February 19th, Ana Cristina Rueles made an even stronger statement in an editorial at FreedomInfo.org, writing that “The government’s rhetoric is all about transparency and co-creation but in their offices they are pushing us backward, to opacity and zero accountability.” She also warned of the risks of regression on open government:

If these changes are approved they can lead us where we were on 2006 — before the recognition of the RTI principles in the Constitution and the Supreme Court criteria we have gained throughout these years — neutralizing the effects of the last Constitutional reform.

Therefore, I wonder how Mexico can still be the leader of the OGP if there is no willingness from the President’s Office to make a change and effectively guarantee RTI to all their citizens. I know OGP is not only about transparency and access to information and that it is supposed to solve particular problems. But no Action Plan can be completed with this limited legal framework. Mexican civil society organizations have sent a letter to the OGP protesting the government’s proposed changes (CSO letter in English and Spanish.)

The transparency and openness the government preaches is clearly just a display. In the past year, Mexico was involved in serious corruption issues related to the white house of the President’s wife and security issues for the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa. The President responded by saying that transparency and openness would outline government actions from there on. However, there is plenty of difference between this momentum and the position of his legal advisor and his party who fight for regression.

These weeks are crucial for the General Law final approval. Senators are still negotiating changes and suppose to bring a final draft before the end of the month but timing is still unclear.

On February 21, the civil society co-chairs of the Open Government Partnership issued a statement responding to the serious concerns that have been raised.

Suneeta Kaimal and Alejandro González Arreola praised the recent record of the Mexican government on transparency, listing various advances since 2002, ending with the advancement of the reform law that has led to this moment.

“One of the most compelling features of these constitutional reforms is that they embraced an unprecedented process of open parliament,” they wrote. “Congress and civil society collaborated closely and the IFAI Commissioners were appointed in an open and public process. This same spirit of co-creation guided the elaboration of the General Transparency Law that regulates the application of the constitutional reform. The robust bill that was presented in December 2014 represented broad consensus among all key stakeholders.”

Kaimal and Arrelo ended the statement, however, by acknowledging the “expressions of deep concern” from Mexican civil society and the commissioners (PDF) of the Federal Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (IFAI), an independent constitutional body in Mexico.

“As Civil Society Co-chairs of the Open Government Partnership, we share these concerns. We encourage the Mexican Government and Congress to seize this opportunity to re-confirm their proven record and commitment towards transparency, access to information and co-creation processes with civil society, as appropriate to their leadership of the OGP.”

What happens next is up to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. While he and his administration has wholeheartedly embraced the aspects of government that relate to digital government, open data and innovation, now they must demonstrate the commitment to social justice, press freedom and constitutional reform that the moment demands in order to retain credibility as the leader of this international initiative.

The words that President Peña delivered at the United Nations must now be matched by action.

In the wake of scandal, the State of Oregon seeks to restore trust through publishing public records

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or-state-sealIn a fascinating turn of events, rainy Oregon is embracing sunlight online after a scandal that led to the resignation of its governor. After governor Kate Brown was sworn in as the 38th governor of the state of Oregon, replacing fellow Democrat John Kitzhaber, her administration chose to try to restore public trust by not only posting public records requests online but including the authors, status and a downloadable link to the records themselves, once fulfilled. The records only go back to January 15th, 2015, with a note that requests made prior to that date are “still being processed.”

The City of Oakland’s public records system, built by Code for America, does the same thing but this appears to set a new bar for state government that’s unmatched in the United States of America. As has been reported elsewhere, exemptions to Oregon’s public records laws mean that this website will be no panacea, but it looks like progress from 3000 miles away in snowy Cambridge.

As Kirk Johnson reported for the New York Times, Brown’s record includes open government work while she was a state legislator, where, as Senate Majority Leader, she worked to reform Oregon’s ethics law and helped to enact legislation that created an online campaign finance database.

“…throughout my 24 years in public service, I have also sought to promote transparency and trust in government, working to build confidence that our public dollars are spent wisely,” she said, in her inaugural speech.

Later in her remarks, Governor Brown said that “we must seize this moment to work across party lines to restore the public’s trust. That means passing meaningful legislation that strengthens the capacity and independence of the Government Ethics Commission. We also must strengthen laws to ensure timely release of public documents.”

On that count, it’s notable that two of the records requests that have been posted for download involve Cynthia Hayes, the fiancee of former Governor Kitzhaber who was at the center of the scandals that led to his resignation. One comes from Margaret Olney, who is quite likely the same Margaret Olney who served in Oregon’s Department of Justice. The other requester was Alejandra Lazo, who co-authored a Wall Street Journal article on former Governor Kitzhaber’s resignation. In an interesting sidenote, the records for both responses were uploaded to Dropbox.

If you know of another state that meet or exceeds this standard for digital transparency, or have experience or feedback regarding the quality or importance of the public records posted by Oregon, please let us know in a comment.

Emily Shaw, the national policy manager at the Sunlight Foundation, said on Twitter that she has not seen any other state’s public records system exceed this standard of transparency.

As Healthcare.gov again faces glitches, HealthSherpa.com continues to sign people up

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As an open enrollment deadline draws near, HealthCare.gov​ is once again having issues, according to a USA Today report.

HealthSherpa___Fast__Easy_Obamacare_Enrollment

The folks at Healthsherpa.com, however, tell me that it’s working fine. Last year, Ning Liang, one of the founders of the site, wrote me last year to tell me about updates to the site. Ling said that they can now enroll people in ACA marketplace plans, including subsidies.

According to Liang, as of June 2014 they were “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.”

To date, they’ve helped more than 110,000 people sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

What a missed opportunity to have created a thriving ecosystem of other Web-based entities that are alternatives to the default government website.

FCC Commissioners take agency to task for opacity around rulemaking

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Today, Federal Communications Commission​ Commissioner Ajit Pai​ released a statement & fact sheet on the non-public FCC’s proposal for Open Internet Rules, which would be applied to regulating broadband Internet service providers. He tweeted out a picture of himself holding the document (above) several days ago. In his statement today, Pai said that the American people are being misled about what’s in the rules and broke out an outline of the 300-page document. Reporting and analysis of Pai’s objections to the proposal may be found at the New York Times and National Journal. Subsequent to Pai’s statement and press conference, FCC Special Counsel for External Affairs Gigi Sohn tweeted out a series of rebuttals, including a clarification regarding the size of the document.

Here, I’ll focus on something else: the commissioner took FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler​ to task for not releasing them ahead of the scheduled vote on February 26th, in DC, although Pai did note that doing so would be “unprecedented.” In fact, FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly tweeted much the same thing, stating that “all FCC meeting items should be made public when circulated to Commissioners. ”

O’Rielly published a blog post on advanced posting of Commission items back in January, following a previous post in August 2014.

In August, I wrote a blog post urging the Commission to post on its website the actual text of the items to be considered at our Open Meetings at the same time they are provided to Commissioners. I made the suggestion because the inability of the public to obtain a complete picture of what is in a pending notice of proposed rulemaking or order routinely leads to confusion over what exactly is at stake. Making matters worse, Commissioners are not allowed to reveal the substantive details to outside parties. We can’t even correct inaccurate impressions that stakeholders may have received, and we are barred from discussing what changes we are seeking. This barrier to a fulsome exchange can be extremely frustrating for all involved. Despite positive feedback from people at the FCC, outside parties, Members of Congress, [1] and the general public, four months later, we have yet to post a single meeting item in advance. Moreover, the lack of full disclosure and transparency has continued to be a problem as some parties have not been fully briefed on recent items, such as the recently adopted 911 Reliability NPRM, while others are not briefed at all. The reason that nothing has happened, I am told, is that there are two basic concerns with the proposal: 1) that it could be harder to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA); and 2) that it could be more difficult to withhold documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I do not find either argument persuasive or insurmountable

Wheeler took a question on this issue in a press conference last month: “The precedent here, through Democratic chairmen and Republican chairmen, has always been that just like, you know, in the court system, and elsewhere that when you’re handling cases like this, you have an internal discussion and then you release what the result of that vote is. And you don’t change that decades of precedent overnight without following the procedures to review questions like that.”

Asked for comment, FCC press secretary Kim Hart Jonson​ said that “Chairman Wheeler circulated his proposal to his fellow Commissioners three weeks before the planned vote in accordance with long-standing FCC process. We are confident the other Commissioners will give the proposal an exhaustive review. The Chairman looks forward to receiving their input and releasing it to the public after the February 26 vote.”

What this boils down to is that publishing proposed rules before a vote is technically legal but has never been done before. As Pai himself noted, “FCC rules prohibit disclosure of nonpublic information except as authorized by the Chairman.” Then-FCC chairman Julius Genachowski didn’t pull the full version of the 2010 Open Internet rules up until right before Christmas, well after the vote. The standard FCC procedure for rulemaking is to circulate the draft rules at least 3 weeks prior to a vote, incorporate edits received from FCC commissioners, then finalize everything. In practice, however, some commissioners have complained that edits may be made right up until a vote. Once rules have been voted upon, they’re published in the federal register.

As long-time readers know, I was critical of that decision at the time, and remain so. To reiterate what I said them, Genachowski made a commitment to a more open, transparent and data-driven F.C.C. under President Obama’s Open Government Directive. In many respects, in its first year of open government, the agency made commendable progress, with strides towards taking public comment through e-rulemaking at OpenInternet.gov, Broadband.gov and Reboot.FCC.gov. The sites were deployed by an able new media team that has used online communications in unprecedented ways. The chairman and his managing director, Steven Van Roeckel, both deserved credit for their plans to reboot FCC.gov as a platform for government including the use of APIs and open source technologies like Drupal.

When it comes to the question of whether the public could see the proposed Open Internet rules before the commissioners vote upon it, the agency fell short of its transparency pledge. I have not found a legal precedent that explicitly gives the agency authority to keep the text of a proposed rule secret until it is voted upon by the Commission. While it is true that the FCC does not appear to be under no legal obligation to do so, given that the members of the commission presumably had to negotiate on the details of the final rules for vote, the decision not to share a version publicly may have made such discussion more flexible.

The choice not to post the proposed rules online before the most reced vote is an example of the same level of government transparency in the creation of important regulation as before, not more. It’s possible that the legal context for how the FCC operates might change in the future, if a bill by Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) were to be passed. Per his office, the FCC Reform Act would:

“provide more opportunities for the public to see pending FCC action by publishing the exact rule or amendment to a rule for at least 21 days and by allowing any Commissioner to ask for a vote on any order issued by a bureau. *Enhance consistency and transparency in the Commission’s operations by requiring the FCC to establish procedures for handling extensive new data submitted towards the end of a comment period, adequate review and deliberation regarding pending orders, providing the status of open rulemaking proceedings, minimum public review periods for statistical reports and ex parte communications. *Empower the Commission to operate more efficiently through reform of the “sunshine” rules, allowing a bipartisan majority of Commissioners to meet for collaborative discussions subject to transparency safeguards.

A provision that the FCC must “identify a market failure, consumer harm, or regulatory barrier to investment before adopting economically significant rules,” however, may well mean that Democrats in the Senate won’t support its advance. As always with these net neutrality stories, to be continued.

UPDATE: Commissioner Pai tweeted another picture of a revised plan February 21, including his intention to vote against it and again noting that the public cannot see it before the vote. In the tweet, he says the plan is now 317 pages, which means it has been trimmed by 15 pages.

White House names VMWare CIO Tony Scott new United States Chief Information Officer

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tony-scottPer Federal News Radio, the White House will name Tony Scott to be the next chief information officer (CIO) of the United States of America. Scott, currently the CIO of VMware, is a veteran of the enterprise information technology industry with over thirty years of experience. Prior to joining VMWare, he was the CIO of Microsoft, the CIO of the Walt Disney Company and the chief technology officer at General Motors.

Scott takes over from Lisa Schlosser, the interim US CIO, who stepped in when former US CIO Steven VanRoekel stepped down last year. In a post on the White House blog and CIO.gov, Shaun Donovan, the Director at the White House Office of Management and Budget, and Beth Cobert, the Deputy Director for Management at the White House Office of Management and Budget, officially confirmed the choice:

The President’s announcement today of Tony Scott as the next United States Chief Information Officer is an important opportunity for our Nation. With the radical evolution of information technology (IT), the Federal Government has unprecedented opportunity to enhance how we deliver services to the American people and spark greater innovation in the digital age. Over the past six years, this Administration has embarked on a comprehensive approach to fundamentally improve the way Government delivers results and technology services to the public. From adopting game-changing technologies such as cloud solutions, optimizing IT investments to save taxpayers nearly $3 billion, standing up the United States Digital Service to transform government’s ability to deliver critical services like healthcare and veterans benefits, to opening government assets to foster economic growth. This tremendous progress is a result of a President who recognizes the opportunity to harness advances in technology to make government work better for the American people. That is why we are pleased the President announced Tony Scott as the next U.S. CIO and Administrator of OMB’s Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology. Under Tony’s leadership, we will continue to build on the remarkable work done by the Nation’s first CIOs Vivek Kundra and Steve VanRoekel in changing the way the Federal government manages IT. Tony will bring will over 35 years of global leadership and management experience to build upon our progress and drive continued success. Tony is the right person to drive the Administration’s Smarter IT Delivery Agenda and the core objectives across the Federal IT portfolio – (1) driving value in Federal IT investments, (2) delivering world-class digital services, and (3) protecting Federal IT assets and information.

The White House Open Government Initiative Twitter account celebrated the news, tweeting: “Excited for new US CIO Tony Scott to join us in continuing to advance digital service delivery and openness efforts!”

“In selecting Tony Scott, the White House has decided that a Washington outsider is the best choice to lead this demanding job,” said Michael Krigsman, analyst and founder of CXO-Talk, in an email. Krigsman had previously said that the next US CIO needed to be a DC insider to succeed.

“With CIO roles at Microsoft and VMware under his belt, Scott certainly understands the nuances of managing tech inside a large organization. Despite this experience, Scott faces the difficult challenge of starting work during the last two years of this presidency. The political learning curve cannot be overstated. As a result, Scott will face a difficult battle to accomplish anything substantive in the next two years. I hope Scott will reach out quickly to innovative CIOs in government, such as David Bray at the FCC and Sonny Hashmi at the GSA, to establish strong partnerships. In addition, let’s see Scott get on Twitter to engage directly with his constituency. The White House has made a considered effort to engage Silicon Valley. Now it’s time to see how those Silicon Valley choices can manage within the huge federal bureaucracy.”
As I told Krigsman when he asked last year, every US CIO faces difficult problems:
The U.S. has been unable or unwilling to reorganize and fundamentally reform how the federal government supports its missions using technology, including its relationship to incumbent vendors who fall short of efficient delivery using cutting-edge tech. The 113th Congress has had opportunities to craft legislative vehicles to improve procurement and the power of agency CIOs but has yet to pass FITARA or RFP-IT. In addition, too many projects still look like traditional enterprise software rather than consumer-facing tools, so we have a long way to go to achieve the objectives of the digital playbook VanRoekel introduced.
There are great projects, public servants and pockets of innovation through the federal government, but culture, hiring, procurement, and human resources remain serious barriers that continue to result in IT failures. The next U.S. CIO must be a leader in all respects, leading by example, inspiring, and having political skill. It’s a difficult job and one for which it is hard to attract world-class talent. We need a fundamental shift in the system rather than significant tweaks, in areas such as open source and using the new Digital Service as a tool to drive change. The CIO must have experience managing multi-billion dollar budgets and be willing to pull the plug on wasteful or mismanaged projects that serve the needs of three years ago, not the future.

Scott’s experience working in some of the world’s largest enterprises should stand him – and the nation he would serve – in good stead as he moves into the White Office of Management Budget to oversee some $80 billion dollars in annual federal IT spending. He’ll inherit many headaches from the previous US CIOs, including legacy IT systems that enormous and obscure federal agencies have built over the decades. Scott’s recent experience with virtualization and cloud computing at VMWare, however, bodes well for federal workers who have been transitioning to cloud computing and mobile environments at unprecedented speed and scale over the past decade. ”

We’re entering a new era of business, where models that once seemed solid and permanent are becoming more liquid,” Scott said, in a VMWare corporate interview on information technology in 2015 last month. “You need to be liquid to be disruptive in this day and age. That means agile and flexible. Able to spin up new services in weeks not months or years. Poised to leverage mobile-cloud architecture to create new business models, revenue streams and means to create stronger connections with customers and partners.”

Scott is well-experienced, respected and connected across multiple industries that make up the core of the modern American economy, from entertainment to software to advanced manufacturing, all of which will serve the Obama administration well as it navigates a complex environment for both policy and deployment over the next two years. Along with the challenges of his predecessors, Scott will also inherit powerful new tools and an organizational capability that Vivek Kundra, the first US CIO, & VanRoekel did not have: the United States Digital Service, which has now grown to dozens of staff and plans to hire up to two hundred more.

In answer to questions, VanRoekel tweeted that the “huge opportunity is incredible [with OMB’s] #EGOV & @USDS teams – they are best in GOV & proudest part of my legacy.” Scott will have the “wind [at his] back with @USDS @18F, a government “good at cyber,” with federal workers expecting more #innovation. The new US CIO will also have a Playbook, TechFAR, open data, and, in VanRoekel’s view, a working cloud.

He said that the challenges Scott will face include “legacy systems & thinking, balancing reactive (cyber) with proactive (innovation),” and a federal bureaucratic that “still favors … contracts, systems, vendors. Need is to #failfast versus #failbig – open & modular replaces monolithic on all fronts”

Update: On Friday afternoon, Scott published a blog post entitled “From Transforming the Enterprise to Serving the Nation” at VMWare.com. Here’s an excerpt that outlines his vision for the role:

In recent weeks, I have been working part-time on a Federal Task Force to shape government policy around the role of technology in economic growth and driving the creation of jobs, as well as expanding opportunities for veterans and women. My new role will allow me to focus full-time on improving IT for our citizens.

In his recent State of the Union message, President Obama emphasized the importance of technology as a means of accelerating economic growth, innovation and increased job opportunities. He also articulated the need to take action in specific areas such as cybersecurity, net neutrality, e-health, and expanding both the access and speed of the Internet. I will contribute in these areas and will bring what I have learned in my career to this role.”

Update:

This post has been repeatedly updated with additional quotes, links and commentary.

Image Credit: VMWare