Defining Gov 2.0 and Open Government

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Fireworks begin as the Killers perform on the South Lawn of the White House, July 4, 2010, during the Fourth of July celebration. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Fireworks begin as the Killers perform on the South Lawn of the White House, July 4, 2010, during the Fourth of July celebration. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Exploring what this year will hold for the intersection of government, technology, citizens and business is a fascinating – and immense – challenge.

That is, however, precisely what I plan on doing,  here, at the Gov 2.0 section of O’Reilly Radar, The Huffington Post, ReadWriteWeb, National Journal, Mashable, Forbes and other outlets.

Yesterday, I participated in a discussion on Twitter that touched upon “Gov 2.0,” open government and social media. I include explanations for those terms below. Dozens of people participatedusing the #SMfastfwd hashtag on Twitter or at the #SMFastFWD room at TweetChat.com.

Be forewarned: there’s some jargon below, but then the organizer of the chat specifically asked for explanations. My answers and key considerations raised by several participants for the year ahead follow.

How do you define Gov 2.0? What about open government? What’s the difference? How do these relate to transparency?

What is government 2.0? Government social software expert Maxine Teller described the concept succinctly: Gov 2.0 equals “leveraging emerging tools, techs & collaboration PRINCIPLES to improve efficiency & effectiveness,” she tweeted. “Today’s tools & tech enable us to return to founding principles: government for, by & of the people.”

That’s useful, since many days it can seem like there are as many definitions for Gov 2.0 as there are people. That’s what happens when a term edges towards becoming a buzzword, particularly anything with a “2.0” added on.

Tim O’Reilly, my publisher, has explained how Gov 2.0 is all about the platform. In many ways, Gov 2.0 could be simply described as putting government in your hands.

As I’ve previously observed in writing about language, government 2.0, jargon and technology, I believe the term should be defined primarily by its utility to helping citizens or agencies solve problems, either for individuals or the commons. Defining it in gauzy paeans evangelizing world-shaking paradigm shifts from the embrace of social media by politicians isn’t helpful on that level.

That’s particularly true when politicians are using platforms to broadcast, in the model of 20th Century, not having iterative conversations that result in more agile government or participatory democracy.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark put it another way yesterday: “Open government includes much greater gov’t transparency, that is, tell citizens what’s going on,” he tweeted. “Gov 2.0 includes gov’t and citizens working together for better customer service, more accountability.”

That melds well with O’Reilly’s perspective, where government 2.0 is the “idea of the government as platform: how can government design programs to be generative, […] building frameworks that enable people to build new services of their own.”

In a Forbes column in 2009, he’d framed this as “the opportunities inherent in harnessing a highly motivated and diverse population not just to help [politicians] get elected, but to help them do a better job.”

“Citizens are connected like never before and have the skill sets and passion to solve problems affecting them locally as well as nationally. Government information and services can be provided to citizens where and when they need it. Citizens are empowered to spark the innovation that will result in an improved approach to governance.

In this model, government is a convener and an enabler–ultimately, it is a vehicle for coordinating the collective action of citizens.

This is the right way to frame the question of “Government 2.0.” How does government itself become an open platform that allows people inside and outside government to innovate? How do you design a system in which all of the outcomes aren’t specified beforehand, but instead evolve through interactions between the technology provider and its user community?

Open government relates to that but isn’t necessarily grounded in technology, although certain aspects of it under the Obama administration absolutely have been.

As Chris Kemp, NASA’s chief technology officer for IT, put it last year, “The future of open government is allowing seamless conversations to occur between thousands of employees and people … You can’t divorce open government from technology. Technology enables the conversation and supports the conversation. We’re finding that if we don’t stand in the way of that conversation, incredible things can happen.”

If you’ve been tracking the progress of the Open Government Directive since 2009, you know that it required federal agencies to take steps to achieve key milestones in transparency, participation, and collaboration. As 2011 begins, more of those plans are still, for the most part, evolving towards implementation.

The progress of open government in the United States has beeen slowed by bureaucracy, culture, and the context of a White House balancing wars abroad and immense macroeconomic pressures, a populace deeply distrustful of many institutions,  and, at the end of 2010, the emergence and disruption presented by the more “radical openness” of Wikileaks.

It was clear back in September that in the United States, open government is still very much in its beta period. It was in that context, that, in December, the White House made a new, ambitious request of the American people: help them to design digital democracy by creating a platform for expert consultation on policy.

In doing so, the architects of initiative embraced the notion government acting as a convener or collaborator, trying to co-create better policy or outcomes. By its nature, such open government platforms are expressed as top down, where officials work to create more participatory, collaborative model of governance.

Gov 2.0, by contrast, is more often conceived as expressly technology driven, founded in the platform principles of Web 2.0, and buoyed by the efforts of citizens and civic entrepreneurs to build “do-it-ourselves” government. Both Gov 2.0 and open government can and do increase transparency.

Consider this detail from a webcast, “What is Gov 2.0?,” which combines open government and Gov 2.0 in action:

“The first person who really put Gov 2.0 on my radar was Carl Malamud. Carl is really the father of this movement in so many ways. Back in 1993, that’s pretty darn early in the history of the World Wide Web, he put the SEC online.He got a small planning grant from the  National Science Foundation, which he used to actually license the data, which at that point the SEC was licensing to big companies.

He got some servers from Eric Schmidt, who was the chief technology at Sun. And he basically put all this data he’d gotten from the SEC online, and he operated that for something like two years, and then he donated it to the federal government. Carl’s idea was that it really mattered for the public to have access to SEC data.”

In that moment, citizens in the private sector helped government do something it had trouble accomplishing. That’s still happening today, as evidenced by Malamud’s work on Law.gov and House.Resources.org.

What is the relationship between Gov 2.0, open government, and social media? How do tools go beyond Twitter, Facebook, etc.?

Ben Berkowitz, the founder of SeeClickFix, put it this way yesterday in a tweet: “Don’t just use social web platforms to communicate, restructure government to operate like a social platform.”

To extend that, and reiterate elements of the earlier answer, Gov 2.0 is a frame to rethink how citizens to participate in government using technology. Open government has been around for decades as both a philosophy and a practice.

Awareness of the concept was rebooted under the White House Open Government Initiative and new Gov 2.0 technologies and events, including numerous camps and the O’Reilly conferences in Washington.

Open government also relates to Federal Register 2.0, rules, passage of new legislation, and culture, a key aspect that requires change management that extends far beyond technology:

Social media is a key element of many emerging citizen engagement platforms. These platforms give citizens new voices and provides new channels for government workers and elected officials to to talk with them. Aides for the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner, say that he reads Facebook and constituents, as do many of his colleagues in Congress. While Facebook is an imperfect platform for government engagement, with respect to privacy or identity issues, given the hundreds of millions of users and global reach, elected officials have effectively been forced to at least pay attention to what is being said about them there. Some politicians, like former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, are shaping the national media conversation through Facebook and other media channels.

Social media, however, goes far beyond giving politicians or workers new platforms to broadcast, though that has been the approach for many first use cases. In 2011, for instance, Twitter is now home to emergency social data, including earthquake warning systems, crowdsourced weather alerts and other disaster-related information.

That’s why social media and FEMA now mix, among other reasons. Deciding to use these platforms creates complex decisions around terms of service and commercial speech, however, since civic discourse is being hosted by a third party. Those issues won’t go away in 2011.

Enterprise versions of these tools also provide the means for government to government communications, just as they do in businesses. That includes blogs, wikis, social networks, video or new forms of social media. For instance, ediplomacy at the State Department is doing behind firewall is in many ways at least as interesting as external social media use.

What should the goals of Gov 2.0 and open government be? How are you working toward those ends?

Smarter, leaner, more transparent, accountable, efficient and agile government, with data-driven policy. I’m sharing the stories of innovators.

What changes will 2011 bring in the Gov 2.0 or open government arena?

Open government will move more from theory to practice in 2011.

Certain policies, like net neutrality, will test open government goals in 2011.

In 2011, the growth of edemocracy platforms *abroad* will be fascinating.

The themes that made 2010 a huge year for Gov 2.0 will continue to matter:

Wikileaks will impact open government in the United States in 2011, as t affects “need to know” vs. “need to share.”

There will be both positive and negative outcomes from that emergence.

What are the obstacles and challenges to success with Gov 2.0 and open government?

Gov 2.0 advocate and San Francisco public servant Adriel Hampton identified a key issue here: “Education. Negative perception of gov still huge, citizens unaware of gov 2. efforts, excited when informed,” he tweeted.

Privacy and identity will be a huge issue for Gov 2.0 and open government in 2011. Follow the FTC Do No Track debate for more there.

There will be significant challenges around open government data, given the role controlling costs will play in 2011.

Another point made about accepting failures came from Newmark: “lots of Gov 2.0 open gov challenges, including normal big organizational inertia. Also, failure is stigmatized.” A more agile government would require tolerating mistakes and iterating faster based upon the lessons learned.

Government social media consultant Maxine Teller raised another angle: “Challenge is: what incentive do existing gov leaders have to embrace collaborative principles. Current system=self-perpetuating,” she tweeted. “Too much focus has been on citizen engagement. Need more on enterprise 2.0 — INSIDE government.” That goes back to the work at the State Department referenced earlier.For context on that challenge, read MIT professor Andrew Mcafee‘s piece on Gov 2.0 vs the beast of bureaucracy.

A final consideration is an open question: will open government be able to tap into the “civic surplus” to solve big problems. That’s Clay Shirky‘s “cognitive surplus,” applied to citizens and government. For open government to succeed, conveners need to get citizens to participate.  That won’t be easy, with historic frustration and lack of trust in institutions in many parts of the country.

What seem to be the biggest misperceptions in the public re: Gov 2.0 or open government? What should the public know?

For me, that’s easy: That Gov2.0 equals = social media. Many members of the media, marketers or consultants have further entrenched that perception, which is not true for Web 2.0 either.

There’s also a misperception that Gov 2.0 is all about D.C., or the White House. The state and local stories of Gov 2.0 are absolutely fascinating, as are international stories.

The public should know about Challenge.gov and the potential for everyone to work on huge issues using crowdsourcing and open government.

What takeaways do you have from the 01.05 edition of #SMfastfwd on Gov 2.0, open government and social media?

The conversation pulled in many informed voices but clearly showed the need to extend much further to resonate with the public. We “need to mainstream the discussion by focusing on impact of Gov 2.0 concepts on agency, community missions,” tweeted Teller.

Covering Open Government in 2011

The “sweeping Gov 2.0 concept isn’t newsworthy,” tweeted Teller. We “need to show RESULTS and impact of Gov 2.0 principles on gov MISSIONS.”

It’s substantially hard to argue with that assessment, although some tech news outlets have covered it. That’s why the Veterans Administration’s Blue Button is a genuinely big deal. Newsworthy, real impact.

So here’s my goal for 2011: explain what Gov 2.0 means for citizens, how it’s impacting agencies, communities, relates to mission and outcomes, and do so in outlets that extend awareness beyond Twitter or blogs. The good news is that other outlets are waking up, as legislation and initiatives move through Congress and pilots: the Washington Post covered the COMPETES Act and Challenge.gov recently.

House 2.0: A Congressional transition is livestreamed, tweeted and Facebooked

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From my National Journal article today on the GOP transition in the House:

Today is the first day of the 112th Congress of the United States of America. One way that the incoming Republican majority will embrace innovation and transparency in the legislative process will be increased use of video and new media. As Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote at ReadWriteWeb, commenting on CNN’s report yesterday, Facebook will livestream the opening day of Congress.

In a post on Speaker.gov, the incoming speaker invited people to visit the “Pledge to America” Facebook page to view the transition to a GOP-controlled House and comment on the feed.

Key detail: you don’t have to be on Facebook to watch. You can see it right here. As Nick Schaper, the speaker’s director of new media, explained, the speaker’s staff is using the LiveStream.com plugin, available on Facebook, with the standard House of Representatives floor feed available on Capitol Hill to put the feed online. Notably, that also means that citizens and other interested parties don’t have to join Facebook, log in or “Like” the page to watch the transition. The feed at Livestream.com/SpeakerBoehner is available on the open Web and can be embedded on any blog or article.

Livestream.com and Facebook won’t be the only options used by the new speaker’s office either, according to Schaper. When asked whether the speaker would use Current.tv or UStream or YouTube, Schaper said that “we’ve never limited ourselves or worked exclusively with any technology partners on efforts such as this. We’ve used all of the above and I look forward to finding more new tools that can help our members more efficiently connect with those they represent.”

UPDATE: Notably, the new speaker’s remarks were livetweeted in sync with his speech by the new @SpeakerBoehner account on Twitter. It’s safe to say that, at least at this moment, Boehner was not tweeting himself.

new TWTR.Widget({
version: 2,
type: ‘profile’,
rpp: 5,
interval: 6000,
width: 600,
height: 300,
theme: {
shell: {
background: ‘#1d0087’,
color: ‘#ff0a0a’
},
tweets: {
background: ‘#fcfcff’,
color: ‘#a60c13’,
links: ‘#303df0’
}
},
features: {
scrollbar: false,
loop: false,
live: false,
hashtags: true,
timestamp: true,
avatars: false,
behavior: ‘all’
}
}).render().setUser(‘speakerboehner’).start();

For more on social media, transparency and the 112 Congress, click on over the full article at National Journal.

Kevin Rose interviews @Jack Dorsey on Twitter, @Square and entrepreneurship

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From the show notes:

In this series premiere of Foundation, Kevin Rose interviews Jack Dorsey, the creator, co-founder and chairman of Twitter and the CEO of Square. The conversation talks of entrepreneurship, decision making, trial and error, and the path Jack took that lead to the creation of Twitter and Square.

TechCrunch covered the launch of Foundat.io/n, the Digg founder’s new venture, earlier this week. It’s a private email newsletter with a 20-30 minute interview like the one above. Some of these will be of more interest to the Gov 2.0 community than others but this one is worth watching.

As NYU professor Jay Rosen pointed out this morning on Twitter (how meta), “Jack Dorsey listened to the radio calls from emergency vehicles when he was a kid. The idea for Twitter was born there.” In 2011, Twitter is now a home to emergency social data, including earthquake warning systems, crowdsourced weather alerts and other disaster-related information. That’s why social media and FEMA now mix, among other reasons.

It’s a great first interview from Rose. Enjoy.

Themes to watch in 2011: E-democracy in Brazil

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As Nat Torkington put it this morning at O’Reilly Radar, “people who consider tech trends without considering social trends are betting on the atom bomb without considering the Summer of Love.” Torkington was annotating a link to 2011 predictions and prognostications at venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog which center on the following presentation that Paul Kedrosky sent him from JWT, a marketing agency.

JWT’s thirteenth prediction will be of particular interest to readers of this blog: “Brazil as E-Leader.”

This digitally savvy, economically vibrant country will prove to be an e-leader. Social media is more popular here than in developed markets, and Brazil has the highest Twitter penetration (23 percent, as of October ComScore figures). PC penetration has reached 32 percent, and many Internet cafes further broaden access. Mobile subscriptions have 86% penetration. Already Brazil is ahead in electronic democracy (with innovations like online town halls and crowd-sourced legislative consulting), and its 2010 census was paperless, conducted electronically.

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2f100thingstowatchin2011-101222142649-phpapp02&stripped_title=2f-100-things-to-watch-in-2011-6306251&userName=jwtintelligence

There are many other themes that will matter to the Gov 2.0 world in 2011 in there, including smart infrastructure investment, scanning everything, home energy monitors, and mHealth. Heck, seemingly mobile everything. Of course, as Mike Loukelides pointed out in his own watchlist of 2011 themes to track, “you don’t get any points for predicting ‘Mobile is going to be big in 2011.'” He thinks that Hadoop, real-time data, the rise of the GPU, the return of P2P, social ubiquity and a new definition for privacy will all play important roles in 2011. Good bets.

JWT does get points for this set of trends, however, and that prediction about e-democracy in Brazil strikes me as apt. Last year at the International Open Government Data Conference, I met Cristiano Ferri Faria, project manager in e-democracy and legislative intelligence at the Brazilian House of Representatives. Faria talked about his work on e-Democracia, a major electronic lawmaking program in Brazil since 2008. As the 112th United States House of Representatives goes back to work today, there are definitely a few things its legislators, aides and staffers might learn from far south of the border. You can download his presentation as a PDF from Data.gov or view it below, with an added bonus: reflections on open government data in New Zealand and Australia.

One caution: Faria concluded that “this kind of practice is too complex” and that e-Democracia “needs a long-term approach.”

Looks like they’re still in an e-government in beta down there too.

Iogdc 2010 Day1 Plenary http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

FT: “Open government never meant the real-time disclosure of all state activity”

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The Financial Times opinion page weighed in on the state of open government in the United States and the United Kingdom today. The gist of the comment is that President Obama’s open data agenda has slightly stalled. A key excerpt, below, focused on potential sources of delay.

Barack Obama, the US president, and David Cameron, the UK premier, took power with a more mundane vision of transparency than that of Julian Assange – that governments should keep as many secrets only as truly necessary. Both were excited by the dry business of putting public data online. But they were right to be: signs that Mr Obama, in particular, has seen his efforts stall are a shame.

WikiLeaks releases highly sensitive diplomatic material. But governments collect reams of less delicate data, from exam results and hospital inspections to maps and weather reports. This can often be reused on the web, creating profitable businesses, helpful advice to citizens or tools that hold leaders to account. Not all such data are useful, just as not all scientific discoveries lead to new drugs. And not all should be published, if they break data protection rules. But more should be than at present.

It would be irresponsible to deny a state’s right to protect its interests, and those of its citizens, by keeping some secrets. Open government never meant the real-time disclosure of all state activity. But the reasons for hiding public information too often stem from fear of embarrassment, force of habit or politicians going cold on previous ideals – not the public interest.

Here Mr Obama began strongly, speedily unveiling schemes to unlock new data. Yet his progress has slowed as departments delay and fudge and the White House’s attention is diverted elsewhere. Mr Cameron has done better, in part by being more focused — and thus picking fewer fights with often recalcitrant civil servants.

The full Financial Times op-ed is online here, behind a registration wall: “Open up, before it becomes too late.”

For a look back at the progress of the Open Government Directive in its first year, click over to the Huffington Post.

Christmas Eve Twitter Q&A with @WhiteHouse @PressSec features plenty of holiday cheer

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http://storify.com/digiphile/second-twitter-qa-with-the-white-house-press-secre.js

#1Q grows to many: The @WhiteHouse @PressSec takes questions live on Twitter, makes @AP news

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http://storify.com/digiphile/live-twitter-qa-with-the-us-press-secretary.js

FCC launches open Internet developer challenge for apps for network QoS testing

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While the technology and political establishment is reeling off reactions to the Federal Communication’s net neutrality vote to approve the first federal rules on Internet traffic will mean for net neutrality, one thing at least is clear: the FCC has launched an Open Internet Apps Challenge on Challenge.gov.

The contest is reasonably straightforward, at least as a proposal; challenge developers to create applications that test networks that inform consumers about broadband Internet connections. Specifically:

The Open Internet Challenge is designed to encourage the development of creative, innovative and functional Internet software tools for fixed or mobile broadband that provide users with real-time data about their Internet connection and, when aggregated, can show Internet-wide patterns and trends.

Apps that can detect, aggregate and analyze such information might be of use to both the agency and consumers alike, in terms of making policy or consumption decisions:

The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of creative, innovative and functional applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with open Internet principles. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content.
These applications should also collect anonoymized data that is useful for network research and analysis that enables the discovery of patterns and trends in Internet openness.
One popular platform for Internet software tools is Measurement Lab (M-Lab), which “is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools.” Those interested in running their software tools on the M-Lab platform should contact the M-Lab steering committee, which coordinates research on the M-Lab platform.

The commission is also soliciting research as part of the challenge:

In addition to measurement tools, this challenge also seeks research papers that analyze relevant Internet openness measurement techniques, approaches, and data. The Challenge is designed to encourage and reward the creation of novel, innovative and useful research. The research must be new or recent and directly involve open Internet principles. For example such research may illuminate how widely fixed and mobile networks observe the FCC’s open Internet principles or how advanced network services can be provided in a way that adheres to the spirit of the open Internet. Such research papers need to have been peer-reviewed by a recognized scientific conference or journal and must have been published since January 2007. (Dissertations, white papers and technical reports are not acceptable, but may be referenced for further details within the paper.) Research on Internet openness can improve policy making and advance Internet transparency, which helps to sustain a healthy Internet.

Will it take off? Another challenge, so to speak, might be the incentives. The winners will earn a free (up $500/person in travel expenses) trip to FCC headquarters in Washington, DC, where they’ll go to an FCC Chairman’s reception, present their work to the Commission, receive plaque and “have their apps and research featured on the FCC’s website and social media outlets.”

It’s also not clear how the development community will feel about the FCC after today’s hearing on somewhat controversial net neutrality rules, for which a public document still hasn’t been published online. Geeks and government have converged at the FCC before. If this challenge is going to take off, they’ll need to do a lot of outreach to encourage the development community to participate, which in turn will likely also mean exactly what the new open Internet principles will mean in practice. Stay tuned.

What the new FCC open Internet rules could mean for net neutrality

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The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules for regulating Internet access at a hearing today in Washington. After FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn said yesterday they will not stand in the way of Chairman Julius Genachowski’s modified order, it paved the way for a 3-2 vote to approve new rules of the road for the Internet. The tech policy reporters at Politico made the following assessment of the rules in their excellent Morning Tech newsletter this morning and got it about right.

1) Transparency for both wireline and wireless services, requiring disclosure to consumers, content and device providers,
2) Wireline providers are prohibited from blocking any lawful content, apps, services or devices; wireless providers, from blocking websites and competing telephony services, 3) Wireline providers are prohibited from unreasonably discriminating against any traffic (but no such rule for wireless). Paid prioritization is not explicitly banned, though any such regime would likely raise red flags for the commission under the “no unreasonable discrimination” test. That will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Below are key excerpts from the report and order the FCC voted on yesterday. (The full order still hasn’t been released to the public; more on that later in this post.)

Rule 1: Transparency

A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service shall publicly disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of its broadband Internet access services sufficient for consumers to make informed choices regarding use of such services and for content, application, service, and device providers to develop, market, and maintain Internet offerings.

Rule 2: No Blocking

A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management.

A person engaged in the provision of mobile broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block consumers from accessing lawful websites, subject to reasonable network management; nor shall such person block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services, subject to reasonable network

Rule 3: No Unreasonable Discrimination

A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service.  Reasonable network management shall not constitute unreasonable discrimination.

Wired’s Sam Gustin may have the best one sentence summary of what the FCC compromise will mean:

The three new rules, which will go into effect early next year, force ISPs to be transparent about how they handle network congestion, prohibit them from blocking traffic such as Skype on wired networks, and outlaw “unreasonable” discrimination on those networks, meaning they can’t put a competing online video service in the slow lane to benefit their own video services.

As Politico reported, these are widely regarded as the first enforceable net neutrality rules. The compromise they have produced widespread reaction on both sides of the issue. As Brian Stelter reported for the New York Times, the new FCC net neutrality rules are going down well with anyone interested in the issue.

The debate over the rules, intended to preserve open access to the Internet, seems to have resulted in a classic Washington solution — the kind that pleases no one on either side of the issue. Verizon and other service providers would prefer no government involvement. Public interest advocates think the rules stop far short of ensuring free speech. Some Republicans believe the rules are another instance of government overreach.

Nancy Scola posted a typically thoughtful analysis of what the FCC did to net neutrality today. The whole thing is worth reading but there are two key grafs:

…for sure, some of the provisions in this proposal do seem designed to be responsive to industry worries that don’t seem to have actually been justified in the record. But looking at this whole debate, it starts to look much bigger than Genachowski, and much like we’ve reached the point to where any sort of meaningful incursion onto the corporate right to influence and even dominate the Internet would seem like a downright radical act of political bravery. That’s a reality of the U.S. communications landscape, circa 2010. That we’re debating just how powerful a say telecom company’s should have over how the Internet works is a sign of how the Internet has, as a medium, shifted since its earlier days.

Writing for Wired in 2005, Kevin Kelly recalled how one of the early debates in the Internet’s evolution was whether or not to allow any sort of commerce at all on the activity layer of the Internet. (That is, e-commerce websites and the like.) “It’s hard to believe now,” writes Kelly, “but until 1991, commercial enterprise on the Internet was strictly prohibited.” The idea that the Internet should be so pure probably seems laughable to many of us now. Watching the net neutrality process unfold at the FCC and on Capitol Hill over the last many months has made clear that the reality is that, very quickly, corporate interests have acquired such a level of influence over the evolution of the Internet where the debate can sometimes seem to be far more concerned with their interests than the public interest.

The Center for Democracy & Technology released the following statement in response to the Federal Communications Commission vote to approve a set of “rules of the road” for preserving the open nature of the Internet.

“The Commission took a vital first step today by voting to adopt rules designed to sustain the open nature of the Internet,” said CDT President Leslie Harris. “The Internet is and should remain a place where innovators and upstarts can experiment and thrive, without needing to seek permission or approval from established network operators,” she said. “Today, after a long debate, the FCC affirms that it can and will play a crucial role in protecting that open environment.”

“This is a big day, but the true test of these rules will depend on how they are implemented and interpreted over time,” said CDT Senior Policy Counsel David Sohn. “It appears the rules will leave a number of important open questions, including how the FCC will approach openness for wireless. Ultimately, the kind of Internet users get should not depend on whether they happen to access it via a wireline or wireless connection.”

“To be sure, there is more to be done,” Harris said. “But this is how we make progress on policy, one step at a time, each step building on the one before it. This isn’t the end of the Internet neutrality debate, it’s just the end of the beginning.”

The Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang, who reported live all day on the FCC’s new neutrality rules, went on the PBS News Hour to talk about the new rules tonight:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/js/pap/embed.js?news01s466fq100b

The FCC’s press release follows. Look for the tech journalism community to be teasing more details from this over the coming days, including mentions of Android and how the FCC will handle the app stores

FCC Press Release 12-12-2010 Open Internet http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

The meeting was livestreamed at FCC.gov/live. An archive of the liveblog on this post embedded below; the FCC itself liveblogged the meeting at Blog.OpenInternet.gov.

A note on transparency

Before the hearing, another writer approached me for my thoughts on how transparency played into today’s hearing. Amy Gahran considered why the FCC ‘net neutrality’ rule was still secret at CNN.com today. While she included most of my statement, here’s the full version:

Chairman 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 deserve credit for their plans to reboot FCC.gov as a platform for government including the use of APIs and open source technologies like Drupal.

That said, when it comes to the question of whether the public has a right to see the net neutrality proposal before the commissioners vote upon it, however, the agency has fallen 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 conversely the F.C.C. 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. That said, the choice not to post the proposed rules online before the vote is an example less government transparency in the creation of important regulation, not more.

UPDATE: Ryan Singel obtained and posted the following snippets of what looks like the new open Internet rules, below:
Net Neutrality Order Snippets http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

UPDATE: The New York Times Brian Stelter obtained a copy of FCC Chairman Genachowski’s remarks. They are embedded below. His initial coverage of the FCC net neutrality rules remains some of the best online.
Net neutrality statement by Julius Genachowski, the FCC chair, on Dec. 21, 2010 http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

UPDATE: Here are all five prepared statements from the FCC commissioners, as posted on FCC.gov as PDFs.

Copps Statement

Clyburn Statement

Genachowski Statement

McDowell Statement

Baker Statement

UPDATE: The FCC released the full version of the new open Internet rules online on the Friday before Christmas.

Advice for federal agencies on social media records management [REPORT]

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One of the risks and rewards for the use of Web 2.0 that came up in the July hearing on “government 2.0” technology in the House of Representatives had nothing to do with privacy, secrecy, security or embarrassment. Instead, it was a decidedly more prosaic concern, and one that is no surprise to anyone familiar with governmental institutions: record keeping. And no, this is not another story about how the Library of Congress is archiving the world’s tweets.

IBM’s Business of Government Center has released a new report on social media (PDF) records management, focusing on some best practices for harried federal employees faced with rapidly expanding troves of tweets, Facebook status updates, blog posts or wikis. For those keeping track, 22 of 24 agencies now, at the minimum, have a Facebook presence.

If you’re interested in the evolution of social media in government, a lot of what’s in here won’t be new to you. If not, the report provides a useful framework for why using social media presents headaches for federal records keeping and quite a few best practices and suggestions for mitigating them. As the preamble to the report allows, “this report does not solve the many challenges it identifies. However, it serves as a useful guide for federal managers attempting to use social media to engage citizens while meeting the statutory requirement to preserve historical records for future generations.”

If you’re still wondering what social media is at this point in 2010, Dr. Patricia Franks, the author of the report and a professor at San Jose State University in California, considers exactly that, with judicious references to experts. She offers a number of definitions and then provides her own summary: “‘social media’ encompasses a number of emerging technologies that facilitate interaction between individuals and groups both inside and outside an organization. The best return on an agency’s investment of resources in social media is realized when the goal of the social media initiative is clearly identified and clearly related to the agency’s core mission.”

And that last point is particularly interesting, and frames where much of the federal government stands at the end of 2010 well. The observation was preceded by an apt observation sourced by “insiders”: that the Obama administration’s Open Government Directive created a “Wild West” atmosphere around social media. In that content “eager individuals, embracing the freedom to innovate, moved quickly to use social media both within their departments and agencies and with the outside world. Early government enthusiasts of social media endeavored to establish a presence without first identifying a goal. Only recently have those responsible for social media initiatives begun to ask what needs to be accomplished before selecting the appropriate tool for the task.”

Some new media directors and communication staff have been aligning tools with mission for some time. Others have simply set up the accounts and then pushed updates to them. From what this correspondent hears around Washington, that “Wild West” is getting civilized, with this report representing the latest push to absorb social media into the business of government, replete with established policies, procedures and, yes, reporting standards.

“It’s not OK just to check a box and set up a Facebook page anymore,” said Cammie Croft, director of new media a the Department of Energy, last week at a forum on citizen engagement. “You have to have an idea for what you want to accomplish.” That reflects what Booz Allen social media strategist Steve Radick wrote last month, when he observed that the “new media director position is a means to an end.”

Speaking at the same event, Jack Holt, senior strategist for emerging media at the Department of Defense, reflected on how federal social media use has evolved from “no way, no how” to “accepted procedure” to “standard operating procedure.”

“These are not new tools we need to learn how to use,” he said. “It’s a new environment in which we need to live.”

As the year comes to an end, in other words, the federal government is learning how to live in the same new media world its citizens are grappling with comprehending, where “We the People” has newfound resonance. Yet again, we’re all in it together.

For more on the report, Brian Kalish has a full writeup of social media and agency records management over at NextGov.