Tag Archives: Sunlight Foundation

Half empty or half full? Mixed reactions to Pew research on open data and open government

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Yesterday, I wrote up 15 key insights from the Pew Internet and Life Project’s new research on the American public’s attitude towards open data and open government. If you missed it, what people think about government data and the potential impact of releasing it is heavily influenced by the prevailing low trust in government and their politics.

mixed-hopes-open-data-improve-pew

Media coverage of the survey reflected the skepticism of the reporters (“Most Americans don’t think government transparency matters a damn“) or of the public (“Who cares about open data” and “Americans not impressed by open government initiatives“). This photo by Pete Souza below might be an apt image for this feeling:

not-impressed-souza-obama

Other stories pulled out individual elements of the research (“Open data on criminals and teachers is a-okay, say most US citizens” or mixed results (“People Like U.S. Open Data Initiatives, But Think Government Could Do More” and “Sorry, open data: Americans just aren’t that into you“) or general doubts about an unfamiliar topic (“Many Americans Doubt Government Open Data Efforts“). At least one editor’s headline suggested that the results were an indictment of everything government does online: (“Americans view government’s online services and public data sharing as a resounding ‘meh’.) Meh, indeed.

As usual, keep a salt shaker handy as you browse the headlines and read the original source. The research itself is more nuanced than those headlines suggest, as my interview with the lead researcher on the survey, John Horrigan, hopefully made clear.

Over at TechPresident, editor-in-chief Micah Sifry saw a glass half full:

  • Digging deeper into the Pew report, it’s interesting to find that beyond the “ardent optimists” (17% of adults) who embrace the benefit of open government data and use it often, and the “committed cynics” (20%) who use online government resources but think they aren’t improving government performance much, there’s a big group of “buoyant bystanders” (27%) who like the idea that open data can improve government’s performance but themselves aren’t using the internet much to engage with government. (Heads up Kate Krontiris, who’s been studying the “interested bystander.”)
  • It’s not clear how much of the bystander problem is also an access problem. According to a different new analysis done by the Pew Research Center, about five million American households with school-age children–nearly one in five–do not have high-speed internet access at home. This “broadband gap” is worst among households with incomes under $50,000 a year.

Reaction from foundations that have advocated, funded or otherwise supported open government data efforts went deeper. Writing for the Sunlight Foundation, communications director Gabriela Schneider saw the results from the survey in a rosy (sun)light, seeing public optimism about open government and open data.

People are optimistic that open data initiatives can make government more accountable. But, many surveyed by Pew are less sure open data will improve government performance. Relatedly, Americans have not quite engaged very deeply with government data to monitor performance, so it remains to be seen if changes in engagement will affect public attitudes.

That’s something we at Sunlight hope to positively affect, particularly as we make new inroads in setting new standards for how the federal government discloses its work online. And as Americans shift their attention away from Congress and more toward their own backyards, we know our newly expanded work as part of the What Works Cities initiative will better engage the public, make government more effective and improve people’s lives.

Jonathan Sotsky, director of strategy and assessment for the Knight Foundation, saw a trust conundrum for government in the results:

Undoubtedly, a greater focus is needed on explaining to the public how increasing the accessibility and utility of government data can drive accountability, improve government service delivery and even provide the grist for new startup businesses. The short-term conundrum government data initiatives face is that while they ultimately seek to increase government trustworthiness, they may struggle to gain structure because the present lack of trust in government undermines their perceived impact.

Steven Clift, the founder of e-democracy.org, views this survey as a wakeup call for open data advocates.

One reason I love services like CityGram, GovDelivery, etc. is that they deliver government information (often in a timely way) to the public based on their preferences/subscriptions. As someone who worked in “e-government” for the State of Minnesota, I think most people just want the “information” that matters to them and the public has no particular attachment to the idea of “open data” allowing third parties to innovate or make this data available. I view this survey as a huge wake up call to #opengov advocates on the #opendata side that the field needs to provide far more useful stuff to the general public and care a lot more about outreach and marketing to reach people with the good stuff already available.

Mark Headd, former chief data officer for the City of Philadelphia and current developer evangelist for Accela software, saw the results as a huge opportunity to win hearts and minds:

The modern open data and civic hacking movements were largely born out of the experience of cities. Washington DC, New York City and Chicago were among the first governments to actively recruit outside software developers to build solutions on top of their open data. And the first governments to partner with Code for America – and the majority over the life of the organization’s history – have been cities.

How do school closings impact individual neighborhoods? How do construction permit approvals change the character of communities? How is green space distributed across neighborhoods in a city? Where are vacant properties in a neighborhood – who owns them and are there opportunities for reuse?

These are all the kinds of questions we need people living and working in neighborhoods to help us answer. And we need more open data from local governments to do this.

If you see other blog posts or media coverage that’s not linked above, please let me know. I storified some reactions on Twitter but I’m certain that I missed conversations or opinions.

few-think-govt-data-sharing-effective-pew

There are two additional insights from Pew that I didn’t write about yesterday that are worth keeping in mind with respect to how how Americans are thinking about the release of public data back to the public. First, it’s unclear whether the public realizes they’re using apps and services built upon government data, despite sizable majorities doing so.

Second, John Horrigan told me that survey respondents universally are not simply asking for governments to make the data easier to understand so that they can figure out what I want to figure out: what people really want is intermediaries to help them make sense of the data.

“We saw a fair number of people pleading in comments for better apps to make the data make sense,” said Horrigan. “When they went online, they couldn’t get budget data to work. When the found traffic data, couldn’t make it work. There were comments on both sides of the ledger. Those that think government did an ok job wish they did this. Those that thin government is doing a horrible job also wish they did this.”

This is the opportunity that Headd referred to, and the reason that data journalism is the critical capacity that democratic governments which genuinely want to see returns on accountability and transparency must ensure can flourish in civil society.

If a Republican is elected as the next President of the United States, we’ll see if public views shift on other fronts.

[STAT] State Department employees made .004% of email sent in 2013 into public records

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Window_and_Hillary_Clinton_Not_Alone_in_Using_Private_Emails_to_Govern_-_Tech_-_GovExec_com

According to a new report from U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Inspector General, agency employees sent more than 1 billion emails, of which they made just 41,649 of them into public records.

That’s about 0.004% of them, by my rough calculation.

It’s a minuscule number, which probably why The Daily Beast ran a post reporting “only .00006% of State Department emails are preserved.”

While their calculation looks off by orders of magnitude, this tiny percentage still translates into members of the civil and foreign service entering almost none of their emails into archiving systems.

While the story hardly need it, this adds more interesting context to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to designate roughly 50% of her personal email as public records.

As Sunlight Foundation policy director John Wonderlich commented in Politico, this IG report undermines her argument that her emails with State Department workers were preserved on their end.

“Her justification around FOIA requests and around preservation became that most of the documents were cc’d or sent to .gov or state.gov addresses used by employees and therefore were preserved and accessible to requests, ” said Wonderlich “This [report] suggests that is not reliable at all.”

For more, read Josh Gerstein report exploring the broader ramifcations of the watchdog report on Clinton’s defense at greater length.

In a win for open government advocacy, DC removes flaws in its municipal open data policy

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Update:

dcgov_logoIt’s a good day for open government in the District of Columbia. Today, DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) has updated the Terms and Conditions for DC.gov and the city’s new open data platform, addressing some of the concerns that the Sunlight Foundation and Code for DC expressed about the new open data policy introduced in July. The updated terms and conditions rolling out onto the city’s digital civic architecture this afternoon. “Today’s changes are really focused on aligning DC.Gov’s Terms and Conditions of Use with the new open data and transparency policy released this summer,” explained Mike Rupert, the communications director for OCTO,” in an interview. “The site’s T&C hadn’t been updated in many years,” according to Rupert. The new T&C will apply to DC.gov, the open data platform and other city websites. “It is encouraging that DC is taking steps toward considering feedback and improving its Terms and Conditions, but there is still room for improvement in the broader scope of DC’s policies,”said Alisha Green, a policy associate with Sunlight Foundation’s local policy team.  “We hope those implementing DC’s new open data policy will actively seek stakeholder input to improve upon what the policy requires. The strength of the policy will be in its implementation, and we hope DC will take every opportunity to make that process as open, collaborative and impactful as possible.” So, OCTO both heard and welcomed the feedback from open government advocates regarding the policy and agreed that the policy implications of the terms and conditions were problematic. Certain elements of the previous Terms and Conditions of Use (Indemnity, Limitation of Liability) could have chilled the understanding of the public’s right to access and have been eliminated,” said Rupert. Those were the sections that prompted civic hacker Josh Tauberer to wonder whether he needed a lawyer to hack in DC are simply gone, specifically that Indemnity and Liability Section. Other sections, however, still remain. The revised policy I obtained before the updated terms and conditions went online differs in a couple of ways from the one that just that went online. First, the Registration section remains, as does the Conduct section, although DC eliminated the 11 specific examples. That said, it’s better, and that’s a win. District officials remain cautious about how and where reuse might occur, they’re going to at least let the data flow without a deeply flawed policy prescription. “While we want to be mindful of and address the potential for harm to or misuse of District government information and data, the Terms and Conditions of Use should promote the new open data and transparency philosophy in a more positive manner,” said Rupert. Sharp-eyed readers of the new policy, however, will note that DC’s open data and online information has now been released to the public under a Creative Commons license, specifically Attribution 3.0 United States. That means that anyone who uses DC’s open data is welcome to “Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material — for any purpose, even commercially,” as long as they provide “Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.” When asked about the CC license choice, Rupert said that “The new copyright language from Creative Commons – which as you is know is becoming the international standard – better states the overriding principle of the public’s right to web content and data. ” That did not sit entirely well with open government advocates who hold that making open data license free is a best practice. Asked for comment, Tauberer emailed the following statement in a response to the draft of the revision, welcoming the District’s responsiveness but questioning the premise of the District of Columbia having any “terms and conditions” for the public using open government data at all.

The new terms drop the most egregious problems, but these terms still don’t count as “open.” Should I expect a lawsuit if I don’t tip my hat and credit the mayor every time I use the data we taxpayers paid to create? Until the attribution requirement is dropped, I will recommend that District residents get District data through Freedom of Information Act requests. It might take longer, but it will be on the people’s terms, not the mayor’s. It’s not that the District shouldn’t get credit, but the District shouldn’t demand it and hold civil and possibly criminal penalties over our heads to get it. For instance, yesterday Data.gov turned their attribution requirement into a suggestion. That’s the right way to encourage innovation. All that said, I appreciate their responsiveness to our feedback. Tim from DC GIS spent time at Code for DC to talk about it a few weeks ago, and I appreciated that. It is a step in the right direction, albeit one deaf to our repeated explanation that “open” does not mean “terms of use.

The good news is that DC’s OCTO is listening and has committed to being responsive to future concerns about how it’s handling DC’s online presences and policies. “Several of your questions allude to the overall open data policy and we will definitely be reaching out to you and all other interested stakeholders as we begin implement various elements of that policy,” said Rupert.

Update: On October 29th, DC updated its Terms and Conditions again, further improving them. Tauberer commented on the changes to the open data policy on his blog. In his view, the update represents a step forward and a step back:

In a new update to the terms posted today, which followed additional conversations with OCTO, there were two more great improvements. These terms were finally dropped:

  • agreeing to follow all “rules”, a very ambiguous term
  • the requirement to attribute the data to the District in all uses of the data (it’s now merely a suggestion)

The removal of these two requirements, in combination with the two removed in September, makes this a very important step forward.

One of my original concerns remains, however, and that is that the District has not granted anyone a copyright license to use District datasets. Data per se isn’t protected by copyright law, but the way a dataset is presented may be. The District has claimed copyright over its things before, and it remains risky to use District datasets without a copyright license. Both the September update and today’s update attempted to address this concern but each created more confusion that there was before.

Although today’s update mentions the CC0 public domain dedication, which would be the correct way to make the District data available, it also explicitly says that the District retains copyright:

  • The terms say, at the top, that they “apply only to . . . non-copyrightable information.” The whole point is that we need a license to use the aspects of the datasets that are copyrighted by the District.
  • Later on, the terms read: “Any copyrighted or trademarked content included on these Sites retains that copyright or trademark protection.” Again, this says that the District retains copyright.
  • And: “You must secure permission for reuse of copyrighted … content,” which, as written (but probably not intended), seems to say that to the extent the District datasets are copyrighted, data users must seek permission to use it first. (Among other problems, like side-stepping “fair use” in copyright law.)

With respect to the copyright question, the new terms document is a step backward because it may confuse data users into thinking the datasets have been dedicated to the public domain when in fact they haven’t been.

This post has been updated with comments from Tauberer and the Sunlight Foundation.

Chris Gates will be the new president of the Sunlight Foundation

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As reported by Politico, Chris Gates will be the next president of the Sunlight Foundation, the Washington, DC-based nonprofit that advocates for open government and creates tools that empower people to improve government transparency and accountability around the world.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join the team at Sunlight to help advance their work to bring more accountability and transparency to our politics and our government,” said Gates, in a statement. “For those of us who care deeply about the health of our democracy, these are perilous times. Our political system is swimming in anonymous money and influence, and our federal government is paralyzed and unable to respond to the challenges of our times. Our hope is that the new tools, data and information generated by Sunlight will help break through this impasse. We look forward to working with others in the reform field to fix a system that clearly isn’t working.”

Gates is currently the executive director of Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, part of the Council on Foundations. Previously, he served as president of America’s oldest good government organization, the National Civic League.

“Chris, who is a thought leader in the fields of democratic theory and practice and political and civic engagement, has, for the past decade, been a leading voice for strengthening democratic processes and structures and developing new approaches to both engagement and decision-making,” wrote Ellen Miller, co-founder and current president of the Sunlight Foundation, at the organization’s blog. “He and I have been colleagues for the past several years — we’ve worked together on numerous occasions — and I am truly thrilled that he will become Sunlight’s president.”

Miller went on to say that Gates will “bring a breadth of experience and style of leadership that will take us to new levels.” This fall, the Sunlight Foundation will undergo the biggest transition of leadership since its founding: last week, Sunlight Labs director Tom Lee announced that he was leaving to work at DC-based Mapbox, with James Turk stepping up to assume responsibility for the nonprofit’s powerful technology resources and development team. I look forward to seeing how both men build out the civic infrastructure, reporting group, and advocacy shop that Sunlight has established since the organization opened its doors in 2006.

[Image Credit: Sunlight Foundation]

Sunlight Foundation highlights benefits of open data beyond the business case

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Given the considerable attention that the economic outcomes of open data releases has received over the past year, with trillions of dollars in potential value flowing across headlines, it’s worth reminding everyone of the impacts of open data beyond the bottom line. Thankfully, Emily Shaw, the national policy manager at the Sunlight Foundation, did exactly that in a blog post today, including a handy briefing document that I have embedded below. She credited her colleagues for the brief:

“Democratic governance improves when people have data that helps them see how officials are doing relative to past or promised performance,” she wrote.

As Shaw highlighted in her post, open data can increase the transparency of governments, corporations, journalism or academia. Its release and analysis can and does hold those same entities accountable. Open data can enable efficiencies in information search, access and retrieval, supporting the case of those looking for the return on investment in these kinds of open government initiatives. And open data can support and enhance civic engagement and participation between the people and their government.

Open Government Week in Review: White House update, eGov setbacks and global OGP potential

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Friday’s White House open government “status update” capped a historic week for open government in Washington. The Blue Button movement now has a website: BlueButtonData.org. Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra challenged the energy industry to collaborate in the design of a “green button” modeled after that Blue Button. White House director of digital Macon Phillips answered questions about “We the People” and the White House e-petitions. The Department of Transportation held a public consultation for the its Digital Transportation Exchange (DTE) open government initiative. President Obama signed the America Invents Act into law.

Progress and Setbacks

Quiet successes have been matched with setbacks to open government in Washington over the past three years, including two from this past week. Several journalism organizations have protested the U.S. federal government taking down doctor discipline and malpractice data from the Web. The Obama administration also faces an uncertain future for funding for its Office of Management and Budget’s open government initiatives after theU.S. Senate appropriations committee shortchanged the Electronic Government Fund by some $10 million dollars this week.

Global Open Government Partnership

While neither of those stories are good data points for the state of open government at the federal level, they are both part of a much larger narrative where some 40 countries (including the founding 8 members) have reportedly now submitted letters of intent to join this unprecedented international open government partnership.

Next Tuesday, I’ll be in New York on the same day that President Obama introduces the U.S. National Plan for open government as part of its commitment to the Open Government Partnership As John Wonderlich observed at the Sunlight Foundation on Friday, preparing for the U.S. National Plan and then delivering upon whatever is contains will be a “complex, ongoing effort that takes dedicated effort and attention,” adding to the progress towards a more transparent, participatory, collaborative or innovative government made to date.

In 2011, some of the most dynamic changes may be found the state and local level in the United States. After next week, the eyes of many more people will be open to the broader sweep of a global movement towards transparency. The world can watch the live streaming coverage of the “Power of Open” at Google’s YouTube channel from 9-10:30 AM and from 1:30-4:30 PM. Event details are available at OpenGovPartnership.org”>, including agenda, participants, presentations and other materials. I’m looking forward to telling that story using Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and next Tuesday, where I’ll be liveblogging at the O’Reilly Radar all day. techPresident’s associate editor, Nick Judd, will be tweeting and liveblogging. Follow the #OGP hashtag for the real-time conversation about the Open Government Partnership:

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How should whistleblowing work in the age of transparency?

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Transparency movements have gone global. Open government, however, depends in part upon the ability of public servants and corporate insiders to blow the whistle on fraud, corruption or other conduct that is not in the interest of citizens or stakeholders. In the context of Wikileaks, the role of whistleblowing has taken on new meaning and scope in this age of transparency. Despite President Obama’s open government commitments, his administration has aggressively pursued whistleblowers over the past two and a half years.

It is in that context that the Advisory Committee on Transparency for the Transparency Caucus in the U.S. Congress hosted a public discussion on July 29, 2011 on the challenges federal whistleblowers face. Video of the hearing, provided courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation, is embedded below.

The panelists included:

  • Angela Canterbury, Director of Public Policy, Project on Government Oversight
  • Carolyn Lerner, Special Counsel, U.S. Office of Special Counsel
  • Christian Sanchez, Border Patrol Agent, Customs & Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security
  • Daniel Schuman, Moderator, Policy Counsel, the Sunlight Foundation
  • Micah Sifry, Co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum; author of WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency; Sunlight Foundation sr. technology advisor

People interested in government transparency will find it of considerable interest.

Even if the White House’s commitment to transparency is questioned, open government continues to grow globally, with new tools for transparency coming online every month.

Kicking off Transparency Camp 2011 with 3 words [#tcamp11]

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Today in Washington, Transparency Camp is back in session. As with every unconference, each attendee introduced him or herself with three words that describes what they do, what they care about or what they work on. The frequency of those words is shown in the Transparency Camp 2011 wordle below.

Transparency Camp 2011 Wordle

Transparency Camp 2011 Wordle

You can follow the conversation on Twitter on the #tcamp11 hashtag:

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Some sessions will be livestreamed at TransparencyCamp.com. Sessions will be updated on a new mobile website at m.tcamp.us. Check back for a report from Transparency Camp 2011 tomorrow.

John Wonderlich on the aspirations and limitations of open data initiatives

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New abilities given to citizens and open government watchdogs through the lens of technology means sunlight can be applied to government transparency in powerful ways. This past weekend, John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation, spoke about open data and transparency at the slashroots ./roots/DEV in Jamaica. His keynote is embedded below.

./roots/Dev Conference 2011 – Keynote Day 2 Pt 1/2 from slashroots on Vimeo.

Open government scrutinized before the House Oversight Committee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Danny Harris

Chris Smith

Jerry Brito

Ellen Miller

The Honorable Danny Werfel

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