Collaborative Thinking

City Data & City Apps: Open Data and Transparency

Interesting how government transparency is getting contagious - local municipalities (New York, San Francisco) are mimicking what the federal government has been doing with its various open data and app store efforts.

New York City Wants You to Create an App For That - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

On Tuesday, New York City is rolling out the next phase of its NYC Big Apps competition, an initiative that will supply local programmers and developers with a stockpile of raw municipal data sets to build applications for the Web and mobile phones.

Screen shot of NYC Big Apps site.

Contestants will have access to more than 170 data sets supplied by over 30 city agencies, including weekly traffic updates, schedules of citywide events, property sales, restaurant inspections and mappable data around school and voting districts.

New York City Wants You to Create an App For That - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

San Francisco Launches City App Store

Last month, at WordPress() headquarters with leaders from the technology community, we launched DataSF.org. This new web site is designed to improve transparency in government, increase access to City data, and engage our highly skilled workforce to create apps from that data.

After the kick off there was a discussion about next steps for Gov 2.0 in San Francisco with Tim O’Reilly, Matt Mullenweg and other technology innovators. One idea was to create a City App Store to highlight and centralize programs created from City data. This has worked for Apple and Facebook, at last check; there are 60,000 apps available in the Apple App store and more than 350,000 different Facebook apps. Why not create a government app store as well?

Today, I’m pleased to announce the launch of the DataSF App Showcase (www.datasf.org/showcase). The site will celebrate the innovators and innovations from a more collaborative and open government. On the site the public can browse examples of new ways in which Bay Area constituents are using City data to improve San Francisco.

San Francisco Launches City App Store

Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

Worthwhile reading - may take a while, PDF link on the destination site.

Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy | The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is a group of 17 media, policy and community leaders. Its purpose is to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs.

The Knight Commission sees new thinking about news and information as a necessary step to sustaining democracy in the digital age. It thus follows in the footsteps of the 1940s Hutchins Commission and the Kerner and Carnegie Commissions of the 1960s.

But in the digital age the stakes are even higher. Technological, economic and behavioral changes are dramatically altering how Americans communicate. Communications systems no longer run along the lines of local communities, and the gap in access to digital tools and skills is wide and troubling.

The Commission seeks to start a national discussion – leading to real action. Its aims are to maximize the availability and flow of credible local information; to enhance access and capacity to use the new tools of knowledge and exchange; and to encourage people to engage with information and each other within their geographic communities.

Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy | The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

XML'ing Your Way To Transparency

Just another example of making information more adaptive and recombinant:

Welcome to FedThread.org

FedThread is a new way of interacting with the Federal Register. FedThread gives you:

• collaborative annotation: Attach a note to any paragraph of the Federal Register; start a conversation.
• advanced search: Search the Federal Register (back to 2000) on full text, by date, agency, and other fields.
• customized feeds: Turn any search into an RSS or email feed, which will send you any new items that match the search query.

The Federal Register is "[t]he official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents." It's published by the U.S. government, five days a week. The Federal Register tells you what your government is doing, in a lot more detail than you get from the news media.

FedThread is possible because of the government's new XML-format Federal Register, a milestone in technology-based civic engagement that lets citizens create new services that in turn provide value back to government. Kudos to the Government Printing Office, National Archives and Records Administration, and Office of Science and Technology Policy for making this all possible.

FedThread

Federal Register 2.0: Opening a Window onto the Inner Workings of Government

That’s why we're pleased to announce that as of today the National Archives and Records Administration and the U.S. Government Printing Office will publish the Federal Register in "XML." XML is a simple and flexible, machine-readable form of text that is easy to manipulate with software. By putting the Federal Register in XML, the federal government is for the first time allowing individuals to take control over how they want to read the Federal Register.

With an XML edition, independent organizations can reorganize the Register’s contents in ways that are more meaningful to you and address your personal interests; track issues that are likely to affect your community or your profession; and even engage in real-time public discussions about its contents with others across the country and around the world.

For example, Princeton's Center for Information Technology is today set to launch Fedthread.org, which allows users to annotate the Federal Register and comment in its margins. Another organization, Public.Resource.org, has created a software application that makes it simpler to search the Federal Register. And GovPulse makes it possible to visualize the Federal Register by topic or by location so the reader can see how particular government actions affect different local communities.

The White House - Blog Post - Federal Register 2.0: Opening a Window onto the Inner Workings of Government

Digital Immigrants & Digital Natives: Different Or Not?

An interesting article worth reading (regardless of viewpoint):

Is Online Privacy a Generational Issue?

• By Ken Denmead
• October 1, 2009  | 
• 9:00 am  | 
• Categories: Electronic Geek

[This is a guest post by Heather West, Policy Analyst at the Center for Democracy & Technology]

It seems like every time I talk to people about privacy, there’s a feeling that younger users of online tools simply don’t care about the issue. Often, I am asked why privacy advocates like CDT push government and industry to protect privacy more robustly- when “no one cares”? In short, people seem to be asserting that digital natives like myself do not value privacy online. While this point is oft repeated, I think that this argument is flawed, and does not address the subtleties of privacy in the cloud, social networks, and other new online technologies. Simply put, these technologies are giving digital natives (really, all users) greater control over their information - and we use it.

Digital immigrants tend to think about privacy as the ability to conceal information from others. Digital natives instead share information within certain contexts, and with granular privacy controls on that information. And according to a new study on behavioral advertising, it is precisely the 18-24 year old age bracket that cares most about how information is used to make decisions about them to deliver news, advertisements, or discounts. In fact, one of the survey’s authors told the New York Times that it’s likely that young adults care more about their privacy and how companies use their information than expected.

Is Online Privacy a Generational Issue? | GeekDad | Wired.com

Transparency In Government: Contracting Oversight Subcommittee

There are several well-known examples where the U.S. federal government leverages social media to create more open and transparent participation mechanisms for exchanging information and collaborating with the public. However, not all examples where government is using social tools to interact more effectively with citizens garners attention. Perhaps that's ok - we could end up being saturated with more information than necessary but it is sometimes a challenge to locate these outreach efforts and encourage public/government engagement. A recent e-mail drew my attention to an effort underway next week that I thought was interesting and important enough to pass along (see below). Besides e-mail and a form-based survey, the effort to solicit ideas includes use of Google Moderator. as well as related discussions at the Open House Project and Sunlightlabs Google Groups.

CONTRACTING OVERSIGHT SUBCOMMITTEE TO EXAMINE HOW THE GOVERNMENT TRACKS CONTRACTS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, chaired by Chairman Claire McCaskill, will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, September 29 to examine the way the federal government tracks information relating to federal contracts.  The Subcommittee will assess the problems of the decentralized and cumbersome systems presently in place, and discuss current plans to develop a new platform for integrating these systems to ensure that goals of efficiency, transparency, and accessibility are met.

Currently, the federal government retains contract information in multiple outdated and inefficient databases maintained by various government agencies.  The federal government has begun efforts to streamline and improve the system by planning to create the Integrated Acquisition Environment, and the General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to move forward with awarding the Architecture Operations Contract Support (AOCS) contract to develop a new platform for integrating information relating to government contracting.  GSA is expected to award the contract by the end of the month. 

Public Hearing on Improving Transparency and Accessibility of Federal Contracting Databases

What should our priorities be for the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight?

What hearings would you like to see?  What contract or program needs additional oversight?  What laws, regulations, and policies need to be changed?
I'll need all the suggestions and support I can get -- I'll draw heavily on your input as we move forward toward a system that better serves the government and the taxpayer. 
- Senator Claire McCaskill
Don’t have a Google account? Submit your suggestions via email to Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight staff at contracting_oversight[at]mccaskill.senate.gov.

477 people have submitted 196 suggestions and cast 4,800 votes

What should our priorities be for the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight? - Google Moderator

Calling for question suggestions

The Government Services Administration (GSA) is bidding a project right now that will unify all federal government contracting information in a single architecture. This is the first step in a new plan to improve and streamline the government’s multiple contracting databases.  But what shape will that new system take?

The HSGAC Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight will hold a hearing on Tuesday, September 29 to examine what such an important public resource will -- and should -- look like. Witnesses include Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO; William Woods, GAO; Adam Hughes, OMB Watch; and A.R. Trey Hodgkins, III, TechAmerica.

Chairman Claire McCaskill is asking for your suggestions on questions for the hearing.

Use the form below to submit your questions on what we can expect from a new federal contracting database system.

Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight

Chairman McCaskill Reaches Out for Contracting Oversight Subcommittee Ideas

WASHINGTON, D.C. –Chairman Claire McCaskill will soon be heading up her first hearing of the newly formed Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight and today she has reached out to experts in the field of contracting accountability to ask for advice about what they believe she should address first. McCaskill will often rely on the help of auditors, inspectors general, contractors, chambers of commerce, watchdog groups, and others to investigate contracting abuses, and she plans to solicit advice from this community regularly.

McCaskill invited members of this community to submit or vote on ideas for the subcommittee through an online discussion forum (requires a Google account) or by e-mailing the Subcommittee at whistleblowers[at]mccaskill.senate.gov.

Senator Claire McCaskill : Missouri

Transparency And Openness In Government

Interesting reads:

What Transparency Means to Feds

04/01/2009

Launch the Transparency Survey Results

President Obama wants to make government more transparent. He clearly said so in a memo released Jan. 21, one day after he took the oath of office.

"Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing," he wrote. "My administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use."

But what, exactly, is transparency? What information should be released and in what form? Who is responsible for making sure it happens? Government Executive magazine attempts to answer those questions in its April cover story, "Behind the Curtain."

What Transparency Means to Feds - Nextgov

The Risks of Open Government

By Allan Holmes 09/14/2009

This is the second in a two-part series discussing the Obama administration's approach to open government with Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government who studies transparency in government.

Nextgov Executive Editor Allan Holmes interviewed Fung in August, shortly after Fung returned from Washington, where he participated in a three-day workshop with federal managers, administration officials, democracy groups, scholars and others to discuss ways to involve citizens more in government. The following are edited excerpts:

The Risks of Open Government - Nextgov