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By Cara Garretson
What does it mean for a government to be open, and how can technology help achieve that goal? These and other questions were pondered by a panel of experts at the Gov 2.0 conference held in Washington, D.C. this week.
During a session titled “The Business of Being Open,” three technology executives and an open-source activist rated the U.S. government’s openness and transparency to its citizens, and proposed ways that federal agencies could make more useful data available to people to help them get the information they need. The discussion became somewhat heated when the question of what role the private sector -- multinational technology corporations that primarily serve their shareholders, not their country or its people -- should play in helping the government achieve greater transparency.
Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs -- a community of open-source developers and designers dedicated to making government more transparent, accountable and responsible -- gave the current administration an openness rating of 4, on a scale of 1 to 10. However, he said that the Obama administration is more committed to openness than previous administrations.
Still, despite efforts, it isn’t as easy for citizens to get the information they need as it should be, Johnson said. He gave the example of the type of information a citizen might need if he or she is laid off. “They don’t care what’s in the healthcare bill, they want to get healthcare,” he said. “They want transparency, they don’t want to become a civics expert.”
Rob Pinkerton, director of government solutions with Adobe Systems, split his rating into two marks. For effort and leadership in openness, he gave the government a 10, but for execution he handed out a 4.
“At the end of the day government is about setting priorities, and I think this government has done an exceptional job,” he said. “But over the past year and a half the effort has started to devolve into a checkbox item -- it’s become the next thing you have to do, rather than absorb the concept and principles of openness.”
Similar rankings were given by Susie Adams, CTO of Microsoft’s federal civilian business and Dave McQueeney, CTO for IBM’s US federal government unit.
Achieving set goals can be more difficult for government than for a private-sector enterprise that operates within the parameters of monetizing efforts and valuing outcomes, said IBM’s McQueeney.
Enterprises “reduce everything to ROI, profit, and stock prices, which makes them easier to run,” he explained. “Most of the outcomes for the government are [things like] national defense and social programs. You have to start with the assumption that the government is dealing with complex problems … so it falls back on process, then measures the adherence to it. Government starts with a big handicap.”
However, McQueeney had to clarify that statement later, when Sunlight Labs’ Johnson remarked that when a company does something that’s good for its stock price, that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
“In the short term, the right behavior and the stock price may go in opposite directions, but in the long term the truth will eventually come out,” said McQueeney, adding that long-term viability is linked to corporate behavior.
The IBM executive said the killer application for Government 2.0 -- the idea of applying Web 2.0 tools such as open data, social media, and cloud computing to enhance government’s capabilities and interaction with its citizens -- would offer a way for agencies to illustrate the complex tradeoffs that must be made when making decisions so it can garner more input from citizens to be sure it’s doing the right thing.
“It would be a way for government to get its head around complexity by building a stronger link to its internal and external stakeholders,” he added.
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