Old Wars and New Open Data

Open Government Data Should Span Years into the Past

Open Government Data Should Span Years into the Past

As I was reading Foreign Policy last night, a good headline caught my eye, The Truth is Out There (In a Library), and I jumped in.

So while the article was about documents and learning about the Cold War, it was an interesting lead for thoughts on today’s open government efforts.

We all too often think in real time nowadays. We want the bus schedule coming up, the weather patterns for tomorrow and polling that tells us how the elections will come out in two months. But we do a poor job of going after the troves of data that already exist. And while knowing when my train will arrive is important, much of the stockpiles of data inside governments can unlock some fairly impressive things if we were to rabidly go after digitization of that data and make it openly available, machine readable and the like.

What kinds of information could be gleaned from such data you may ask? Plenty.

We have decades of public health data, insurance data, drug interactions and efficacy data (I am speaking of the de-identified types) that could be analyzed across the globe to do some fairly interesting things. The sample size is large enough for folks to draw some conclusions about things like the efficacy of certain types and dosages of medication and its effects in different regions and demographics of the world. In essence, creating personalized drugs.

We have specific conflict resolution data that could be analyzed across time to gain some insight into what theories and strategies have provoked what sorts of reactions over time. There is certainly no way to ensure leaders wont pursue wrong minded policies, but this would start to eliminate unintended consequences in foreign policy matters based upon decades of hard data.

We could look at periods of tight monetary controls and looser ones and truly start to understand the effects that central banks have on growth. Or we can look at monetary flows from developed to emerging markets and analyze the most effective over decades, not just the last six months.

In short, if we focus on a longer string of open data targets, the outcomes appear to be much richer than the currently vital app of the week. It would make ICT worldwide a much more strategic tool for governments to use to truly be more effective in solving the issues of the governed while they upgrade their commitment to openness at the same time.

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Russia: Government 2.0 Community Does More Than Talk – They Are Active in Fighting Russian Fires Online

Government 2.0 as a Platform in Russia - ICT Citizens Fight Fires

Government 2.0 as a Platform in Russia - ICT Citizens Fight Fires

Global Voices, and Alexey Sidorenko in particular, wrote about their experience in helping to fight the devastating fires in Russia.  It is a great example of what we can do as a community when we simply take the risk of saying “yes, we can” when we are faced with an opportunity to help our fellow citizens.

In particular Alexey took advantage of the platform, developed by the community, to launch a solution.  He didn’t wait for the government itself to respond. Hhe took the challenge in his own hands, with help from the ICT community, to solve the problem by leveraging the platform.  This is living evidence of the power of Government as a Platform thinking.

We continue to try to pursue platform thinking and we get closer each time.  We pushed forward on a new platform for disaster relief with the IADB last month and are proud of the outcomes.  When we arm officials and citizens with the right tools, we can have them all focus on fixing the problems.

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UK: CityCamp London

London - Site of CityCamp 2010 and Gov20 Activity

London - Site of CityCamp 2010 and Gov20 Activity

Dominic, the harbinger of all good things Gov2.0, and FutureGov are bringing CityCamp to London in October!

Register for all of the announcements and a huge thanks to all of the partners involved to bring this event to London for free.

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Germany: PEP-NET event to Continue #Gov20 Leadership from Germany

The upcoming Open Government event in Germany will continue its recent but proud heritage in Open Government activism.

It is based off of a great organizational group that is broad based, diverse and inclusive of academics, civil servants, political leadership, private and public sector alike and caputres the passion of citizens directly from the citizens themselves.  I attended the previous incarnation at the GovCampBerlin last year and was impressed with the structure as a model for the future of GovCamps and reform efforts worldwide.

You should definitely check out the information on the event, and even if you cant make it yourselves, take part online as they will certainly build a web based community around it again this time and continue the converstion on into the future.

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Digital Transformation: Interoperability as the Bedrock of #gov20 Efforts

The multi-vendor interoperability test board at the University Of Warwick

The multi-vendor interoperability test board at the University Of Warwick

My friend Craig Shank wrote an article over at Microsoft on the Issues about the transformative power of ICT in government. And he has rightfully placed interoperability near the top of the list of items that must be done right to be successful.

He focuses on four main areas:

  1. Government agencies should focus first on delivering services that meet the public’s need.
  2. With that need in mind, the key stakeholders should agree on what success looks like at the outset of any e-government project and what will be needed to achieve that success – not just as a technical matter, but in light of the important organizational, legal, political and cultural mappings between different systems.
  3. Government agencies will also need to speak the same language across borders – figuratively, not literally – and agree on the meaning and use of their data, independent of organization, culture or language differences.
  4. Government agencies should make use of widely adopted technical standards to facilitate interoperability, rather than focus upon any particular technology, vendor solution or development approach.

I think he sets out some great ideas and I agree that these are vital.  A few points of clarification:

I believe that the focus indeed should be on providing services that fit a public need.  I think we should augment this statement slightly to envelop the idea of “Government as a Platform” so we can move these ideas forward in the most cost effective manner.  As we target workloads for app development, lets also target who should be providing what.  Direct service provision by Government in a few cases, Government providing open data in most cases, the private sector and partners delivering services on top of the data platform whenever feasible.

A characterization of the effort as, before all else, focusing on the business needs of Government is a great idea.  The technical barriers and requirements will come up, but we should be driven by things like better education, economic growth, clean environments and safe streets.

As a huge advocate for GJXML and NIEM when I worked as a CIO in the US, I can tell you how complicated the data dictionary work is across complicated silos in the Justice arena.  And while it only gets more complex across the whole of Government, I can certify that this is the right goal to keep in mind.  Common taxonomy is a must.

And standardization precedes success.

I think this is a great set of principles to keep in mind as we fight to deploy Government 2.0, Government as a Platform and other ideas into our collective mindset.

Keep up the good work!

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India: Facebook takes on traffic

Government 2.0 and Indian Traffic: Can Facebook Save Us?

Government 2.0 and Indian Traffic: Can Facebook Save Us?

The New York Times reports that the Delhi Traffic Police have started using Facebook to go after New Delhi traffic scofflaws.  They have enlisted the help of the teaming masses in New Delhi to upload photos and go after the offenders.  Uptake has been impressive, if not a bit scary (given that many of the photos must have been taken while other drivers were driving :) )

This is a return to the civil service (and police service) proud long standing tradition of crowd sourcing.  9-9-9 (or 9-1-1- in the USA) were efforts born of a public safety need and a realization that the only way large cities could survive, especially in tough economic times, was to leverage the power of the crowd.  This simply adds the technical layer of mobile phones with cameras and a platform like Facebook.

By the way, their page is here.

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Korea: Reunification and How #gov20 and #opengov Could Help

Korea - Can Government 2.0 help Reunification Efforts?

Korea - Can Government 2.0 help Reunification Efforts?

The Economist has covered Lee Myung-Bak, South Korea’s President, statements suggesting that “reunification will happen” with the North.

While it is unclear what these statements mean, it reminds me of early statements in the thawing of relations near the end of the Cold War and makes me think there may be similar, yet updated, roles for us to play in the Government 2.0 movement.

Two main points:

1)  Much of the thaw in Cold War days was due to Eastern Bloc countries and their citizens being exposed to cultural freedoms that had been taken for granted by the West.  For inst5ance, rock and roll played a major role in giving folks a view of what was possible if the Iron Curtain were to fall.  Similarly here, the potential for the North to see a wide array of openness and citizen-centric systems could generate positive buzz from North to South.  From basics of trains running efficiently to citizens having access to public platforms for policy conversations may help to nudge folks toward reunification;

2)  Service Delivery versus Government as a Platform:  Here is the real opportunity.  As the size of income disparity is huge, if reunification were to happen the pressure on the Korean Government would be enormous.  The new country would have to treat Government as a Platform to succeed.  This may be the best test case for regional cooperation that we could ask for.  Developing an investment analysis that allowed the North and South to agree on where to invest in robust platforms, where to commoditize services and how to best leverage the private, non-profit and NGO communities who care could all work together to build an investment model for modern governments.

In short, I think this is an incredible opportunity.  Even if it is simply political talk right now, we should take the opportunity to press forward with our mission to provide more open government and government2.0 platforms.  Worst case, it just makes South Korea a better country and best case, the potential for a reunified peninsula.

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