For Government Transparency, “Public” Should Mean “Online.” Plus, Free the Nerds!
At today’s Wiki White House at Google (also sponsored by the New America Foundation and Wired), Ellen Miller made a great point: as far as government information goes, “public” information should ultimately mean “online” information — citizens should not have to dig through paper in some government office to find out what an agency (or an officeholder) is up to. And the data quality and the presentation matter, because if the information is functionally unavailable even though technically online, it’s not really available. Government databases should be designed to be interoperable with other government databases and with outside data — which as NAF’s Sascha Meinrath pointed out has the potential to open government to real crowdsourcing.
4 comments January 9th, 2009 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us
