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Oromo Index |
She writes that transparency, one of the “core principles of democracy” can ... The third goal of open government, collaboration “across agencies and with ...
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Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia (RTKNS) is a non-profit organization. Through advocacy and education, RTKNS encourages the use and development of freedom-of-information legislation to foster a better informed and more politically active electorate in Nova Scotia and to improve the quality of public and private decision making in the province.
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Oromo Index |
A new survey out from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that Americans are going online to look for government information, participate and interact with the government and use online tools for transactions with the government.
A full eighty-two percent of internet users either looked for information or completed a transaction on a government website in the last year. Even more impressive, forty-eight percent have "looked for information about a public policy or issue online with their local, state or federal government." This is an impressive number and shows what Sunlight has long known, people are looking for information about their government and the internet is best place to deliver such information.
One statistic that amazed me was that nearly a quarter (23%) of internet users searched online for information on the how money from the stimulus bill was being spent. If you find yourself to be one of these people, this iPhone/Android application that Sunlight Labs developed may be what you're looking for. The app layers stimulus spending, as reported by Recovery.gov, over Google Maps to provide an on-the-go way to search where the money is being spent.
Another welcome development from the report is that 22% of internet users downloaded or read text of legislation online. One of Sunlight's more popular efforts has been to get Congress to post legislation online for at least 72 hours before debating and voting on it. It was pretty obvious to us last year that people wanted to find legislation and read it last year as thousands of people visited our Read the Bill site.
Other statistics that relate to searches for government information include:
Americans who use interact with the government online through social media or by searching for data are more likely to find online government presence useful than those who do not:
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CPJ Press Freedom Online |
![]() Globe and Mail | The government seems to be inviting suspicion Globe and Mail The Globe and Mail was able to obtain, through an access to information request, a major document that, even in redacted form, was not brought to the ... and more » |
One of the key axioms of modern open government is that all public data should be published online in a raw but usable form. Usability in this case is aimed at software programmers. By making government datasets more usable, programmers are more likely to innovate in the civic sphere and build technologies, using the raw data, to enhance the relationships among citizens and with government.
The open government community has provided plenty of valuable guidance about what usability means for programmers. We proclaim that all datasets need to be: published in a format that is reasonably structured and machine-processable; well-documented; downloadable in bulk; authenticated using cryptographic digital signatures; version-controlled; permanent and citable; and the list goes on and on. These are all worthy principles to be sure, and all government datasets should strive to meet them.
But you'll be hard-pressed to find any government datasets that exist with all of these principles pre-satisfied. While some are in better shape than others, most datasets would make programmers cringe. Data often only exist as informal working sets in proprietary Excel spreadsheets. Sometimes they are in structured databases, but schemas are undocumented, field values are ambiguous, and the semantics are only understood by the employee who created them. Datasets have errors and biases that are known but never explicitly corrected.
For a civil servant who is a data caretaker looking over the laundry list of publishing principles, there's frequently a huge quality chasm between the dataset she owns and how people are asking to see it released. To her, publishing this data adequately just seems like a lot of extra work. The more attractive alternative is to put off the data publishing—it's not in her job description or evaluations anyway—and move on to other work instead.
How can this chasm be bridged? A widely-adopted philosophy in software development and entrepreneurship would serve open government data well: release early and release often. And listen to your customers.
In the software development world, a working version of the product is pushed out as soon as possible even with known imperfections—an 'alpha' release—so it can be subject to real use by early adopters. Early adopters can provide helpful feedback about what works, what's broken, and what new features would be most useful to them. The software developers then iterate quickly. They incorporate the suggested fixes and features into their code and release an updated version of the product to their users. The virtuous cycle then starts again. Under this philosophy, software developers can be efficient about how to best improve their code where it matters, and users get software that works better and has more features they desire.
The 'release early, release often' philosophy should be applied to government data. For the initial release, data caretakers should take the path of least resistance to get data out the door. This means publishing datasets in whatever format is most convenient, along with as much documentation as can reasonably be mustered. Documentation is especially important with an 'alpha' dataset—proper warnings about its problems, instabilities and inductive limitations must be prominently displayed. (Of course, the usual privacy and legal caveats should also be applied.) Sometimes, the 'alpha' release will be 'good enough' for programmers to start their work, and this will minimize any superfluous work done by caretakers. This is the virtue of 'release early.'
In other cases, programmers will need assistance using the dataset and will notice problem spots with the initial release. The dataset might be confusing, contain errors or be difficult to work with. A tight feedback mechanism allows the programmer to get help quickly and continue to innovate, while the data caretaker can fix problems based on real use cases and add clarifying metadata into an updated version of the dataset. Data quality and usability increases for those working with the dataset, both in and outside of government. That's the virtue of 'release often.'
And here is the big opportunity for government: no platform currently exists to engage the prime audience for government data—software programmers. Without a tight feedback mechanism, the virtuous cycle of mutual benefit cannot exist. Government is missing its best opportunity to improve data quality by neglecting useful feedback from programmers who are actually tinkering with the datasets. Society is losing out on potentially game-changing civic innovations, which otherwise would have been built if data were more usable and the uncertainty of failure reduced.
A terrific start in turning the corner would be for government to adopt an issue-tracking system for its datasets. As a public venue, it would help ensure that data caretakers are prompt in addressing developer concerns. It would also allow caretakers to organize feedback in a formal way. Such platforms are commonplace in any successful software development venture. The same needs to be true for government data in order to drive rapid quality improvements and increase developer engagement.
"When Regina Holliday needed her husband's electronic health record to help her care for him after a terminal cancer diagnosis it didn't arrive for days, was incorrect, and outdated when he was transferred to another provider. She later used the correct record to care for him until his death.
"It's time to stop being incremental," Holliday, now an advocate for patient access to their EHRs, told a panel of the Health and Human Services' Health IT Policy Committee on April 21. "There's too much urgency to get the data to the patient."
"Access to Information Act has turned into a bad joke Winnipeg Free Press It costs $5 to make an Access to Information request. And while a response is to be answered within 30 days, many government agencies average several months ... and more » |
Convention centre report public soon TheChronicleHerald.ca Save the View, a group opposing the project, received a copy of the report under a freedom of information request, but the Coast weekly newspaper reported ... |
The Guardian |
Dan Froomkin has a good write-up of the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA) failure to release certain notes related to violations that Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine was cited for in the past year. The Upper Big Branch Mine was the site of the worst coal mining disaster in the United States in the past forty years.
"The Charleston Gazette’s award-winning mining beat reporter Ken Ward Jr. first reported about the inspector’s notes late Tuesday, describing them as being among a “dribble” of documents that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA, pronounced em-sha) is finally releasing to the public “as federal and state officials begin a long and complex effort to figure out what caused the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in 40 years.”
The violation the inspector described in his notes was fixed later that same day; the company was cited for “unwarrantable failure” to follow safety rules and fined a hefty $70,000.
But the inspector’s notes — a particularly valuable source of information that the government used to routinely make available on request — weren’t released to members of the public or to journalists until more than a week after the mine exploded.
If those notes had been available, journalists like Ken Ward or Ellen Smith (the managing editor of Mine Safety and Health News) or someone else just might have brought some much-needed attention to Massey’s evidently casual attitude toward such a life-threatening issue. And maybe a disaster would have been averted.
“This is life and death stuff,” said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy specialist at the Federation of American Scientists. “And by withholding this information from the public domain, the government’s capacity to spur corrective action was blocked.”
Call centres legacy of federal fund for Cape Breton CTV.ca An access-to-information request to the Enterprise Cape Breton Corp. resulted in a list of the 25 companies and 16 government and non-profit recipients of ... and more » |
Access denied: Federal delays stymie information requesters, watchdog says Winnipeg Free Press Citizens who pay a $5 application fee to make an Access to Information request are supposed receive an answer within 30 days, but many agencies average ... and more » |
![]() CBC.ca | Access to chief of staff fleeting National Post ... aide invented the concept of "unreleasing" public information just as it was poised to roll out in response to a media access to information request. ... Access denied: Federal delays stymie information requesters, watchdog saysWinnipeg Free Press all 119 news articles » |