Macleans: Is public data the future of governance?
Is public data the future of governance?
How free information can make government more accountable and transparent
PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON HAYTER
Garbage day in Vancouver is complicated. Because the schedule shifts each time a holiday occurs, your assigned day for pickup regularly changes. And because your assigned day regularly changes, it is easy to forget when you’re to put your refuse at the curb.
A little more than a year ago, David Eaves, a fresh-faced and effusive public policy activist, speculated on his blog that there had to be a way, perhaps something like an iPhone app, to make it easier to keep track.
He speculated one could, using public data from the city, establish a service that would eliminate forgetfulness and help make the city cleaner, healthier and more efficient. Two Vancouver computer programmers—Luke Closs and Kevin Jones—took up the project and within a few months, VanTrash was launched. A year later, 3,000 people use the free service to either update calendars on their computers or BlackBerries, or receive email reminders of approaching garbage days.
This, in its own way, might be the future of governance. A future in which the principles of free information, collaboration and connection allow citizens—and perhaps businesses as well—to provide what government does now in more efficient, useful ways. “You have information that in the hands of other people can become valuable,” explains Eaves. “That’s VanTrash. We can augment and extend what it is that you do.
And we can do it in simpler, cheaper and clever ways.” At the essence of theories like open data and open government is the belief that when information—from garbage routes to data on the efficiency of government services—is widely accessible, government is not only more accountable and transparent, but citizens are empowered to engage in public policy and create their own solutions.
FULL ARTICLE: http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/16/power-to-the-people/
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