Customer Reviews

Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice

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The most basic definition of open government is the idea that people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of government. Being able to closely examine decisions, policies, and procedures is foundational to having the ability to make intelligent and informed decisions as a citizen, especially in a democracy where an informed electorate is vital if good choices are to be made by voters when selecting leaders or holding them accountable.

The Open Government movement is not officially organized as a group or party, rather it is a growing collection of concerned citizens who want to help create better government by increasing citizens' access to information. It has been heavily influenced by the open source software movement and has similar aims: increased collaboration through making options available to any interested party willing to read and study, increased transparency by making source materials freely available for anyone to peruse and examine, and increased participation by eliminating closed systems wherever possible. While this idea was broadcast most widely in the campaign and early days of Barack Obama's presidency, this is not a one-sided political issue as much as it is an Enlightenment era system of belief, enshrined in the United States' Declaration of Independence and Constitution, now being updated for the digital era which is filled with technologies which could make those ideals more easily fulfilled.

Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice is a collection of 34 essays written by a wide variety of people who are interested in both promoting the philosophy of open government and in suggesting practical ways to implement procedures that will assist in applying that philosophy. The range of topics covered is diverse and interesting. Included are thoughts about governmental uses of information technology that currently limit openness and specific recommendations for remedying the problems, creating a wider variety of methods for people to access government data and increasing access across society, enabling greater innovation among those not directly connected to government such as through the creation of specific APIs so that outside research may be more easily accomplished using government collected data (paid for with public funds via taxes and therefore publicly owned data). We have essays that consider new and effective ways for current government officials to communicate more easily and directly with the people who elected them, discussions of how increased openness in government could decrease the influence of monied interests in governmental policy and could replace that with a greater influence by and for the electorate. There are clear and logical presentations on topics like why using open standards for data storage matters, especially with regards to publicly owned data as collected and used by governments, as well as some great arguments for the use of open source software to make government more efficient, transparent, and flexible in a rapidly changing world.

I greatly appreciate that this book exists. I would love for a copy to end up in the hands of every member of the government as well as any interested person planning to run for an office. These are policies that would greatly benefit the original intent of the founders of the United States (of which I am a citizen and where the book was written) and would be useful in any nation willing to carefully read and consider the ideas being proffered.

If this topic is of any interest to you, and I argue that it should be, this book would benefit you in your thinking. Go find a copy and read it.

I'm not an expert in politics or government. My field is corporate governance. However, I found this book, focused on civil governments, to include many lessons for corporate governments as well.

For example, the chapter by Douglas Schuler discussed online deliberation, including the work of e-Liberate, which developed an online version of Roberts Rules of Order to facilitate online deliberations. The system in its current form can support meetings that take place in real-time over an hour or so and, also, meetings that are more asynchronous (and leisurely), meetings that could, in theory, span a year or so, making it necessary for meeting attendees to log in to e-Liberate once or twice a week to check for recent developments and perhaps vote or make a motion. Might not such a system be useful for facilitating online shareowner forums, shareowner collaboration in deciding on proxy access candidates, or even annual shareowner meetings?

David Eaves builds off the work of Clay Shiky who looked at Ronald Coase's, The Nature of the Firm. Coarse theorized the people didn't self-organize in a manager-free environment because managing transaction costs - the costs of constantly negotiating, coordinating and enforcing agreements - would be prohibitive. In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Shiky asks, "But what if transaction costs don't fall moderately? What if they collapse?" The Internet seems to make that possible. Eaves cites the DIRECT Launcher project, where NASA and non-NASA employees created a virtual "skunk works" to design a rocket that outcompetes NASA. Eaves argues that with the acknowledged end of objectivity, sites like Wikipedia have increased credibility because their transparency documents partisanship. You can trace bias. Eaves goes on to discuss many self-organizing tools that I think might be readily adaptable to [...], CII and others. Other variations are discussed by Charles Armstrong. For example, One Click Organizations utilize the Themis Constitution developed by CIRCUS Foundation, designed to take advantage of electronic decision-making to simplify governance and administration.

Sarah Schacht takes us back to the fundamentals of democracy, points made in the Constitution, like the fact that a Journal of the Proceedings of Congress shall be published with Yeas and Nays of Members voting for and against bills. Of course, we can't have Board minutes released right after meetings but wouldn't it be reasonable to release minutes or at least votes after some reasonable amount of time... perhaps a year later, unless otherwise deemed strategically critical to remain secret? How can we hold our board members accountable if we never know how they vote?

If corporate directors really begin to represent shareowners, rather than CEOs and self-replacing boards, they might learn a thing or two from [...]. Then there's Sheila Krumholz's discussion about why the Center for Responsive Politics decided to publish their data on [...], which reminds me of decisions by funds to disclose their proxy votes at [...]. It turns out giving away what may cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to compile can actually increase your clout and help better fulfill your mission than hording information like gold.

Another site all in governance can benefit from is [...], which facilitates the ability to upload data, visualize it, and talk about it with other people. Explore your data through word tree maps, bubble charts, phrase net, tag clouds, etc. Visualization provides powerful insights.

That's just a few observations on a few chapters. Open Government contains 34, so there is a great deal to explore. [...], which improves the accountability of elected leaders by allowing you to vote on funding for websites/blogs that cover how you are being represented, is one of many sites that are missing. However, Lathrop and Ruma have done an excellent job of compiling a list of useful sites and essays that will go far in creating more open governments... whatever their form.

I haven't worked my way through all of this book, but thus far I am pleased to have found that this book contains a bunch of intelligent, passionate, and detailed reports on the practice and future of Governing 2.0. Most fortunate -- the book leans on the side of practical rather than the utopian, though the manner in which some authors link our democratic traditions to the ease of access afforded by new technologues is heartening.

The authors discuss the ways in which governmental technology can actually be used as a tool (inadvertently?) to reduce transparency. Rather than simply throwing up their hands and tacitly agreeing to the inevitability of a less-than-optimal signal to noise ration, they follow up with detailed examples of how technology can and should be simplified to make governmental data easier to access and easier to apply.

My favorite section thus far came from Charles Armstrong who provides an ample and veldt-friendly look at One Click Organizations. How can we not use computing platforms to allow quick and stremlined e-decision making? (He references the Themis Constitution.)

Throughout, this book is not simply about facia, but is foundational, proving that the political should never merely be ur-philogical in its roots. We deserve better!

This book is comprised of 34 essays written by thought leaders in both technology and government who are passionate about open data. The authors argue the case for "openness" in government and offer best practices and examples (several case studies included at the end as well) for building, supporting and evangelizing Open Platforms in government.

With the clout of Social Networks and hacker communities, the idea of being "open" isn't as radical as it used to be several years ago, and the book clearly capitalizes on that. Almost all successful companies have open APIs today. These companies realize that it is "data accessibility" that will invariably create value for the consumer-and their business.

So why can't governments do the same? The book argues the case for governments to "open up" and give access to their data (e.g. documents, bills, voting records, proceedings, initiatives, ...etc) so that the electorate is informed and able to fully participate in governance, which is in effect the ultimate goal of democracy.

Out of all 34 essays, Tim O'Reilly's "Government as a Platform" offered the most comprehensive blueprint for what needs to be done to get to the next level in Open Government. He offers seven lessons, or principles, that lead to Open Platform. These aren't government specific, which makes them even more valuable to anyone interested in the subject of Open Platform.

The seven principles are:

1- Open Standards Spark Innovation and Growth
2- Build a Simple System and Let It Evolve
3- Design for Participation
4- Learn From Your "Hackers"
5- Data Mining Allows You To Harness Implicit Participation
6- Lower the Barriers to Experimentation
7- Lead by Example

The principles are pretty self-explanatory and Tim fleshes each one out with examples and guiding thoughts. I highly recommend reading those sections twice to fully understand what they require of you and your company to build a successful Open Platform.

The principle that resonated with me the most was #2. I see this all the time (I'm guilty of it sometimes too): Engineers embark on an elaborative architecture quest to build the most "awesome" or "kick ass" software that will undeniably be the best platform EVER. The only thing is they often end up with a convoluted, unmaintainable system that ends up being "legacy" in no time. Tim quotes John Gall's Systemantics:

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true. A complex system designed from scratch never workes and cannot be make to work. You have to start over, beginning witha working simple system.
It's so very true."

At the end of his essay, Tim O'Reilly offers ten practical steps that government agencies can adopt to be more open. If you don't have time to read the entire book, I strongly recommend you read his chapter.

In the end, the paramount beneficiary of Open Platforms is the Consumer. In government, the consumer is the Electorate. President Obama understood that. He is the first US President to fully embrace the Open Government movement. We saw clear signs of that during his campaign in 2008 and in the release of data.gov and change.gov.

A few weeks back, I went to interview protesters at the Occupy LA encampment in downtown Los Angeles as part of my research for the new startup I co-founded, Voterspring.com. When I asked the question, "how do you think we can hold government accountable?" The overwhelming answer was, "information and transparent access to it."

This book paves the road to open and transparent government. Now the ball is in the government's court.

This is simply must reading. If you want to know what open gov is, where it has been and where it is going--this is the book

Politicians use the words collaboration, transparency, and public participation as punch lines. This textbook digs deeper than bumper sticker campaign promises. Illustrating how technology is (case studies) and can (theoretical essays) continue to increase citizen participation and awareness, this collection

This textbook is one of the required readings for Professor Dr. Ines Mergel's Government 2.0 course at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Unfortunately, the chapter that is required reading is "You can be the eyes and ears": Barack Obama and the Wisdom of the Crowds by Micah L. Sifry. I previously wrote about the danger of tying your message to a particular messenger in my review of Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign. Here again, Sifry delivers some thoughtful questions about whether "President Obama will listen to candidate Obama..." It would be a shame for someone to let their political affiliation get in the way of an informative essay.

In the foreword, Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, captured a key hurdle for open government:

"All this is happening at a time when an entire generation of baby boomers will retire from government, creating an exodus of knowledge and skills that may never be replaced. In the United States, this demographic shift will see more than 60,000 civil service employees exit annually between now [2010] and 2015. Large departments, such as the Department of Defense, will lose 20 percent of their workforces Many of these people hold executive, managerial, or key administrative positions -- replacing them will be nearly impossible.

To make matters worse, recruiting and retaining a younger generation of public servants won't be much easier. Just when government most needs an infusion of fresh-thinking talent, young people are losing interest in public administration as a profession."

Chapter 28, "Toads on the Road to Open Government Data" lists seven general reasons government data remains locked away:

* Privacy and legal restrictions;
* The culture of bureaucracies and homeland security;
* Ancient media;
* Proprietary and medieval databases;
* Ethically questionable (privacy);
* Ethically questionable (sharing);
* Cost.

It is fascinating to read that, despite what conspiracy theorists might claim, ancient media and medieval databases play as large a role as cost in preventing government from becoming more transparent.

In summary, I approached this book with more than a decade of government work experience. I've sat through a number of case studies that painted a rosier picture than reality, so I started reading with a healthy dose of skepticism. However, Open Government provides a balance of theoretical approaches and practical examples from an impressive collection of sources, both inside and outside of government.

Rating: Four stars.

This book covers a wide spectrum of "open government" topics. This should be a must-read for politicians and leaders, particularly those older than "Generation Y" (yes, I am older than Gen Y).

There are a number of contributors who add their perspectives to the book. This collaborative approach makes for an interesting read, not unlike flipping through "Wired", but with a focus on governement transparency.

If you work in governement, PLEASE read!

A terrific resource like no other in its field. It offers an amazing diversity of viewpoints covering virtual every aspect of the debate over transparency and open government. It deserves a place on your bookshelf if you care about transparency and Government 2.0 issues.

I've been noticing recent references to "open government" and "transparency" in political discussion circles and it appears to be a trend that has the potential to make dramatic changes to the national political landscape. This book is a collection of interesting essays that show how the vision of political transparency would be supported through technology. So, yes, it is possible and yes, there is a movement in this direction and yes, there is the possibility of having access to the truth rather than the political propaganda that organizations like Fox News likes to pump out.
If you're really interested in supporting the movement towards governmental transparency, here is a book that explains how it would work. Now, go ye forth and "make it so."

OPEN GOVERNMENT: COLLABORATION, TRANSPARENCY, AND PARTICIPATION IN PRACTICE is a top pick for any college-level library strong in politics and government. It comes from leading practitioners inside and outside the realm of government, and shares their ideas on how to use the Web to make data accessible to citizens and government internal operations alike. From understanding online collaboration and transparency to encouraging participation and cooperation, this packs in key details for organizing more effective government operations using the Web's powers as a pivot point.