Building the User Centricity Within the NET-EUCEN Network. A More Social Open Government. Earlier this week, Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein jointly released an inquiry about the future of open government-- specifically, they asked for insight on three things: How can regulations.gov, one of the primary mechanisms for government transparency and public participation, be made more useful to the public rulemaking process? OMB is beginning the process of reviewing and potentially updating its Federal Web Policy. What policy updates should be included in this revision to make Federal websites more user-friendly and pertinent to the needs of the public? How can we build on the success of Data.Gov and encourage the use of democratized data to build new consumer-oriented products and services?
We have specific, detailed responses to each of these questions, based on our experiences in encouraging public engagement, but first, it’s worth talking about how far we’ve come. Just two and a half years ago, the White House didn’t even have a blog. 1. 3. Summary. Global mapping of technology for transparency and accountability | Transparency & Accountability Initiative.
As internet and mobile phone use increases, technology is transforming the field of transparency and accountability making it an increasingly dynamic space across the globe. Technology is helping to improve citizen participation in decision-making and producing new ways of identifying public service challenges through processes such as ‘data mashing’. This paper documents current trends in the way technology is being used to promote transparency in different parts of the world. It reviews over 100 projects from across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, examining how new technologies are re-energising traditional methods. In particular, it focuses on how these new technologies are helping to engage different actors from citizens, media, authorities and the private sector. Our research finds promising success stories alongside less accomplished examples. The paper includes a summary of the key findings and recommendations for further research in key areas of this field.
Making Government Transparent and Accountable - SunlightFoundation.com. Open-source governance. Open-source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open source and open content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry, employing their collective wisdom to benefit the decision-making process and improve democracy.[1] Theories on how to constrain, limit or enable this participation vary however as much as any other political philosophy or ideology. Accordingly there is no one dominant theory of how to go about authoring legislation with this approach. There are a wide array of projects and movements which are working on building open-source governance systems.[2] Applications of the principles[edit] In practice, several applications have evolved and been used by actual democratic institutions in the developed world:[3] Common and simultaneous policy[edit] History[edit]
World Map of Open Government Data Initiatives. Open data, open government. There’s been a lot of talk about open government, but one province is finally walking the talk. Last month, the B.C. government unveiled DataBC, a broad initiative to make available at no charge a wide array of data gathered by government that had previously mostly sat unused in filing cabinets. B.C. is making close to 2,500 data sets available, such as birth rates, provincial obstacles to fish passage, old-growth management areas, carbon emissions statistics and information on schools.
This information is searchable and available for anyone to use. The goal is to help citizens and businesses make informed decisions, conduct research, analyze statistics and develop applications. Premier Christy Clark said the new data, available through www.data.gov.bc.ca, will do two important things. Many people think the idea of open government is all about freedom of information, but its impact goes much deeper.
The idea is a simple one. B.C. is a leader in this thinking. Government Web 2.0 in Canada. My thanks to Mike Kujawski at Governing People for reporting on Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0 in the Canadian Government. The guidelines themselves are available, as he points out, on the government website (published 18 November 2011). The UK government published its guidelines some time ago, the US ones are available here along with a range of others, and a further database courtesy of Chris Boudreaux. One of my colleagues noted that the guidelines are almost a website in themselves, being rather substantial.
Whilst I can understand the need for guidelines, much of the guidance within them already exists, as the Canadian ones demonstrate by the links provided to ethical ones and many other government policies as their context becomes appropriate. Will anybody seriously read such a dry and very lengthy web page, without even following the links? One of the main difficulties in my view is where the responsibility for the maintenance of social media lies.