Hi, Dave -- want to start off by thanking my high school typing (that's what it was in the day...) teacher, Mrs. Taughner, for giving me nimble fingers.

I came to this work through my work on what I call "networked homeland security," which argues that the advent of networked communication devices and Web 2.0 apps, especially mobile social network ones, have fundamentally changed the relationship of government and the people, and have empowered us whether government wants that or not.

When I first found out about what I guess we'll call "public data" -- ie, public release of data streams in easily-used formats such as XML, RSS and KML, that seemed to be a logical extension of the same change toward empowering the public and unleashing the "wisdom of crowds"

In the US, there are only a few government agencies (TO MY KNOWLEDGE -- WOULD LOVE TO KNOW OF OTHERS!!) working actively in this area. The RI Secretary of State, for example, releases a wide range of data streams, but they don't provide a lot of information on how to use them, so it's largely for the geek population.

In the US, the best example is the District of Columbia: its Citywide Data Warehouse releases -- at last count -- 216 different REAL-TIME (that's important, because real-time data allows you to interpret the data in real-time (duh) and that allows any analyses to really be valuable management tools, rather than just historical.

However, bar none, the most creative effort of this sort that I'm aware of is in the UK, where the government is actually asking the public for our ideas !!! on how to use public data better to serve the public interest. The "Show Us a Better Way" competition is actually posting the entries to the web as they are received (compare that to most contests, where only the judges ever see any but the winning entries), so that the public in essence already "wins" by learning a wide range of practical and impractical ideas, and they're offering a sizeable pot of money to the best ideas to begin their implementation. I hope that this gains a huge amount of attention, and that it forces the new US president to follow suit!

It seems to me that -- as the tremendous number of creative Google mashups that have been created in just a few years demonstrates -- there are limitless ways in which data can be used, by entrepreneurs, by watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation, and by people with a strong interest in a given subject, to analyze possible trends, convergences, causality, etc. As a result, almost any kind of data stream that doesn't affect security or personal privacy is probably fair game for release in easy-to-use streams such as XML, KML and RSS. I'll be urging the attendees to err on the expansive side: you should have to justify keeping a data stream private, rather than the reverse!

Bear in mind that David Robinson, the lead author, is a self-described libertarian, and thus isn't a huge fan of government in general, so it's understandable that he'd take a position (OK, this is an over-simplification) that the best thing government can do is to publish data streams and then get out of the way of activist groups and entrepreneurs who can interpret it.

I think that under-estimates the way that smart government employees can use data internally to do a better job. I forgot to mention that Vivek Kundra, the DC CTO (who will be on the 9/9 panel!) is doing a great job of using data streams internally to undercut agency and program "silos," encourage collaboration, empower individuals, etc, with demonstrable benefits in terms of more efficient government operations, better services, etc!

Number one, understandably, would be fear of the unknown. This might seem risky if you've never done it before, and they also worry that statistics might be taken out of context (as if government officials hadn't ever done that themselves....) That's why I favor an approach of releasing the data internally first, as DC has done. That way you'll see some of the potential benefits, get familiar, understand possible pitfalls, etc. THEN release them publicly.

However, for those who still don't want to do it, I answer that ALL YOUR DATA ARE BELONG TO US!!! -- smart folks can already "scrape" much of it from other sources. If that's the case, I think the battle is already lost, and agencies would instead be smart to start enjoying some of the benefits of releasing it.

BTW: I don't want to underestimate the critical importance of a rigorous review process so that data relating to national security or personal privacy is protected -- much better than it is at present!

Hi Dave, thanks for bringing me in. Let's get to it!

A few government employees said it was a morale boost, so that was fantastic. At the end of the article, I asked people who were interested in two aspects of the article to write to me and voice their interest. I've gotten a good response to that request.

Finally, some people, both in comments and via email, disagreed with my arguments and/or the ideas. What's great, though, is that all such criticisms were constructive. There was zero bickering or ad hominem attacks, which, having blogged in the past about government and politics, was a huge surprise for me.

Overwhelmingly positive, especially from those outside the government. I've gotten great feedback from everyone from government reformers to everyday programmers to founding fathers of the open source movement.

My friends in the government, who are primarily in the Intelligence Community, have stopped short of a full-out endorsement of it. But they are definitely open to using more open source software...as long as it comes from a trusted source. That's one of the reasons why I want to create an organization with a formal government relationship.

Hi Mark. State and local governments could absolutely participate. There are a few reasons why most of my words about it have focused on the federal level:

-That's where I have experience
-That's where all of the high-profile government software screw-ups have happened. In other words, their projects waste more money than state ones, and using such examples is a better way to convince people of the need for this project.
-Their work affects people nationwide--worldwide, even. So it's easier to attract possible programmers if they know their work will have a larger impact.

On the other hand, it might be easier to attract local programmers for local projects. Local governments will probably have less red tape than the Feds as well. So yes, I am definitely open to working with non-federal agencies.

Two things:

-First, I'm looking for funding to help me develop the project and promote the idea.

-Second, I'm researching what sort of legal entity the organization should be, how it should be funded, etc. This seems trivial, but when dealing with the government procurement process, your corporate structure could be the difference maker. Government procurement is a very murky world. I'm sure that even if a government office would love to work with us, their ability to do so could hinge on the most arcane of legal matters ("Oh, sorry...you didn't check Box 47f. Deal's off."). Therefore, I'm reaching out to people with government contracting and procurement experience to find out how to do get this project off on the right foot.

Josh,

you've struck at the heart of the matter. The two challenges you mention are precisely my motivations. I want to open the government's eyes to a new and better way of doing things, and I want to decrease the influence of the military-industrial complex and keep them from pilfering taxpayer dollars.

I have an answer for the first one. A necessary part of marketing the project will be talking to government managers and teaching them the facts about open source. I expect to encounter lots of skeptics who believe open source is low quality, is unsafe, etc. They need someone to explain the concept to them, so this project would be a good way to do that. Even if a certain person isn't willing to do a project with us, at least we have an opportunity to teach them the facts about open source.

Another way to fight it is in how we develop. Lots of open source projects allow for anonymous contributions, and government friends have told me this makes them skittish. So a low identity-based barrier to entry might be necessary if you want to contribute code to government projects.

As for the second challenge, I don't expect our financial resources to compete with the likes of SAIC, Booz Allen, Lockheed Martin, etc. But we can provide some things they can't--or, at least, aren't very good at: Our programmers will come from a bigger and better talent pool. The Release Early, Release Often philosophy will let us respond to user feedback as we develop each project. Change requests can be made and deployed within hours instead of months. And then there's the whole "free" thing.

I realize, however, this "muscle" you speak of might be used subversively. If that happens, I have no idea how I'll react to it. But I do know that if it does happen, it means this project has arrived.

Thanks! Happy to do so.

The Open House Project started because many different people were all trying to address the same sorts of issues: redefining accessibility and openness in light of the increasingly relevant Internet. I wouldn't want to claim to have founded something so community driven. It grew out of individual efforts that discovered a shared interest in developing recommendations for the 110th Congress. I was working with a community of citizen activists on Daily Kos, a project we called the Congressional Committees Project, and initially connected with Pelosi's staff, The Sunlight Foundation, Matt Stoller, David All, and Rob Bluey, and the project rapidly expanded to include many other citizens and staffers with an interest in congressional technology.

I've grown used to dealing with Congress's idiosyncratic attention span, since their agenda is defined by a shifting agenda and justified partisan maneuvering; that's what to expect from the way Congress is structured.

Given that structure, the way something exists as a "true priority" in Congress is much different than what that looks like in other contexts.

Working with others necessarily involves understanding that their priorities need to be fungible, and that an unanswered email to a staffer should never be taken as a sign of neglect.

That said, one of the great surprises for me after relocating to DC was that congressional staff are some of our staunchest allies, and that public access and staff (and Member) IT resources are integrally linked. For example, if a more robust congressional video processing system existed, then members and staff could do a better job of what's happening on the floor and in the various committee hearings they're scheduled to attend, often in conflict with one another.

My practical advice, though, is to recognize the different kinds of interests insiders have in what your work is, and to treat them as assets and allies. Volunteering to help, or sharing information, is always a good idea.

Some partisan fights are inevitable, and to be expected. The electoral imperative is the built in incentive structure for representative government.

"Paving the Cowpaths", or what I sometimes call "practical attainable or incremental reform" has served the Open House Project well as a central theme, since consensus is easier to organize around than brainstorming.

Both parties are free to politicize government reform issues as much as they want, and they'll have to answer to an electorate inasmuch as any bad-faith participation is understood by their constituencies. Our focus, however, is on the underlying issues behind the struggles, which often overlap far more than the arguments make it seem.

Republicans and Democrats can embrace technology kicking and screaming, or they can do it holding hands, or one party can drag the other onward despite heel-dragging. Facilitating reform is the project's primary goal.

No. I think there are some fundamental changes happening, and a big part of that involves having Representatives and staffers who understand and use technology.

As a general principle though, finding the first levers to push on from a public perspective was something largely missing from the dialog about government.

Ongoing government reform will involve visionary ideas, administrative minutae, and political struggles, and an appeal to any one of those catalysts will always involve the others, at least obliquely.

The new communities that we're seeing developing through technology (to borrow from Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody) are able to form and dissolve with much more agility than traditionally possible. This means that an organizations identity is more malleable, and more able to engage in whatever the situation calls for more easily, rather than being stuck in an academic, or advocacy, or legalistic framework. We can pick and choose the best features.

The Open House Project is a project of the Sunlight Foundation, so the relationship couldn't be closer.

I'm home in Noe Valley, close to downtown SF.

Hi Jim,

Wikipedia's internally evolved governance system is one. Another is the series of Asambleas Populares that arose in Argentina during the 2001 crisis to take back power.

At a larger scale, the compliance certification movement that NGOs are spearheading is a form of self-governance, too. See Branded! for more details.

For an inspiring scan of this space, view the Everyday Democracy video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR45-VFcVyg

Hi Brian,

The work we used to think had to be done by big news organizations at newspapers or TV networks is what I think is migrating off to investigative reporters and editors. They need a very stable base of revenue that can't be threatened, like endowments.

I'd love to have an infrastructure where those larger groups plus independent citizen journalists could be rewarded for their efforts. A business idea I had five years ago I call "Grassroots MacArthurs," with the working premise: if the MacArthur people can give genius grants, why can't you and I?

Citizen journalists are extremely important.

Hi Jim,

Yes, I think we're in one of those phase changes like the shift from feifs to Church, then Church to States, then States to Corporations. All these roles are being remixed now (including the Fourth Estate, per my answer about citizen journalism).

I can't really predict how it all turns out, especially because there are always these unexpected big detours in any "obvious" trend, but I'd love to see people wake up and begin to take power back themselves.

Back in 19th Century England, the central Government began to usurp local power for the new highways they were building. Once they'd started that, they worked their way through other domains, including education.

Now we have a chance to rebalance the whole, discovering new ways of (dis)solving problems without huge centralized (corruption-attracting) Government projects. It's a future that liberals, libertarians and conservatives might actually all like -- if they thought through their goals and principles.

Hi Dave,

Like the neural connections that carry signals inside individual brains, we're now weaving simple, "dendritic" connections between people around the world.

Every seemingly low-value act of "friending," blogging, linking and even email forwarding builds these connections. At first, they're just weak links, but over time, these become the trusted channels for recommendations (what to buy, how to vote, whom else to trust) and new relationships.

The result looks a bit like Teilhard de Chardin's idea of a Noosphere, or other folks' beliefs about conscious evolution. It's a pretty neat future, and I think we're heading toward it.

Hi Ellen,

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200: read Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody. That's a great start.

After that, you can go in a zillion directions. Two other recommendations:

Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley, an international relations prof at Georgetown who mentored Bill Clinton. Way interesting view of history.

The Alphabet vs. the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain (Tiffany's Dad!), an even more out there view of history -- with very useful insights about the role of written language versus images.

Sure, happy to do it.

We find that people using unstructured digital information, especially Web 2.0 data like wikis, blogs, and Google documents for projects are often saving information that they then promptly lose. We think that people are having challenges finding the "good stuff" in all that unstructured data, and are often unable to easily share their "insights" - the main takeaways from the data they find, save and use.

Now we're shifting gears a bit, so I'll back up from the software arena, and talk in general about the arena of "money for good." There is currently no set definition of the social capital market, so it's a little hard to say there's a specific number. Is it only money that generates a return or a profit? Does it include donation money, which typically looks for no return? Is it "blended capital" that includes both? What *kind* of return does it look for - financial return (just money), social return (people are helped), or environmental return (planet is helped)? Depending on how you slice it, the arena encompasses billions of dollars, but how many billions depends on how you define it.

Xigi Software's godfather was xigi.net, a non-profit site that was created to help people in the social capital space to find each other. It's both a social network and an information network. On Xigi.net, we help people discover others who also want to accelerate the flow of capital to good. As for Xigi Software... we're still somewhat in stealth mode, but I can say that we see the opportunity to connect people and information in new ways.

Depends on what we mean by "contributors." If it's people contributing their information to the non-profit xigi.net site, then yes, we've had thousands of people come. They add a brief profile, and define their "power relationships" in the social capital space - who they invest in, what boards they're on, etc. - and they can see a dynamic "map" showing their connections.

It took a few months to get going, like any social network, but once it reached a critical mass of a few hundred, people saw a lot of value in the connections being displayed graphically, because there were enough people to connect to.

Thanks Dave, it’s a pleasure to be here, and I am really looking forward to the multi-way interaction.

A creative commons, social venture that combines argument mapping and wiki-editing to let people around the world collaboratively map contentious public issues; so that the best arguments on all sides of any debate can be freely available to all and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all.

Most of the maps are in an early stage of development themselves—like Wikipedia in early 2001 rather than 2008—and open to further collaborative refinement. But, for example, as well as the map on Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, there are maps on how the international community should respond to Iranian nuclear policy, climate change, drugs policy, abortion. In an educational rather than public policy context there’s also a map of 50 years of philosophical debate on artificial intelligence (building on Bob Horn’s pioneering work in this field). Once logged-in, anyone can create a map—and edit, extend, rate and comment on all the existing maps.

It’s a perfect example of the flow of emergent and generous conversation across the web. Seb Schmoller found, and was intrigued, by Debategraph, and asked us for a guest blog post. David saw the blog post and responded with a characteristically encouraging and insightful commentary—followed by a call for open debate on Obama’s running mate, which inspired us to seed and post the initial debate map.

[Ed: the Obama's Vice President debate]

My colleague, Peter Baldwin, is a former cabinet minister in the Keating administration in Australia, and I have worked as a public policy advisor in the UK. Having seen the policy system from the inside, we both felt that the way that we address and resolve complex and contentious issues in public life is broken—and it is broken at a time when it has never been more important for this system to function effectively. Independently we arrived at the conclusion that argument mapping offered a way bringing greater transparency and efficiency to this process, and that the read/write technology emerging on the web offered a way to open up this process to the collective intelligence and scrutiny of the creative commons.

Appropriately enough, we discovered each other via the web. Peter had begun to develop an initial version of the software, and I found his work while researching developments in the field. We struck up a tremendous collaborative relationship over the net immediately—Peter lives in the Blue Mountains in Australia and I live in Somerset in the UK—and have been working full time together at opposite ends of the world across the last two years.