Tech: Govt Info: Expo in Washington lobbies Fed govt for new digital info policy

A h+powered expo and conference in Washington DC will lobby for new ideas regarding govt accessiblity and info-transparency, according to the values of the Open Government movement. The event goes under the rubric of "Gov 2.9: Aspiring to greatness in Open Government," according to Governement IT Blog and the email newsletter InformationWeek Government (they have several other newsletters targetting non-govt topics, with information on information of various kinds).

Gov 2.0: Aspiring To Greatness In Open Government

Posted by John Foley (editor, InformationalWeek) on May 24, 2010 04:46 PM

Tim O'Reilly is raising the bar on what he envisions for the open government movement. At this week's Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C., O'Reilly won't be talking merely about government serving as "a platform" -- that was last year's idea -- but about government as "a platform for greatness."

It's an ambitious goal for a concept that's still so new and unproven, but O'Reilly, the tech book publisher and Web 2.0 evangelist, is right to think beyond the release of data sets once cordoned off behind the federal firewall, which is only a starting point. He foresees not just new services and applications being delivered from government platforms, but, in some cases, originating from smaller government entities and at lower costs relative to existing services. "There's an opportunity to rethink how certain government programs work," Tim told me in a phone conversation.

O'Reilly compares "government as a platform" to the iPhone phenomenon in which Apple's smartphone serves as a foundation for thousands of applications created by a thriving ecosystem of third-party developers. Think of how that model might apply to the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and the EPA -- with thousands of useful new apps and services being offered, but not by the government itself -- and you begin to see the potential.

The Obama administration unveiled its Open Government Directive in December 2009, and just last month agencies submitted detailed plans on how they will meet the mandate to become more open, participatory, and transparent. You can find a spreadsheet-like dashboard of where federal agencies are in meeting the Directive here. OpenTheGovernment.org has its own audit of agency plans.

Technotes, by Owlie Scowlie


Fine and dandy, with all due respect to the visionaries and evangelists of this proposed free-market innovation in digital info-flow: but without the integration of a security-minded stream, the entire advocacy posture becomes glaringly one-sided. Notice that Foley doesn't mention the Department of Homeland Security, but I imagine there are app developers out there with competence to add to the iPhone (and smart phones generally) a few cryptpgraphic ideas, and even apps for notifying local authorities of mischief on the order of the recent attempted terrorism at Times Square. Just a thawt.