Web 2.0 Expo: Towards a More Open Union: Ways for Us to Change America

Session Description: We have a unique opportunity now, as developers and designers to change our Government. From the FEC to Recovery.gov, new sources of data are beginning to pour out of Capitol Hill and state houses across the country. What kind of opportunities arise? But how do we developers use our skills to make this data compelling, useful and open. Sunlight Labs director Clay Johnson will discuss the story so far with Government data, where things are headed, and how you can help.

This session took place Friday, April 3, 2009. The speaker:

• Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs.

So this was much more of a call to action on the part of developers, but it had some take homes for everyone.

Bullet Point Review!

• The Landscape
  • Barack Obama “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency”.
  • Harry Reed “it’s time for open government, transparency, and it’s a time for results”.
  • Nancy Pelosi “the internet is an incredible vehicle for transparency, honest leadership and open government”.
  • John McCain “ethics and transparency are not election year buzz words; they are the obligations of democracy and the duties of honorable public service”.
  • Democrats: helps keep the majority, rep helps take back the majority.
  • Transparency makes healthier government.
    • Wubbahed.com
    • As they become more digitally immersed, they ask for less money in earmarks; digitally immersed = ethical?
    • Recovery.gov powered by Drupal
  • Transparency Opens Markets
    • Open data coming out of the government is helping to increase markets for commerce (Google Maps, Weather.com are examples).
  • Transparency Saves Lives
    • FDA made a widget regarding the salmonella outbreaks.
• The Problems
  • We have to meet the president half way.
  • Public means online (a warehouse open in wash dc doesn’t cut it).
  • We can’t afford to wait on government to get their stuff cleaned up.
  • Sunlight Labs is a community of 466 (so far).
• How You Can Help
  • Coding>Consensus
    • If you do it for them, they’re faster to adopt than they are to decide to adopt.
  • We don’t have much time.
    • Every politician is kowtowing to transparency. May change by January next year when people start running for election again. Only have about 9 months to push the ball as far up the field as it’ll go.
  • Issue -> Movement
    • Be an Organizer
      • Make sure people know each other’s names.
      • Move them into the physical space.
      • Make specific requests, but check your ego at the door.
        • Convene a Hack-a-thon in your area.
    • Parse a State (50 State Project)
      • The laws your state legislature are passing are far more important.
      • More local = more listening.
      • More local = less technology.
    • Redesign an Agency
      • Federal websites are heinously ugly.
      • Draw a picture for them of what their websites should look like – see them want to adopt your designs (Examples: USA.gov, Federal Elections Commission).
    • Visualize Data
      • CIO of the Federal Government wants to create data.gov with all the feeds and data.
      • Visualizations tell stories.
    • +1 Our Community
      • Spread the word about Sunlight Labs to developers and hackers.
      • Sunlightlabs@googlegroups.com
      • Wiki.SunlightLabs.com
        • Working on standardizing nomenclature in government documents (e.g. walmart, wal-mart, wlmrt all used in various documents, making searching hard).
      • Steal this presentation
        • Sunlightlabs.com/ignitepresentation

Points brought up during the Q&A

• What can non-developers do?
  • Join the list; it’s an open forum.  Some stuff you might not understand but there’s other stuff you can help with.
• How do you solve the warehouse full of paper issue?
  • A big scanner 🙂
  • Some are handwritten scans and using volunteers to manually enter this data into a database.
  • Data and technology will get us 80% there, the rest are actual eyeballs reviewing things.
• How can government help facilitate this?
  • Bulk access to the data.
  • API, rest based.
  • Compelling user interface for ordinary citizens (IN THIS ORDER).
• Have you explored the limitations of transparency (money, CIA, DOD)?
  • They’re not into hacking the FBI, they’ll know when they’re successful when the EEF complains about what they do.  For the time being they’re allies.  There are limits they tend not to cross.  They know what info is sensitive and not to put online.
  • Start with the open data and then remove what might be private, not the other way around.

Despite not being a developer, some of this is stuff that we can all pass on to our friends who ARE developers and attempt to make a difference.