Why Don't We Have Information.gov Instead of Data.gov?
The relatively new Federal government website Data.gov has made a lot of waves and gotten many people excited as part of a larger government transparency movement. But who really wants all this data? Primarily, the people I see excited about Data.gov and similar efforts are what I call "tech elites." Bloggers, evangelists, startup companies, software developers, former CTO's, large tech company execs, and the like. They hold apps contests, they run BarCAmps on weekends, they create new websites with open data, they get consulting contracts with local, state, and federal government. I see nothing wrong with tech elites or their behavior per se. But I wonder if a larger community - average citizens - has been ignored to some degree. Ellen Miller related to me that the Sunlight Foundation did a poll which showed 80% of citizens were in favor of more government transparency. Interesting, but that could mean many different things. I'm interested in knowing if there's a poll, or even some man-on-the-street type video, asking citizens if they want more government data, and if so, what - specifically and individually - they would do with it. I suspect that few people want more data. The data might benefit them indirectly, through websites and tools that others develop, no doubt about it. But what citizens - the real community the government serves - really want is information. They want news. They want analysis. They want content. Not XML, a tool catalog, or geodata. To me, this begs the question of whether the government should have an Information.gov site full of compelling, immediately useful, simple content for average citizens. What do you think? It's great that the government can check some boxes on a form and say, yes, we have a new "open" website, and yes, we have made more data public and available (counting the number of data sets per agency has become a bit of an amateur sport). But if the citizens don't care, who is it helping? Forget the lobbyists people love to complain about - While they're enjoying their eggs benedict, have tech elites stealthily become the newest powerful special interest group in Washington, DC?
Comments (6)
America.gov could do a better job of delivering people-friendly content from government, but developers are essentially building 'information.gov' with the help of quality open data.
I agree, citizens wants accessible content, but government can't be counted on to provide this, especially with limited resources. Why should it when citizen developers are willing and able to do this? The government doesn't have to invest the energy or potentially fail at this. It just has to open the data. The effort around building 'information.gov' then grows exponentially.
Discussing data and data quality is not high on my conversation list, but I know the value, and I appreciate data.gov's role in all of this.
A better question would concern the result of that data and how it affects citizens daily lives.
Ask about the end product, not the process.
Thanks, Mark.
Taking the next step to an information.gov would become overwhelming political, as information provides a context about what the data means. Political viewpoints will lead some people to want to ignore data, but it must be captured as objectively and accurately as possible.
Herbert Schiller wrote a book, Information Inequality, in which one of the chapters is on Data Deprivation. His case in point is that the Clinton administration couldn't establish a solid baseline for the healthcare debate, because key data had stopped being collected in the 1980s.
Now information takes not only preparation, but consideration. While it, too, is plentiful, it requires translation; and feedback can be immediate, if not sooner. Information can lead to discussion and then to collaboration. And that type of "2.0" exchange still eludes online, meaningful G-C/C-G communication.
