On November 19th, EU governments will meet in Malmo to sign a Ministerial Declaration on the key priorities for European e-government strategy over the next few years.

In recognition of this, a group of concerned citizens setup a campaign to collaboratively craft and get endorsed a declaration highlighting core principles for the advancement of European public services.

This Open declaration has now been created and will be presented at the official programme of the Ministerial Conference. The team is now seeking 2,000 endorsements for the declaration ‘in order to convince governments to fully embrace these values’.

A dedicated website has been created to allow citizens to register their support. The declaration has already received hundreds of endorsements (over 300 at last count) and has been translated into many languages including Greek, Catalan and Spanish.

Background

The video below explains the origin of the declaration and how the final text was arrived at.

The process towards the final declaration consisted of three phases:

1. Brainstorming - Uservoice was used to provide a platform through which citizens could submit policy recommendations for Public services 2.0. More than 40 recommendations were received and over 800 votes were cast.
2. Drafting the manifesto – The manifesto itself was drafted through the MixedInk platform. This enabled others to comment on and edit the document. Dozens of comments were collected which helped craft the final version of the declaration
3. Endorsement - This phase of the campaign is still in operation. A  detailed supporting programme on how to implement the key action points has been created, and the team is now seeking endorsement for the manifesto’s core principles and the actions needed for implementation.

The phased approach outlined above is similar to that taken by the Whitehouse during the drafting of the Open Government directive (to be released later this month). It’s also a similar approach to that being taken by the Australian government in relation to their Gov 2.0 taskforce. The medium through which the manifesto was created embodies the principles it seeks to embed within European public services i.e. that of openness, transparency and participation.

Manifesto Objectives

One of the primary objectives of the manifesto is for e-government policies to embrace ‘the open, meritocratic, transparent and user-driven culture of the web’. Encouraging innovation within European public services and allowing citizens to play a larger role in their provision is also a key objective. This can include the public building new public services based on open data, or simply engaging in dialog with Government around how service provision can be more citizen centric.

The manifesto focuses on three core principles for European public services:

1. Transparency – all public sector organisations should be “transparent by default”
2. Participation – government should pro-actively seek citizen input in all its activities
3. Empowerment – public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation

The team note how these three principles converge in issues such as the importance of making data legally open. By doing this governments can empower citizens to proactively contribute towards improving public services or engaging in civic debate:

public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation. In particular, government data and government services should be made available in ways that others can easily build on. Public organisations should enable all citizens to solve their problems for themselves by providing tools, skills and resources. They should also treat citizens as owners of their own personal data and enable them to monitor and control how these data are shared.

European governments are already under an obligation to open up their data under the European Council Directive on the re-use of public sector information. The declaration, however, is pushing for ‘real openness, not just accessibility on a website‘. This means conforming to Open government principles and a recognizing that, as Vivek Kundra says:

government does not have a monopoly on the best ideas.

Work is already underway in many of these areas. For example, the Semantic Interoperability Center Europe seeks to support the sharing of assets of interoperability to be used in public administration and eGovernment. Also, many of the finalists in the European eGovernment awards exemplify how the web can be used to empower citizens and businesses to more effectively interact with government.

The manifesto seeks to provide principles in which to frame answers to the pertinent questions regarding public service. The design, delivery and accountability of public services has been questioned, and new thinking is required in order to redefine the function of public services in the 21st century.

In order to facilitate new thinking, however, those working within government must be empowered to experiment and take risks in the delivery of public services. Andrea DiMaio highlights how the declaration fails to take into account how these tenets should be embraced internally by government employees. Gwynne Kostin also identifies this as an issue and quotes Mark Drapeau on Gov 2.0′s mid-life crisis:

Despite some leadership from influential individuals on using social software in government, there is still in many cases a disconnect between authorities issuing directives and ground troops carrying them out…

There are some key issues that need to be overcome in order for the principles of Open Government to be embraced. Nevertheless, the manifesto tenets are not necessarily directed toward only government-to-citizen interaction. Rather they are principles required for an open civic system, which includes Government to Government communication. Given this, I believe endorsing the manifesto can also be considered as a recognition that Gov 2.0 tenets need to be promoted as a necessary prelude towards effective reform of public services.

I’ve endorsed the manifesto and encourage you to do the same.

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Note: Malmo09 are organizing a conference to coincide with the 5th official EU e-government event in Malmo. Their aim is to offer a ‘creative statement of what Europeans really want from e-enabled government’. This Pecha Kucha style un-conference will issue their own popular declaration on e-government for Europe. For more information, or to attend see http://www.malmo09.org.

(Photo courtesy European Parliament on Flickr)

The New York State Senate launched a new feature rich website last month. It comes complete with lots of neat open government features. The site is open and clean with a similar presentation layout to many of the new Obama Administration sites, such as whitehouse.gov and recovery.gov. It’s easily navigable, and is heavily focused on creating a consistent and user-friendly visual experience. Along with this it provides a specific area for  Open source software and services.

Federal News Radio has a good interview with Andrew Hoppin (CIO of the New York Senate) regarding this initiative.

The new site has received many favorable reviews particularly in how it adheres to principles outlined in the Obama Administration’s memo on Transparency and Open Government. In relation to Openness, the top five principles upon which the site is based include:

1. Open Source software

The site was developed by a team from Advomatic using the free and Open source software. The Drupal Content Management System already powers other Federal websites, with the most prominent example being recovery.gov. The development team have outlined many of the modules used to create the site at Drupal.org, and intend to contribute back specific code and refinements. These contributions are at the heart of the Opensource methodology. It’s also a key ingredient in how government technology can be more transparent and collaborative.

The Senate recognizes that it has a responsibility to give back to the Open Source community, and as such all the NY Senate source code is published on Github at http://github.com/nysenatecio. This means that any developers could potentially create a copy of the site using the same Open source technology. Allowing other agencies to create replicas of the site is a fantastic gesture of sharing and collaboration from the Senate.

One of the actionable items resulting from the recent Open Government Brainstorm was to utilize “good collaboration practices in web and other technology design”.  The greater use of Open source software – as advocated by many with the administration – can create a more collaborative relationship between citizens and government, along with reducing the $71 billion Federal IT budget.

2. Open Content distribution

The site content is available under a Creative Commons license.  The license used is the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This means that the site text, pictures and graphics are free to be copied and distributed so long as appropriate attribution is provided.

While this is not as liberal a policy as Whitehouse.gov (which uses an Attribution 3.0 license allowing for the remixing of content), it is more open than many other state sites. For example, the recently relaunched Utah.gov uses a Copyright (All Rights Reserved) license for its content. This is disappointing given the impressive Web 2.0, transparency and open data features of the site.

3. Open Data area

As part of New York Senate’s commitment to transparency and openness, an Open Data section displays various documents relating to Stimulus spending and Senate budgets. Documents also include expenditure reports detailing how the Senate spends funds appropriated for its operation. This includes salary payments, travel expenses and lump sum payments by Senators and staff offices.

While Clay Johnson’s criticism on the format of the files (i.e. PDF and not adhering to Open data principles) is justified, it is nonetheless a step forward in terms of transparency and accountability. Given various controversies over Senate spending, the release of this data can only help – in the long term at least – increase trust between citizens and their elected representatives.

APIs

The New York Senate provides a developer API to help organizations and individuals compile the Senate data the way they want. This means records from the Legislative Retrieval System (LRS) are available in an open format and can be queried via a simple RESTful API to produce output in many formats – XML (RSS, ATOM), JSON, CSV etc.

4. Open to new ideas

The site solicits ideas on how to make New York State better. Through crowdsourcing it wants to encourage ‘citizen participation in the legislative process’.  As a result, three idea portals have been created encouraging the public to discuss ideas relating to Campaign Finance, Property taxes and Ethics Reform.

The site utilizes the ideascale platform, which was also used by the National Academy of Public Administration for the Open Government brainstorm. The current status of idea particpation includes:

• Property Tax: 36 ideas, 48 comments and 5134 votes
• Campaign Finance: 53 ideas, 18 comments and 1581 votes
• Ethics Reform:  7 ideas, 1 comment and 9 votes

Many of the Property tax ideas and comments relate to a specific piece of legislation relating to tax credits and tax reform. Through the provision of a discussion venue citizens can actively debate the pros and cons of legislation going through the Senate. This can serve to further engage people in civic debate with their elected representatives, and serves to make them accountable for their votes on specific issues. Increasing this kind of civic participation and the accountability of elected representatives is one of the primary aspirations of the Open government movement.

5. Open to commenting and sharing

The site is Open for citizens to comment current legislation under consideration by the senate. It describes this as a ‘virtual version of a session where legislative committees amend bill texts’ and is a New York specific version of the Federal site publicmarkup.org. Sections of legislative text can be commented on, with permalinks making these much easier to cite.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) data feeds are readily available for much of the site, including News, Blog posts, Senator updates and calendars (also available in ical format).

The use of Web 2.0 tools and platform is heavily promoted throughout the site. The New York Senate has its own Twitter (1013 followers) and Facebook (364 fans) account. It also highlights Senator profiles on these platforms if applicable. Along with this they maintain a Youtube account for legislative updates, press conferences and interviews.  Much of this content e.g. photos, videos, blog posts can be easily shared through the use of many standard Web 2.0 sharing services available throughout the site.

The use of Open APIs, Open source software (including giving away the source code), and Open data set the New York Senate apart from many other government websites. Notwithstanding some issues regarding Open data formats and lack of an XML sitemap it’s a model for State openness and transparency. Other New York State online services e.g Stimulus tracker, NYCStat, Tech talk and Open Book ensure the State is one of the most open and transparent in the country.

The eagerly awaited data.gov site launched this week, ushering in a new area of openness and transparency throughout the federal government. Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra announced the site as a platform to democratize government data by stimulating the creation of innovative applications and visualizations.

Kundra’s aim is for the government to tap into the ingenuity and ideas of the public to exploit information held by government agencies and institutions. He wants others to create new applications, conduct research and come up with new ideas to transform the way government works.

Data.gov is going to democratize data that the taxpayer has already paid for…It is fundamental to the President’s commitment to a transparent and open government. It lifts the veil on how your government works… and is going to be fundamental to driving transparency, innovation and lowering the cost of government operations.

Datasets

The site launched with dozens of datsets consisting of raw data in machine readable formats e.g. XML, Text/CSV, KML/KMZ, Feeds and XML. Along with this the public is invited to suggest datasets to be added to the site. The current data catalogs include:

• Environmentally-relevant data (copper smelters, energy usages, brownfields, soil geochemistries, clean air statuses, weather trends, earthquakes, etc.)
• Demographic data (earnings, ages, etc.)
• National income and accounts (Gross Domestic Products, income levels, etc.)
• Regulatory alerts
• Patent applications and grant information

Vivek Kundra’s interview on Federal news radio explains how more and more information will be added to the site over the coming months and years. Indeed, he expects over 240,000 data sets to be added from a wide range of agencies and departments across the federal government.

The majority of the data sets on the site (see Sunlight labs chart) are from the US Geological Survey, but Kundra expects more data to be added in relation to healthcare and energy.

He mentions how the Sunlight Foundation has launched a competition, called Apps for America 2, to see what applications/visualizations citizens can develop from the information on Data.gov. This crowdsourcing of ideas and inventions from the public is the exactly the kind of activity Kundra is trying to promote through the site. Public participation, analysis and exploitation of the data is encouraged, and re-reinforces Kundra’s view that the government does not have a monopoly on how it’s/our data is best represented.

Open Government needs you

Data.gov is a major milestone in the Obama administration’s Open Government Initiative. Indeed, its launch coincided with the White House’s other initiative for a more open government. Whitehouse.gov now includes an Open Government section highlighting process on this directive. It includes a link for the public to submit ideas, a blog and an innovations gallery that features other federal transparency projects.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy has launched a three phase approach to develop recommendations on how to make the government more transparent. Public participation is integral to the open government roadmap, and the solicitation of ideas is a cornerstone for progress in this area.

• Phase 1 seeks ideas and suggestions from the public on how to make government more open. The public can submit and vote on ideas at http://opengov.ideascale.com. Hundreds of ideas have already been submitted in the areas of Transparency, Participation and Collaboration.
  
• Phase 2 is a discussion and in-depth analysis of the ideas and suggestions submitted during the brainstorm stage. The feasibility and value of ideas will be discussed, with a view on how best they contribute to the President’s objective of a more transparent and open government.
  
• Phase 3 is concerned with drafting proposals to implement the most relevant ideas from phase 2.

The plan outlined above is similar in scope to the National Dialog on how to improve Recovery.gov. Seeking the public’s input and ideas for improving government is a central tenent of Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopera’s mission towards fulfilling the goals of President Barack Obama’s memorandum on transparency and open government.

The confirmation of Aneesh Chopra this week to the role of federal CTO will help develop and embed this directive throughout the federal government. Data.gov and the Open Government Initiative are an exciting start to this transformation. Their success, and the mashups/ideas they generate, will be a measure of how the public wants to participate in helping to improve government. It’s now over to us – the public – to engage and demonstrate what can be done with open date.

The first applications built on this data has already arrived (see FBI Fugitive Concentration). It’s exciting to see how an ecology of innovation will develop based on this data. What’s certain is government data, and its visualization are about to get a lot more interesting.