Comments on: Open Source Government Transparency Projects

By: Mattie Bohanan

Mattie Bohanan — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:33:44 +0000

Wonderful!, discovered your web log on Ask.Glad I finally tried it out. Not confident if its my Safari browser,but sometimes when I pay a visit to your website, the fonts are actually tiny? On the other hand, adore your submit and are going to be again.Bye

By: Albert Bernatowicz

Albert Bernatowicz — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:22:50 +0000

Wo die Suchmaschine mich den ganzen Tag hinbringt Fabelhafte Homepage, ich werde wieder kommen.

By: prometheuspan

prometheuspan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:07:16 +0000

yes, i was thinking about some sort of feature where persons would list their areas of expertise and knowledge and etc so that people could determine easily how much credibility their ideas and information have, and so that people could find each other and work together and etc by looking for people in the search engine aspect of it that are online and available with that knowledge etc.

Maybe you can come on over and brainstorm some with us. Just asking these questions
and pondering is fascinating… these are the thoughts we need to be moving through now.

I’m not a business person, I’m a geek aspie polymath, so my ideas of functionality are
created through the lens of what i imagine to be needed for my own use.

Those with a clearer or more direct perspective on business and government should
help us out with that. It can only be a brilliant and useful as the quality of feedback
and process. Most people are used to non responsive admins and such… This is the opposite situation. Jim keeps upgrading the site everyday with new features, at a lightning fast pace for a programmer. Some minor features i have asked for were done in like under half an hour. I was floored. What we really need is a lucid couple of people to tell Gilliam what else it needs.

Maybe you don’t know off the top of your head, but… the materials on your site lead me to believe you have given it a lot of thought and have a lot of insight.

Thanks in any case for any time and energy,
sincerely,
pan

By: NoelDickover

NoelDickover — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:18:16 +0000

Hi Eric, I just checked out your site. I think the larger problem is in getting large segments of the agencies to even agree on similar, let alone standard formats. I think your approach of offering up some options for govt agencies to use is terrific. The more exposure that possible options get, especially if there is a community behind it, the more likely government agencies will actually use this stuff.

Regarding the information required for transparency, I think the answer is at least as much based on the operations and outputs an agency as the file format the data is delivered in. This is why notions of participation and collaboration are so important - dialogue is necessary to get a reasonable answer to this question, as the answer will be different in every agency. We know Kundra stresses both operational data as well as normal output data, but this still leads us to a rather wide open field.

The other thought I had regarding data formats is whether you’ve talked with the Sunlight Foundation (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/). They are definitely in the front of the herd on this issue.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:30:56 +0000

I worked with Erik Wilde and Raymond Yee in developing a site to help guide implementation of Recovery.gov transparency measures. The (ugly and tech-focused) site is located at:

http://isd.ischool.berkeley.edu/stimulus/2009-029/

The site has demonstrations and an accompanying report (all under a Creative Commons attribution license). We’ve developed a set of simulated data that conforms to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) February 18th specifications for disclosure. These data are offered in a variety of human and machine-readable RESTful web services. We hope that this simulated data will help act as a guide for implementation federal agencies. We are already in communication with several agency officials and data architects at OMB.

However, one topic that needs more attention is the issue about what kind of information is required for “transparency”. To help answer this question, we’re seeking feedback from the wider community. Do these data really help in offering a more meaningful level of transparency? What additional information would be required to make this even more useful for community oversight?

Thanks!
-Eric

By: NoelDickover

NoelDickover — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:04:11 +0000

Hi prometheuspan, the main thing that’s needed for that is a company already under the GSA schedule that the open source community trusts to do work with. Aside from that, a jobs board type of function would be required. In terms of features, I’d need to think about that a bit more, but the thought is you would want to marry up like interests fairly seamlessly.

By: prometheuspan

prometheuspan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:40:53 +0000

I agree we need to be doing all of that. Thanks for expressing it, its nice to have somebody else working the problem.

wh2 is now prepared in theory to do most of all of that, all we really need is some good influx of energy to get people using the wikis.

That begs for a new crowd of wiki savvy type folks.

“1. Finding an easy method for allowing open source developers of all stripes to bid for jobs under the GSA schedule.”

What does that need for features?