Description
The Enlightenment idea that citizens should have access to their government's documents and proceedings is recognized by most democracies, but recently has been influenced by principles and practices in the open software movement. Here contributors from technical fields and from academic and practical politics consider the trend in light of statements by incoming President Obama, which the subtitle quotes. Among their perspectives are government as a platform, engineering good government, online deliberation and civil intelligence, Barack Obama and the wisdom of crowds, emergent democracy, why opensecrets.com opted for full frontal data sharing, liberating government data, promises and realities of Freedom of Information Acts, and utah.gov as one of several case studies. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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In a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to achieve and direct this emerging world of online collaboration, transparency, and participation.Contributions and topics include:Beth Simone Noveck, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for open government, "The Single Point of Failure"Jerry Brito, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, "All Your Data Are Belong to Us: Liberating Government Data"Aaron Swartz, cofounder of reddit.com, OpenLibrary.org, and BoldProgressives.org, "When Is Transparency Useful?"Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, "Disrupting Washington's Golden Rule"Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.Org, "By the People"Douglas Schuler, president of the Public Sphere Project, "Online Deliberation and Civic Intelligence"Howard Dierking, program manager on Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet Web platform team, "Engineering Good Government"Matthew Burton, Web entrepreneur and former intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, "A Peace Corps for Programmers"Gary D. Bass and Sean Moulton, OMB Watch, "Bringing the Web 2.0 Revolution to Government"Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, "Defining Government 2.0: Lessons Learned from the Success of Computer Platforms"Open Government editors: Daniel Lathrop is a former investigative projects reporter with the Seattle Post Intelligencer who's covered politics in Washington state, Iowa, Florida, and Washington D.C. He's a specialist in campaign finance and "computer-assisted reporting" -- the practice of using data analysis to report the news. Laurel Ruma is the Gov 2.0 Evangelist at O'Reilly Media. She is also co-chair for the Gov 2.0 Expo.
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