Sunlight Hackathon at Web 2.0 Expo

Thomas Lord [2009-03-16 03:17 PM]

I've been following / critiquing here and there the progress of the Open Government movement generally, Sunlight in particular. Now, who am I to do so? What authority have I in these domains? I'm nobody special - I'm just sayin', is all:

The movement, not least Sunlight, has been a pretty significant catalyst for change. The administration and the legislature (mostly the house) are moving very quickly in this area and I think we have all these nice Open Government Movement folks to thank. They are generally doing a fairly good job (on balance). Support Malamud for Government Printer, etc.

There is a big danger, though. There is a kind of corruption sneaking into the Open Government Movement of a sort I think Lessig can appreciate:

The movers and shakers there are all echo-chambered. They are living in a too-small world similar thinkers, all affirming each others work. Social kudos in that society go most often to whichever org or person most recently set up a fancy web site to explore government data. When they judge among themselves what kinds of new govdata hacks are "cool", they are talking mainly to themselves.

The danger is that they are going to accidentally create something too centralized and too "self-dealing". Slightly exaggerated: government data will be "liberated" but only so far as this one small community of Movement folks develops some hot web properties out of it... and then that's it. The net effect would be a simulacrum of open government and an ad hoc appointment of this small society as the keepers of the (bogus) definition of what public consumption of the data means. The political biases of that small society will color what data is prioritized for opening, how it is presented, and what kinds of feedback from it are recognized. Members of that small society will get some good gold stars on their CVs but, a great deal of potential will be lost and malicious corruption becomes that much more likely.

What they aren't able to much focus on, it seems, is how to get the raw data into the hands and activities of a decentralized movement. "Stuff" (unspecified) needs to happen so that a lot more groups are entered into the debate about what data is a priority to release, a lot more groups working on how best to consume that data, and a lot more groups working on how to convert consumption of that data into orderly, meaningful, transparent feedback to the government and the press.

That small society of Movement folks is freeing up data but if they are the only ones working on the problem of what is actually done with that data then their efforts are likely to run counter to their intent.

Conversely, the Movement will really be a huge win if that small society utterly loses control of it - if lots of various opinions about how to consume the data and what to do with it play out. If there is a competition over these things.

I hope that people "dog pile" on opportunities like the hackathon. Really, if it helps, think of it as trying to take over the Open Gov. Movement from the small society running it right now. It's not that I want any one party to win in such a fight - it's that I don't want a central authority in this sphere and I do wish for diversity and collective creativity. The best way to honor the work of the Open Government Movement society is to compete against it, all out, but towards the same prize. Otherwise, they are going to rapidly turn into naval-gazing, self-serving, fakes and nobody wants that...

This is a backhanded way of agreeing with the topic post that people ought to get involved. The addition I'm suggesting is to bring your skepticism and don't just follow trends.

-t

Anonymous [2009-03-16 08:49 PM]

I've been posting "virtual democracy" related links here http://collect-connect.blogspot.com/2008/09/online-democracy-related-links.html

Aaron Fulkerson [2009-03-22 09:59 AM]

If you want to do some rapid application development using sunlight foundation APIs, here's a very easy way: http://www.mindtouch.com/blog/2009/03/20/governmental-openness-sunlight-labs-and-mindtouch-deki/ In fact, with this MindTouch integration one doesn't even need to be a programming to be about to mash up Sunlight and hundreds of others web-services; although it helps.

This is available in the free and open source core of MindTouch too and the tutorial above makes it super easy to get the extension installed. Enjoy! :-)

Aaron Fulkerson [2009-03-22 03:34 PM]

Wow, my last comment was barely coherent. :-( Mis-post. Let;s try it again:

If you're interested in rapid application development using sunlight foundation APIs, here's a very easy way: http://www.mindtouch.com/blog/2009/03/20/governmental-openness-sunlight-labs-and-mindtouch-deki/ In fact, with this MindTouch integration one doesn't even need to be a programmer to be able to remix Sunlight APIs and hundreds of others pre-configured web-services; although, some basic programming/scripting skills does help.

This integration is available in the free and open source core of MindTouch and the tutorial (linked above) makes it super easy to get the extension installed. Enjoy! :-)

KTG [2009-03-22 04:18 PM]

The Open Government push may or may not develop to fulfill it's original intent but it's a push in the right direction. The "Banking 2.0" comments were interesting as well. I manage my own financial and data risks with the information I derived from justaskgemalto, a wide ranging digital security site.

Carl Malamud [2009-04-02 08:45 AM]

Jennifer's post has 425 words. Thomas Lord's "comment" has 647 words.

As to the substance, there is no "small movement" in "control" of things. There are a huge number of people working on these kinds of problems and trust me, nobody is in control. There is no secret society, no hidden puppet masters.

Terry Jones [2009-04-02 09:11 AM]

Hi Carl

> Jennifer's post has 425 words. Thomas Lord's "comment" has 647 words.

Is that a criticism? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make - to discourage long comments? Praise them? Or you just like counting things? :-)

Anyway, I think you've misinterpreted Tom's remarks (and he only uses the word "control" once - I counted).

I think his point is valid, and it has nothing to do with conspiracies, secret societies, etc.

He's simply pointing out that there is a tendency for small groups of self-affirming, mutually-reinforcing (and I can think of some more colorful terms), circles of well-intentioned but similarly thinking individuals to form around issues. When that happens, there is a risk - and that's all Tom is saying - that the outcome of the group's collective effort is less than it could have been if the group were more diverse, less self-affirming, etc. It's nothing more than that, and as I said I think it's valid.

I would re-word one thing slightly. Tom says "then their efforts are likel

Terry Jones [2009-04-02 09:37 AM]

[My comment got truncated somehow. Here's how it ended.]

I would re-word one thing slightly. Tom says "then their efforts are likely to run counter to their intent." I'd say instead that there is the danger/possibility that their efforts will run counter... etc.

Terry

Bruce [2009-04-02 05:01 PM]

FYI, the link to her personal blog is broken and should be http://blog.pahlka.com/, I believe.