ENTRIES TAGGED "open government"

Mr. Issa logs on from Washington

The tech entrepreneur turned legislator on open government, data, regulatory reform and his new foundation.

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 25, 2012

An interview with Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) on open government, personal data ownership, a digital Bill of Rights, Internet freedom, regulation, and more.

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Rethinking regulatory reform in the Internet age

Rep. Issa advocates for applying evidence-based thinking to regulatory reform.

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 25, 2012
As the cover story of a February issue of The Economist highlighted, concerns about an over-regulated America are cresting in this election year, with headlines from that same magazine decrying “excessive environmental regulation” and calling for more accurate measurement of the cost of regulations. Deleting regulations is far from easy to do but there does…
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Do citizens have a ‘right to record’ in the digital age?

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 25, 2012
When Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) and I talked this summer about his proposal for a digital Bill of Rights, I followed up by asking him about whether it might be more productive to focus on the rights that we already have in the digital context. That conversation naturally led to a question about freedom of assembly…
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Should the Freedom of Information Act extend to data in private companies?

Rep. Issa expressed support for reforming FOIA to include personal data held by companies.

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 25, 2012
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which gives the people and press the right to access information from government, is one of the pillars of open government in the modern age. In the United States, FOIA is relatively new — it was originally enacted on July 4, 1966. As other countries around the world enshrine the principle into…
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Does the Open Government Partnership merit more oversight and attention?

Rep. Issa weighs on on the Open Government Partnership and international treaties.

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 25, 2012
There are any number of responsibilities and challenges inherent in moving forward with the historic Open Government Partnership (OGP) that…
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Uncertain prospects for the DATA Act in the Senate

If legislative efforts to standardize federal government spending data founder in the U.S. Senate, it's a missed opportunity.

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 25, 2012
The old adage that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” is often applied to organizations in today’s data-drenched world. Given the enormity of the United States federal government, breaking down the estimated $3.7 trillion dollars in the 2012 budget into its individual allocations, much less drilling down to…
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We the People need our existing Bill of Rights to apply in the digital domain

Why propose principles for Internet freedom and a "Digital Bill of Rights" when existing ones will do?

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | July 14, 2012
How the Bill of Rights is being upheld in a digital context is, to say the least, an interesting living story to follow. The passage of a resolution that human rights must also be protected on the Internet in the United Nations Human Rights Council was a historic affirmation of the principle that “the same rights that people have…
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UK Cabinet Office relaunches Data.gov.uk, releases open data white paper

The British government further embraces open data as a means to transparency and "prosperity."

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | June 29, 2012

The Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom released a notable new white paper on open data and relaunched its flagship open data platfrom, Data.gov.uk. This post features interviews on open data with Cabinet Minister Francis Maude, Tim Berners-Lee and Rufus Pollock.

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The emerging political force of the network of networks

12 talks from the 2012 Personal Democracy Forum worth watching and sharing.

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | June 22, 2012

The ninth Personal Democracy Forum explored the nexus of technology, politics and campaigns. What's happening online matters offline. Indeed, the barrier between the virtual and physical worlds has fallen.

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mHealth apps are just the beginning of the disruption in healthcare from open health data

Rockstars from music, government and industry convened around healthcare at the 2012 Health Datapalooza

by Alex Howard | @digiphile | +Alex Howard | June 8, 2012

Two years ago, the potential of government making health information as useful as weather data may well have felt like an abstraction to many observers. In June 2012, real health apps and services are here, holding the potential to massive disrupt healthcare for the better.

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