The People's Data.(International Edition; TECHTONIC SHIFTS)(making government information available to the public)

Byline: Christopher Werth

Government should make data openly available and then let outside talent reimagine how it can be used online.

President Barack Obama has pledged to make the U.S. Government more open and transparent. As a senator, he was off to a promising start by trying to expand the amount of government data offered up to public scrutiny. The most important aspect of his proposal (which has yet to make it into law) was not what information it required the Feds to provide but how they were supposed to supply it. All data on federal funding would have to be made available through "applications programming interfaces," a Web 2.0 tool for managing large amounts of data. The APIs would make it easy for third parties--citizens, civic groups, activists or lobbyists--to take the information and incorporate it into online maps and visual displays or "mashups" that compare it with other data. It would go a long way toward harnessing the Web to promote a rigorous public dialogue.

The idea is that government agencies should make public data openly available, and then get out of the way to let the best outside talent reimagine how it can be used online. It's something of a free-market approach to nosing around in the government's business. David Robinson, associate director of Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, has argued for what he envisions as an "ecosystem" of open, easily accessible public data. The competitive advantage that savvy, civic-minded Web developers have over federal Webmasters would increase the opportunities for public engagement with the activities of government.

A visit to nearly any U.S. government Web site shows how much improvement is needed. The sites, like government offices, are often cramped and confusing, with information that flows in one direction through thick, bulletproof glass. Even Obama had to backtrack when he took office: BarackObama.com, the campaign Web site, and Change.gov, set up for the president's transition, were models of responsiveness, but WhiteHouse.gov is much more staid. Part of the problem is that official sites run into tricky legal ground on free speech, which makes it difficult to do things like moderate comments on a Web site. Civic groups, by contrast, would have no such restrictions. Open APIs would also help enourage a healthy competition of ideas for disseminating government data.

Civic groups have already had a big impact on the relationship between government and its citizens; they just do it, without APIs, by painstakingly gathering the data. GovTrack.us, developed by University of Pennsylvania grad student Joshua Tauberer, has become a widely used source for tracking legislation through the U.S. ...