Open Government Links of the Week – July 29, 2011
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“OpenCongress 3.0 empowers citizens to contact their legislators”(by Alex Howard)
- How do you think this could apply to local government?
“Counties Share IT Survival Strategies for Declining Budgets”
“New York Assemblyman speaks on FOIL; Gov2.0 in NYC, and pensions names withheld” (SunshineReview.com)
- The Assemblyman fielded questions regarding executive sessions, posting meeting minutes, and participation during open meetings.
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Open Government Links of the Week – July 8, 2011
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“Michigan communities join other cities, states in banning electronic communication during public meetings”
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“Successful changes to open meetings law in Massachusetts–a year later”
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“OpenDataPhilly.org source code released”
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“#GOV20 Takeaways from the Space Shuttle’s Final Launch”
- “There’s more than one way to look at Friday’s historic final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-135). What can local, state, or other government agencies learn from how NASA handled the event?
- Here are just some ways that NASA used the web to both build it’s brand and provide visitors with information that they were looking for. Also, don’t miss the photo collection from the event at the end of this post!”
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Open Government Links of the Week – June 17, 2011
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“Open data: top tips on transparency for local authorities”
- This includes 6 tips…
- The 1st of which is: “Make a start… accept that it’s not as complicated as you might think. Even on a very limited budget you’ll be surprised at what can be achieved and the difference it could make to the people in your community”
“Guide: Wiki’s for Government”
“Beta: The future of government websites”
- “Launching a website in “beta” used to be a way to test functionality before releasing a more polished product for public consumption, but according to some federal technologists…”
“City commission adopts phone attendance provision”
- What would be beneficial about this (or would it possibly be a negative step)? Hear what some have to say…
“White House Establishes Government Accountability and Transparency Board”
“The Network Effect: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter & Tumblr Reach New Heights in May” (comScore)
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The ROI of Open Government – FOR Government
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When you invest in something, you want to know how well your investment is paying off – your ROI. Well, citizens “invest” in government (and their community), so they want easy access to useful information about it. They want to see a return on their investment.
But open government is not just beneficial for citizens; there is a Return on Investment (ROI) for governments as well…
The ROI for Government
Saves time (and $)
When government data is easily accessible, citizens can easily find what they are looking for and download the information themselves. This significantly reduces the amount of government time spent on fulfilling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. If the government voluntarily puts data on its website (proactive disclosure) and makes it easy to use, citizens/reporters can find the information on their own, without needing to fill out a FOIA request. Clerks (and others) who work on fulfilling FOIA requests become enabled to spend their time working on other tasks.
Enabled Participation = Free consulting
Blind spots: everyone has them, including government. Citizens who have data at their disposal can be of greater help by helping to expose these blind spots to the government by means of providing insight and ideas.
If a government provides relevant information that is easily accessible to the public, citizens are then more likely to provide relevant feedback on their wants. Citizens can also take a look at what it going on and provide relevant feedback to the government that could potentially save the government money (see “Case Study: How Open data saved Canada $3.2 Billion” by @daeaves). Armed with this feedback from their citizens, government officials can then make more informed decisions about issues that impact their constituents.
Builds trust
Transparency encourages trust in government. And when citizens trust their government, they’re more likely to support their policies and their decisions. Which would you chose: To walk down a city street in pitch black or in broad daylight? It’s the same with government. Transparency (like sunlight) helps to build trust by removing suspicion.
The Payoff
The Sunlight Foundation puts it well when they say that “today, our newly networked citizenry has rising expectations of greatly expanded access to governmental information, so that it may play a fuller role in understanding, evaluating and participating in the workings of its government.” Remember Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address? The government is “…for the people”.
More openness means that both the people and the government win.
What other ways do transparency and collaboration help government become more effective? Let us know in the comments below!
*Note, Char Domin helped in editing a previous version of this post.
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Open Government Links of the Week – April 22, 2011
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It’s that time of the week where we let you know about some of the stories going on in the open government and technology space! Have any that should have been included? Share them in the comments!
“White House unveils tax calculator designed to give taxpayers a receipt” (Nextgov)
- Here’s the White House’s blog post and techPresident’s post about it.
- Interestingly, Clay Johnson (@cjoh on Twitter) had a blog post on this back in October. That post is entitled, “You Can’t Have a Receipt for your Taxes“.
- What do you think? Is the White House’s “Your Federal Taxpayer Receipt” a fair thing to post? Let us know in the comments!
“The Top Twittering Cities & Counties” (Code for America, HT)
- “This past cycle, we took a stab at collecting all the Twitter handles for cities and counties in ShortStack, our knowledge base of local governments. Out of 1293 accounts across 810 cities and counties (that we found), here’s the top ten by followers…”
“April 2011 Municipal Cost Index shows continuing price increases” (American City & County)
- How much higher was it than last year?
- Here’s an archive of the Index and a blog post on it by American City & County.
- About the Index: “The Municipal Cost Index, developed exclusively by American City & County, is designed to show the effects of inflation on the cost of providing municipal services.”
“Users to Google Video: Please Don’t Delete Our Clips” (GigaOM)
New York: “Putting the ‘Public’ in Public Meetings” (Gotham Magazine)
- ‘Staff who have to stay in the office, whether it’s the district office or even at City Hall, are assisted by webcasting,’ said [Councilmember] Brewer. ‘Not everyone has time to come down to City Hall, since government operates during the day.’….
- In the City Council, Brewer currently carries legislation modeled after the state rules that would require all city agencies to webcast their meetings. She hopes council will take it up this fall.
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