Hello all-
I've wanted to diary this topic for quite awhile, as this group is one of the best constituencies to debate and understand this topic.
As engaged citizens, we all tend to make the observation that Government -- these days President Obama's Government -- should be doing more for all of us. Well, I'm going to show you how President Obama's Executive Branch is succeeding in empowering YOU to do more to advocate from a more informed position. As a tech-savvy online advocacy community, you NEED to care about this topic.
Given how busy this holiday week is for me (and you too, I'm sure) I think that perhaps the most effective way of presenting this information is more "open letter" than diary.
So, let me give that a shot.
First, the immediate news. Yesterday, in a splashy unveiling, the Executive Branch (in the person of Federal CIO Vivek Kundra) announced that USASpending.Gov has been updated with detailed information on IT Contract data. It now is supposed to show all contracts held by major firms within every agency. Editorially, I suspect that there is plenty of DoD and DHS stuff which isn't and never will be in there, for better or worse.
Understand what just happened. The U.S. Executive Branch just said, "Hey, come look behind the curtain". Transparency. This is the first step towards democratic Government "by the people". What is even MORE important is what is implied. "Inspect our data. Tell us what you find. If you must, use it to criticize us. We will all be better for having had the debate." To be sure, what is on USASpending.gov is not knowledge. It is data. The administration is challenging the citizenry to use it's combined know-how to cull this data, draw conclusions and synthesize them into knowledge about how our Government is operating and what it could be doing better. This knowledge becomes power -- the power to collaborate with our government to improve the country.
Look at how the Federal CIO frames it:
"Everyone knows there have been spectacular failures when it comes to technology investments," Kundra said. "Now for the first time the entire country can see how we're spending money and give us input."
Next point. As a tech-savvy person, you need to understand what a Government IT investment actually is. Any consultant will tell you that three components make up a (public or private) business area: people, processes and technology. These days, IT underpins the vast majority of mission areas within the Federal Government, because it can supplement the capabilities of people and can enforce consistent processes. To my way of thinking (and you're probably not going to believe me on this) the Government really started to embrace this way of thinking under GWB's President's Management Agenda. Seriously. I kid you not. Anyway, the point is that the Government has evolved to understand the importance of IT as an enabler to every single corner of the Government's function. So showing us all IT spending is a VERY BIG DEAL. Did you have access to all this data before? Well, kind of. But you had to know where to look. And only a few of us actually knew how to interpret it when we found it. Admittedly, it made people like me a little more important than we really should be.
Now, to be sure, all this data can be used in many ways. Indeed, there is already speculation that this data can be used to further the interests of the already-monied insiders. Well, of course it can. But so can virtually any piece of data. But your Government is challenging you to use this data, and use it to further the countries interests through using technology and technical projects in more efficient and more progressive (oh, yes I did say PROGRESSIVE) ways.
So. You have the IT Spending data. What other presents has the President and the OMB given you. Oh yeah, this little thing called Data.gov.
Now, I know I don't need to explain the concept of "meta" to this community. Data.gov is basically intended to be "meta government". It's a list of the stuff your government knows, without giving you the stuff itself (in most cases). Agencies submit datasets to this repository on a voluntary basis. As of now I'm told there are over 10,000 data sets there. Again, you will never find too much DoD and DHS stuff in there (and I will be in the minority on this particular point but I'm perfectly okay with that). And, I've already looked for some Area 51 stuff. No luck. :-)
But here's an example of what you can do with Data.gov --
Lets say you just read a great diary by TeacherKen about poverty in the Marianas. You're all fired up. You then remember that Dengre is absolutely "the man" on this topic. He's got a recent diary too. You want to help but you don't think you know enough to call your Senator. Enter Data.gov. You do a quick search and you find out that the EPA has submitted a dataset which tells you exactly how much toxic waste was released by CNMA in 2005. And the data.gov page even links you right to the flipping data!
You're smarter now. You can call Senator X and advocate for Change We Can Believe In.
A closing thought. The Obama Administration damn sure did not set up these tools so that they could be inundated by lobbyists. They set these up FOR YOU.
Use them.
Welcome to Transparent Government. YOU are the target audience.