From:
carlchenery
Date:
Mar 09 13:37 NZDT
Short link
Hi Ninjas,
Thought it might be of interest.
*Long Now Foundation Seminar: Transparent Government *
The talk on from Beth Noveck as San Francisco-based Long Now Foundation,
currently available on mp3 here
http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/mar/04/transparent-government/
(Long Now members have video access now, and open access is later.
A bio of talk is below with good outline of some of the U.S initiatives in
one place.
I like:
- "the government replacing its reflex "there's a form for that" habits with
"there's an app for that,"
- encouraging citizens to "adopt a dataset"
Carl
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stewart Brand <email obscured>>
Date: Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 9:00 AM
Subject: [SALT] Dot.Gov (Beth Noveck talk)
To: <email obscured>
Noveck began with the example of patents, first devised in Renaissance
Florence and Venice to protect techniques such as glass manufacture. In
England, conferrring a monopoly on a tool or technique became a perogative
of the king. In contemporary America, the process of getting a 20-year
monopoly on your invention from the US Patent Office is mired in a morass of
litigation costs, a huge backlog, insufficient reviewers with insufficient
science education, and what Noveck calls "an outmoded conception of
expertise."
Her revolutionary approach is to "reengineer institutions to bring in
expertise from outside." Thus she developed Peer-to-Patent, which publishes
patent applications to the Internet. The online community researches prior
art, organizes the most excellent reviewers that emerge, and greatly
accelerates and refines the patent review process. A pilot program proved
the concept, and it is now being institutionalized at the Patent Office.
Noveck describes the methodology as "focussed collaboration" and as a way to
move power "downwards and outwards."
On President Obama's first day in office he signed a memorandum on Open
Government, committing all the departments and agencies to "transparency,
participation, and collaboration." They were asked to begin by identifying
high-value datasets that could be put online in downloadable form
immediately. The result was Data.gov <http://www.data.gov/>, which went
public in May 2009 and quickly had 64 million hits for its raw data files.
An IT Dashboard <http://it.usaspending.gov/> of the government's information
technology spending got 86 million hits. The White House made its visitor
logs
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/visitor-records>public.
Noveck said the government is replacing its reflex "there's a form for that"
habits with "there's an app for that," and a panoply of cloud-based apps,
including 165 social media platforms, are on offer at
Apps.gov<https://apps.gov/cloud/advantage/main/home.do?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes>.
Just within the Department of Defense, the entire department has adopted
(Long Now co-founder) Danny Hillis's
Aristotle<http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/Dod-Aristotle>software
to link all military expertise; the Army
field manuals <http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/wikifiedArmy> are
being wikified---collaboratively updated by soliders in the field; and
troops are encouraged to learn and use social media.
The formidable Code of Federal Regulations used to cost $17,000. Now the
price is zero for the
"e-CFR<http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&tpl=%2Findex.tpl>
."
"Loved data lives longer," Noveck declared. She encourages citizens to
"adopt a dataset," and to demand ever wider release of government data
troves. (One audience member requested that all the aerial photographs ever
made by the US Geological Survey be digitized and published.) The Obama
adminstration is finding that the whole process of opening up government
digitally doesn't have to wait for pefection. It can move ahead swiftly on
the Internet standard of "rough consensus and running code."
--Stewart Brand
PS. As a government employee, Noveck is not allowed to plug her book, Wiki
Government<http://www.amazon.com/Wiki-Government-Technology-Democracy-Stronger/dp/0815702752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267818242&sr=1-1>.
But I can.
--
Stewart Brand -- <email obscured>
The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org
Seminars & downloads: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/
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