US perspectives on Government webs

Something is in the air. A flurry of announcements has put open access to government information, particularly legal and regulatory information and information about legislative processes, into the spotlight on both sides of the Atlantic.

Important Details:  Recent weeks have seen number of developments in the growing movement to bring more public-sector information online.  In the US in particular, it seems every day brings interesting news of realistic prospects for making judicial, legislative and regulatory sources available - not just to individual citizens, but to entrepreneurs and innovators who can transform the data into new products and services.  A sample of these prospects includes:

• Proving that access government information need not be a boring topic, open access gadfly Carl Malamud has launched an only partially tongue-in-cheek campaign to be named the next Public Printer of the United States, head of the Government Printing Office, called YesWeScan.org.  He wants to use that platform to lead government information into a new age, and has a full platform of reforms.  Malamud’s Public.Resource.org has already brought significant advances in access to court decisions, legislation, and other public filings information.
• Picking up on one of Malamud’s pet peeves, the US Federal Courts’ laughably outdated Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has directed a sharply-worded letter to the chair of the Rules Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. If you want to see what the internet looked like circa 1996, PACER is like a time capsule.  Lieberman’s letter isn’t about the clunky interface, however; it points out two more serious flaws.  First, PACER continues to charge 8 cents per page (per-page pricing, another anachronism!) for court filings, despite a rule change in 2002 that encouraged the Judicial Conference to move to free access to information to the extent possible.  Second, Lieberman points to a Public.Resource.org study that showed thousands of examples where PACER documents included sensitive personal information such as social security numbers that should have been removed by the courts prior to availability on PACER, and demands an explanation of how such information will be protected in the future.
• President Obama’s appointment of Vivek Kundra as the Federal CIO says a lot about the priority that the new adminstration places on transparency.  Kundra promises a Web 2.0 approach to government information; more cloud computing and fewer big IT contracts; and generally more access to data. As CTO for the District of Columbia, Kundra created a centralized Data Catalog where the public could obtain streams of data and other data sets for use or re-use in new products or services.  He ran an Apps for Democracy contest that resulted in all kinds of mash-ups and public information services based on the data feeds.
• Quietly and somewhat under the radar, the new appropriations bill working its way through Congress includes language encouraging “access to legislative documents … through more direct methods such as bulk data downloads and other means of no-charge digital access to legislative databases.”  This is a key aspect of open access; advocates want low-level data that can be further manipulated, rather than PDF or other final-form data.  The bill also requires a report on advanced search capabilities from the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, and the GPO, all key information providers.  See Tim O’Reilly’s summary of developments.
• Meanwhile, in the UK where the move to greater access to PSI is somewhat more centralized and coherent, the Power of Information Task Force has issued its final report.  The task force, created by the Cabinet Office, was created to advise the government on ways to leverage new media to benefit from government and citizen-generated information.  The government’s response is expected in May.  In addition to producing the main report, the task force ran its own competition similar to the one in DC, Show Us a Better Way. The report identifies a number of ways in which public data can be made more available and useful, and it recommends measures that will encourage third-party re-use: “Government should encourage and assist the development of capability outside government in online empowerment or mutual support for public service outcomes, particularly in the Third Sector.”  For the task force and the Cabinet Office, citizen empowerment is the name of the game, and Web 2.0 is seen as an alternative to the chaos of the thousands of government web sites created since the dot.com boom.

Implications:  This train has left the station. As all the various boards and task forces slowly move their way through some of the legal and policy issues surrounding public sector information in recent months and years, a culture of mash-ups and do-it-yourselfness has taken hold.  Watch for governments at all levels to simplify and open up access to their data sets, not just as a matter of policy, but to create cost savings as older legacy systems are replaced with cloud computing and open-source solutions.

All this activity opens the door for new players who will exploit newly-lowered barriers to entry.  They will devise new,  interesting, and disruptively low-cost applications to run on top of all that open source data. In addition, the changes afoot will decrease the friction in the information pipeline, and make it easier for non-publishers to grab regulatory data and feed it directly into the software and processes that run on enterprise systems.  Increasingly, publishing models, even if converted to online platforms, will be under pressure from all kinds of competitors delivering content faster and in more actionable forms.  It will be up to the publishers to hone their value proposition in that environment, whether that value lies in even better technology and workflow solutions, or in editorial and analytical strengths.