Gov 2.0 Week in Review

Data.gov 2.0, Law.gov, cloud computing at Apps.gov, open data, Facebook Communities and government, and the future of the Internet and democracy.

This past week in government 2.0 news was full, as always, particularly for this correspondent as the Gov 2.0 Expo comes to Washington next week. Bernard Kouchner may have written that the "universal spirit of the Enlightenment should run through the new media" but this week, the zeitgeist of the government information revolution online was powered by open data. As always, if you have comments or suggestions, please send them to alex@oreilly.com or reply to @digiphile on Twitter.

Data.gov 2.0

The news that earned the most headlines was of the relaunch of Data.gov, which has seen substantial growth and improvements since the U.S. federal government published the first data set at the online repository a year ago. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra called data.gov: "pretty advanced for a 1-year-old" at the White House blog and talked at length on Federal News Radio about the anniversary of the website. The best coverage of the relaunch came from Wired's sneak peak at the redesigned Data.gov. Read NextGov for another good take on the update to the nation's data warehouse. And on the first anniversary of Data.gov, the Sunlight Foundation officially announced the launch of the National Data Catalog.

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App contests are unlocking government innovation

Apps for Democracy co-creator on how app contests get government going.

In August, Army CIO Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson will announce the winner of the Apps for the Army Challenge. He'll be speaking about the progress of the contest at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C. next week. Regardless of which application wins the contest, however, the development of software by coders in the Army is an important case study in disruptive IT innovation. Creating application contests, especially for government entities, is no walk in the park, given the complex rules and regulations that govern procurement.

The man who may know the most about the nuts and bolts behind that process is Peter Corbett, the founder and CEO of iStrategyLabs an interactive agency based in DC. In the Government 2.0 world, Corbett is well-known for co-creating Apps for Democracy with Vivek Kundra, now federal CIO, and for his work on Transparency Camp, Government 2.0 Camp and civic entrepreneurship. An edited interview with Corbett on app contests, open data and innovation follows. For the raw take, you can also listen in to the embedded podcast.

What are your current projects?

Peter Corbett: At the moment, it's Digital Capital Week, a specific innovation initiative we've got here in the District. It's 3,000 plus people, all geeks and creatives, who want to make the city and world a better place. It'l be here June 11-20.

We're also doing Apps for the Army. When application development challenges wrap up and all of the apps are shown, that's when it really gets exciting.

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Open space data can improve lives (and save birds)

Jeanne Holm wants to see an international ontology for space data.

The spectacle of thousands of migratory birds is among the natural world's wonders. And the images of the Earth generated by NASA's network of weather satellites are among humanity's most breathtaking creations. [Satellite Image of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge via NASA]

What happens when bird migrations are tracked using that advanced imaging technology and then mapped onto flight paths? Open government data leads to fewer bird strikes. That's of major interest to anyone who operates, flies on, or is otherwise associated with European air travel, given that the cost of bird strikes due to damage and delays for civilian aviation is estimated to be €1-2 billion.

I learned about this application of open data from Jeanne Holm, the former chief knowledge architect at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (she's since left to be communications and collaborations lead for Data.gov). Holm told me about FlySafe, a European Union initiative that's primarily led through ESA, the space agency.

"Space data is meant to help us understand the world around us," said Holm. "We share because people are asking for it and making a difference with it."

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Applying social software to digital diplomacy at the U.S. State Department

How do you move from a culture of "need to know" to a culture of "need to share?" Richard Boly thinks about the answer to that question every day. Boly, a speaker at next week's Gov 2.0 Expo, is the director of the Office of eDiplomacy at the State Department. His office is an applied technology think tank within the agency that's focused on improving the agency's communication and knowledge sharing.

Boly is responsible for overseeing Virtual Presence Posts (VPPs), enterprise search, classified web publishing, and social networking, including the development of "StateBook." He recently spoke with me about all of these initiatives, as well as the cultural challenges of integrating social software into a large, distributed enterprise.

Given the online reach of people like Jared Cohen, Katie Stanton and Alec J. Ross, the U.S. State Department has already accumulated social media credibility. When coupled with the State Department's YouTube channel, official "Dipnote" blog , Facebook page, Flickr account, Second Life hub and RSS feeds, someone assessing "Government 2.0" success at the oldest executive agency in the United States might miss the importance of how social software is changing the way things work behind the firewall. Consider these numbers:

• Diplopedia, the State Department's enterprise wiki, has more than 11,000 articles, which are viewed by employees more than 35,000 times every week.
• Communities @ State includes 64 online communities, with 20 more on the way. State Department workers have posted more than 32,000 entries and comments to these blogs.
• The Secretary's Sounding Board, an idea generation platform, has suggestions for improving the Department from nearly 1,000 workers, including more than 6,000 comments.

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Gov 2.0 Week in Review

Open government, open data, moving .gov into the cloud

So what is Gov 2.0? This past week saw wide-ranging discussion about the meaning, substance and relevance of the term, along with plenty of other news related to social media in government, open data, improved crisis response through technology and a move to the cloud.

Tim O'Reilly went live online to talk about his paradigm for government as a platform, including how technologists can play key roles in this important transformation. You can also read Tim's thoughts on open government at O'Reilly Labs. The recording is embedded below, after the jump. J.D. Lasica wrote a terrific review of both "Open Government" and the webcast.

Mark Drapeau took a look back at the three phases of government 2.0 as the first Gov 2.0 Expo draws near. Federal News Radio anchor Chris Dorobek also stepped back and published an important "mile high" perspective in his Gov 2.0 status report. Time to get ready for the Gov 2.0 Expo!

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White House moves Recovery.gov to Amazon's cloud

Earlier today in a blog post on WhiteHouse.gov, federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced that Recovery.gov would be moving to the cloud. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board's primary contractor, Smartronix, chose Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to host the site. NASA has used EC2 for testing, but this will be the first time a government website -- a ".gov" -- has been hosted on Amazon's EC2. Kundra estimated the savings to the operational budget to run Recovery.gov at approximately $750,000, with $334,000 coming in 2010 alone.

"This is a production system," said Kundra, during a press briefing today. "That's a critical difference from other agencies that have been testing or piloting. We don't have data that's sensitive in nature or vital to national security here."

The recovery board plans to redirect more than $1 million in computer hardware and software that were being used to host Recovery.gov to fraud oversight operations. It's a move that Earl Devaney, chairman of the recovery board, said will help identify fraud, waste and abuse in the recovery program.

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White House deputy CTO Noveck on next steps for open government

Transparency gets all the press, but participation and collaboration are equally important

Transparency initiatives at the White House, one of the three elements of the Open Government Initiative, have received ample attention from mainstream media and groups like the Sunlight Foundation. The implementation of the other two elements, participation and collaboration, have not. Can citizens be empowered to participate and collaborate in governance?

To begin to answer that question, I spoke with Beth Simone Noveck, professor of law at New York Law School, director of the White House Open Government Initiative, and U.S. deputy chief technology officer. Noveck is the author of "Wiki Government," where she wrote about using social networking technology to connect people to policymakers.

President Obama's first executive action on January 21, 2009 was to sign the Memorandum of Open Government. Last December, Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued the Open Government Directive. In April, all federal agencies delivered initial open government plans and an independent coalition released an open government plans audit.

Noveck has been at the heart of open government theory and application for years, starting with her groundbreaking work on the Peer to Patent project. That effort -- which began in 2005 and became the subject of Noveck's 2009 book, "Wiki Government" -- was aimed at applying the expertise of individual members of the public to the heavily burdened U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Now, she's directing the implementation of the open government agenda of President Obama.

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When it comes to new media, the Smithsonian is all in

Michael Edson on how the Smithsonian uses crowdsourcing and transparency to further its mission

The Smithsonian Institution epitomizes the phrase "an embarrassment of riches." With 137 million physical objects in its collection, and 28 distinct museums and research centers, you could spend the rest of your life there and not see everything.

Michael Edson, who serves as director of web and new media strategy for the Smithsonian, got his start cleaning cases in one of the art museums. He now oversees the Institution's online presence, which he talks about in the following interview. He'll expand on many of these same topics at the upcoming Gov 2.0 Expo.

Where the Smithsonian's online content comes from:

Michael Edson: Each museum collection -- sub collection, the zoo, the portrait gallery, natural history museum -- really functions as its own world. And 99 percent of the content creation happens deep within the Institution's 28 separate research and collection units. It's a real innovation at the edge environment. We argue in our web and new media strategy that so much great work can happen in those edge environments, where you've got subject matter experts, collections, the public and a little bit of technology expertise really close together. That's the hothouse where these great things grow.

Pretty much any model of web and new media production you can think of is being done somewhere in the Smithsonian. We have 6,000 employees, 137 million physical objects, and incredibly brilliant and talented people. So we do outsourcing. We do in-sourcing. We do lightweight development. We do great big monolithic development. The trick now is establishing a framework -- we call it a Commons -- where these edge innovators can have the basic tools they need to be successful.

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Craig Newmark on better government through enlightened customer service

Would you "like" a government agency on Facebook? Would you "like" a service delivered by a .gov website? How would you feel if a government official "liked" you back? How would you like to be identified online?

There are no easy answers to these questions, as anyone who attended the FTC privacy workshops or recent "privacy camps" in the District of Columbia or San Francisco knows. Craig Newmark, the founder of craigslist.org, attended the privacy camp in San Francisco and shared a few thoughts about issues of trust, identity, social networking and government.

Online privacy is now even more top-of-mind for tens of millions of users, as Facebook's social plug-ins roll out across the Internet, along with its instant personalization pilot. Thirty-three government agencies are on Facebook, with more than 400 pages between them. Those government agencies may not have added "like" buttons yet -- but they're interacting with citizens on Facebook, Citizen Tube, Google Moderator, Twitter and beyond.

Electronic privacy is much more than social media privacy, as White House e-privacy priorities on HIT, smart grid and education show, but the topic has been red hot since Facebook's f8 developer conference. When Jenna Wortham asked the readers of the New York Times to ask Facebook privacy questions, for instance, nearly 300 of them responded.

When Craig Newmark visited Privacy Camp SF, he used characteristic humility in observing that he saw a whole bunch of people "much smarter than him interested in real privacy issues and how to do something about them." Newmark, who founded craigslist more than 15 years ago, has seen how online culture has evolved as the Internet and web has experienced exponential growth. "That culture respects privacy, though the concept is being redefined," he said. "It's a moving target. It's important to know what information exists about you, know how it is being used, and be able to control that information."

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What is Gov 2.0? Come find out

Tim O'Reilly examines the issues and opportunities surrounding Gov 2.0

Tim O'Reilly recently hosted one-hour webcast that took an in-depth look at Gov 2.0 -- what it is, where the opportunities lie, and how you can get involved.

Topics included government efficiency and transparency, government as a platform, and how technologists can play key roles in this important transformation. The webcast recording is embedded below.

Many of the same topics will be explored at the upcoming Gov 2.0 Expo. You can also read Tim's thoughts on open government at O'Reilly Labs.

Better government through code

Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka wants to empower developers to become civic coders

In his inaugural address in January of 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged his fellow Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." In 2010, the question has been updated: ask not what your country can code for you - ask what you can code for your country.

Toward that end, Jennifer Pahlka has extended the innovative volunteerism of Teach for America toward software developers with the new organization, Code for America. The non-profit allows the brightest technical minds of this generation to create applications that let government deliver better services to citizens. As Jolie Odell reported at Mashable, five American cities have been selected to receive help building web and/or mobile applications through Code for America's fellows program. Boston, Boulder, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Seattle will soon have civic coders looking for ways to make government work better.

What follows is an edited and condensed interview with Pahlka conducted shortly before the selected cities were announced. (Note: included emphasis was added by the editor.)

What has bootstrapping Code for America been like?

It's definitely been "a dive right" in experience. And I think the good news is it's happening. When ideas hit reality, sometimes there's sort of a combustion moment. We certainly have had bumps. But it seems as this comes out into the world and gets tested, especially with city staff, that there is a real need and there is an interest in making this happen. There is enough belief in the potential to really drive it forward. We've taken it basically from a concept to having "real clients."

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Notes from the Politics of Open Source conference

Small conferences are often the best, especially when there's a high concentration of really well-educated and personally committed people sharing a room for two days. That's what I found at the Politics of Open Source conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Friday. (I could attend only the second day.)

The conference was the brainchild of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, which will publish articles based on conference talks in an upcoming issue. The editors have agreed to release the papers under an open license, and drafts are up on the web now -- for instance, the draft of my paper Promoting Open Source Software in Government: The Challenges of Motivation and Follow-Through.

Along with celebrity keynoters -- Eric Von Hippel and Clay Johnson -- the presenters as well as the attendees could boast a lot of real-world experience, a lot of serious academic achievement, and occasionally even a combination of the two.

They covered a lot in two days, too. A conference organizer summarized the main themes as:

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Recent Posts

• The three phases of Government 2.0 | by Mark Drapeau on May 10, 2010
• Four short links: 10 May 2010 | by Nat Torkington on May 10, 2010
• Gov 2.0 Week in Review | by Alex Howard on May 7, 2010
• How government can engage young people online | by Alex Howard on May 6, 2010
• Building better White House policy through online citizen engagement | by Alex Howard on May 5, 2010
• The spy who came in from the code | by James Turner on May 3, 2010
• Four short links: 3 May 2010 | by Nat Torkington on May 3, 2010
• Gov 2.0 Week in Review | by Alex Howard on April 30, 2010
• Health IT committee has six months to define insurance enrollment standards | by Alex Howard on April 30, 2010
• Promiscuous online culture and the vetting process | by Alistair Croll on April 29, 2010
• Setting White House priorities for electronic privacy: HIT, smart grid and education | by Alex Howard on April 28, 2010
• The military goes social | by James Turner on April 27, 2010