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Expert Labs: Putting The 'Public' Into Public Policy Wasn't Easy

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, March 29 2012

The closing down of an effort known as Expert Labs this month acted as a marker of sorts in the open government movement. Epitomizing the general ethos of the time, here was a group of Internet-famous hipster technologists and personalities who had decided to storm the barricades and focus their collective attention on helping the federal government to break out of the Beltway bubble to connect better with the public when making policy decisions. Why shouldn't the world be excited about what kind of change they could potentially bring about? As the organization closes up shop, here's a look at what it did after launching in 2010. Read More

Beth Noveck's Transparency Suggestions For Bringing Better Data Through the DATA Act

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, July 7 2011

Two competing initiatives from the House of Representatives and White House respectively fall short of their stated goal to increase transparency around government spending, former White House Deputy Chief Technology ... Read More

U.S.'s Noveck to Help Open British Government

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 16 2011

Photo credit: Joi Ito Beth Noveck, until January the Obama administration's point person on open government, has been recruited to the British government to help in its "open-source policy making" efforts, ... Read More

"The Two Tribes of Open Government"?

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 9 2011

The Project on Government Oversight's Danielle Brian takes issue with former White House Deputy CTO Beth Noveck's breaking down of the open government space into "Good government reformers who focus on a certain ... Read More

Why "Open Government" is Terrible Branding (Or, Whatever Happended to Participation and Collaboration?)

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, April 14 2011

Looking back, "open government" was a dumb thing to call the Obama administration's early forays into innovative online work (as in, the White House's "Open Government Initiative") writes Beth Noveck, ... Read More

A Map of the U.S. Open Government World

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, April 6 2011

GovLoop, GOOD, former U.S. Deputy CTO Beth Noveck, and open gov researcher Angie Newell team up to create a clickable visualization that maps out more than 350 federal open government projects. Read More

Noveck on Lessons Learned

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 23 2011

In a 1-2-3-part interview with Asia-based FutureGov, former U.S. Deputy Beth Noveck argues a point that seems to be gaining traction in open government circles: that while the "institutionalization" of open ... Read More

White House Taps Top City CIO to Replace Beth Noveck as Deputy CTO for Innovation

BY Nick Judd | Monday, February 28 2011

Chris Vein, widely known as the groundbreaking chief information officer for the city of San Francisco, has departed for the White House, you may have heard already from Luke Fretwell at Fedscoop. His new title, ... Read More

W.H. Open Gov Lead on Why She's Headed Back to Academia

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, January 11 2011

Beth Simone Noveck; photo credit: Joi Ito Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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