The Future of "Gov 2.0": Transparency or Trash Collection?

There's was a telling, if all too brief, exchange between Texas Republican Representative John Culberson and the west coast publisher and conference convener Tim O'Reilly at this morning's Gov 2.0 Summit that exposed a fault line that runs through the whole of this "government 2.0" discussion. One wishes that Culberson and O'Reilly had kept up their back-and-forth rather than moving on to less contentious subjects, but it boils down to this: Is this new movement, such as it is, fundamentally an aggressive bid to reform a political system that has devolved into a mess of corruption and exclusion? Or is it instead an apolitical course correction aimed at simply making government more efficient? The answer, if there is one, will like shape what the future of government 2.0 looks like, and whether we'll ever be able to ultimately judge whether it's been a success.

The exchange happened after Culberson, a six-term congressperson, waved a thick stack of papers in the air. It was a copy, he said, of the "health care junk," a.k.a. health reform legislation, that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attempting to pass without ever letting Culberson and his colleagues read it. Those hard-hitting comments were of a piece with Culberson's other remarks. Congress, said Culberson, is like a common pickpocket in that it needs secrecy and cover to do its work. A advocate of direct democracy, Culberson described a brand of government reform that is decidedly focused on shrinking government. His beloved social media holds the promise of making governing more local, leaving to the federal government only the small sliver of American life that, in his estimation, directly affects the federal government. He painted a picture of transparency that is, at its core, political. Worth remembering is that Culberson recently introduced birther-inspired legislation that would require that presidential candidates file a copy of their birth certificates with the Federal Elections Commission.

Culberson's remarks about Pelosi's bullying ways were interrupted by O'Reilly. O'Reilly has been meeting with those working inside government and around government as he's gotten into this gov 2.0 work. He took offense at Culberson's characterization of the current state of government. "There are an awful lot of people desperately trying to do the right thing," he objected.

For O'Reilly's part, he has come up with a vision of government 2.0 that is centered around simply making the services that government provides work better for more people. Government-as-a-platform, O'Reilly's model, isn't about revolutionary transparency. It's about opening up government processes so that other people can help government along. The ultimate goal is to build tools that let us know if our bus is on schedule or how to schedule a bulk trash pickup. The ultimate goal is killer apps. Important stuff, no doubt. But it's less a political paradigm shift than it is a straightforward upgrade of the services that citizens already get from government.

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, had the last word for now when he took the stage after Culberson and O'Reilly left it. Gov 2.0, said Kapor, "has to be about more than knowing when the next bus is going to show up." Reforming government is innately political, Kapor said. And ultimately it is rooted in "what you believe is in the best interest of the country." That fundamental tension -- Is open government a political struggle over power and accountability? Or is it a straightforward upgrade of what we already get from government? -- underlies much of what we talk about when we talk about "gov 2.0." And as this movement matures, its a tension that will likely get closer to the surface.