October is Open Government Manifesto Month
BY Nancy Scola | Monday, October 5 2009
The "Open Government Directive" that Barack Obama ordered up on his first full day in the Oval Office is, reports NextGov's Aliya Sternstein, almost ready to drop. On January 21st, Obama called on OMB to come up with something concrete for the President to tell the dozens of federal agencies how they can satisfy his call to overhaul the United States government to make it less opaque, less inaccessible, and less insular. Sternstein quotes an OMB spokesperson saying that his office will have the President's open government marching orders drawn up and delivered "in the next few weeks at most...[i] in the next couple weeks, at best." Expect something in October, says OMB.
You might remember that we also heard in early September that the Open Government Directive was "imminent." In fairness, though, directive-izing takes time. That's partly because the wheels of bureaucracy move slowly. But there are signs that something more significant and fundamental is at play here with the OGD. And that's that, while words like transparent, participatory, and collaborative are all the rage and Gov 2.0 is a catchy shorthand for them, the theory of practice driving open government is, arguably, still pretty fuzzy.
Spend some time in the Gov 2.0 world and, for example, you're likely to hear talk of direct democracy bleed into technocratic diving into the details of data dumps. During the recent Gov 2.0 Summit, we mused here on techPres about whether we're conflating stuff like legislative transparency -- which is, tellingly, quickly turning into a partisan badge of honor in DC -- and more pedestrian service-focused e-government advancements like more efficient trash collection. And we've more recently wondered whether, when it comes to New York City government, e-gov is getting confused with "we.gov," which you might define as government that uses the magic of technology to tap the untapped power and wisdom of the citizenry.
That fuzziness is at play with the Open Government Directive too, it seems. Sternstein reports that OMB Watch and other advocates are worried that the OGD will concern itself with upgrading how government publishes data. Left untackled: changing the dynamic between the public and government by shifting knowledge-as-power from the latter to the former. Better data, the thinking goes, is a welcomed and necessary step in our evolution. But an OGD centered on that evolution stops short of the revolutionary paradigm shift that all our fancy technology makes possible.
Importantly, though, the downside of the Open Government Directive an intense focus on freeing data over overhauling the practice of government is, as Sternstein suggests, that every agency is its own strange beast, and will tend to absorb anything less than transformative change without batting much of an eye. Stay tuned.