U.K. Calls on British Coders to Leapfrog Their Country to Open Government
BY Nancy Scola | Friday, October 2 2009
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is having a tough time of things as he attempts to hang on to his post, is perhaps not uncoincidentally seeing great wisdom in positioning himself as an energetic champion to and firm ally of the U.K.'s open government movement. When he's not spending time chatting up Sir Tim Berners-Lee (a.k.a. the guy who invented the web) about how government data should be set free, his Cabinet Office is preparing to launch Data.gov.uk. And as they do it, the British government is making a point to reach out to the British developer community to ask for their expert help. The Data.gov.uk site, currently in privately beta, is said to have about a thousand feeds from seven different government agencies. And the Cabinet Office says it is "inviting developers to show government how to get the future public data site right."
To indulge in a bit of analysis, while it's true that seeing politicians embrace the spirit of open government is familiar to those of us in the United States these days, watching them do it in the U.K. is an interesting twist. That's because, without bragging, the United States is far ahead of Britain on the freedom of information front. The presumption -- in law and culture -- that government data belongs to the people is far more developed than theirs is. Our major freedom of information law is more than four decades old. There's has been aging for less than a decade. But, and here's the twist, there's a decent chance that the U.K.'s lagging behind on the freedom of information front might, in the end, turn out to actually be a good thing.
If that sounds crazy, consider that -- in addition to the 'zeal of a convert' factor -- playing to British citizens' advantage might be that without an entrenched way of making government information public, the British are freer than Americans are to innovate in the open government space. They're not shackled by expected ways of doing things. They're not bound by the constraints of merely porting the way things have always been done to the web. It's worth noting there wasn't, here in the Unitd States, the equivalent of the U.K. Cabinet Office's outreach to the developer community when the White House launched its Data.gov.
We'll see how this develops. But one thing is for sure: the British developer community is kinda kicking our cans when it comes to how they talk about cracking open government, stuff like "Fancy hacking the Government into shape?" Or "Code a Better Country." Or, in a shove it to the stiff upper lip-ism and deference to the establishment of World War II Britain, "Keep Calm and Carry On" has been replaced by "Get Excited and Make Things."
That last is a killer slogan, no? Get your t-shirt here.