it research challenges to advance open government

IT Research Challenges to Advance Open Government

Marti A. HearstUC Berkeley School of Information

iConference 2010

Disclaimers

I am speaking only for myself, not my employer. Any views or opinions are solely my own.

I am new to most of the topics I'll cover, so my statements may be naïve and/or shallow at best, and incorrect at worst.

What’s the Excitement About?

“Government 2.0”

What's the Excitement About?

“Government 2.0” Three main areas for IT innovation:

1. New technologies for public-govt communication,

2. Open data and other techniques for govt transparency,

3. Cost savings and efficiencies from new approaches to using technology.

Outline

Background U.S. Govt Agencies basics IT-related legislation

What is Open Government? Research Topics for iSchoolers How can you get involved?

1%

2%

Proportion of employment (Bureau Labor Statistics)

97%

U.S. Government Agencies

Agencies are like large public universities Serve the public Relatively autonomous Slow to change Similar in structure and operation

Lots of replicated functionality

Lots of sub-agencies that replicate functionality

Depend on the state for their funding

U.S. Government Agencies

The nation’s largest employer 15 executive cabinet agencies (1.9M employees)

Defense Homeland Veterans State Justice

Education Health Energy Interior Agriculture

Commerce Treasury Labor Housing Transportation

~70 independent agencies (180k employees)

Social Security, General Services, EPA, NSF, NASA, …

The Executive Office of the President (EOP)

Executive Office of the President

OSTPScience & Tech

Policy

CTO

OMBManagement and Budget

OIRA Information and

RegulatoryAffairs

e-Gov and ITCIO

And manyother offices

Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Used to be the Bureau of the Budget Assists the President in budget formation, review

Now, an expanded role, with IT spending as a “hook” for linking reforms to management:

(according to P2PC Group’s Newsletter, October 2002)

procurement policy accountability for management results information security shaping management priorities

E-Govt and Open Govt

E-Govt / Open Govt

Recent timeline: 1998: Govt Paperwork Elimination Act

By 2003, agencies must provide the option of submitting required information electronically.

2002: E-Government Act 2006: Transparency Act

Requires a single searchable website of federal spending award information.

2009: Open Government Directive Jan 21: Memorandum on Transparency and Open

Government (Open Govt Initiative)

Dec 8: Open Govt Directive itself

E-Government Act of 2002

Purpose: Improve the management and promotion of

electronic government services,

Establish a Federal Chief Information Officer,

Establish a framework of measures that require using Internet-based IT to improve citizen access to government information and services,

Reduce costs and burdens for businesses and other govt entities.

E-Government Act of 2002

Purpose: Promote access to high quality govt information and

services across multiple channels.

Make the Federal govt more transparent and accountable.

Transform agency operations by utilizing, where appropriate, best practices from public and private sector organizations.

Promote inter-agency collaboration in providing electronic govt services.

Open Government Initiative

Inauguration Day, 2009 Three pillars:

Transparency Participation Collaboration

Approach: Use cutting-edge tools Use cutting-edge practices

Open Government Approach

Use cutting-edge technology, e.g. Online dialog tools Visualization and dashboards Cloud computing

Use cutting-edge practices, e.g. Social media for communication Challenges and prizes

Open Government Directive

Goal: change the default stance in govt agencies to one of exposing information.

Designed to require action.


First 45 Days — Jan 22, 2010

3 high-value datasets from each agency

A senior official must take responsibility for accuracy of information in usaspending.gov

An OMB working group.


60 days — Feb 6, 2010 An Open Govt web page for each agency

A framework from OMB for describing spending data

The CIO and CTO will make an Open Government Dashboard.


90 days — Mar 8, 2010OMB will make a framework for challenges, prizes, and other incentive-backed strategies to find innovative or cost-effective solutions to improving open government.


120 days — Apr 7, 2010 OMB will issue a longer-term comprehensive

strategy for Federal spending transparency, including ARRA.

Each agency publish an Open Government Plan that will describe how it will improve transparency and integrate public participation into its activities.

OIRA will review existing OMB policies, such as Paperwork Reduction Act guidance and privacy guidance, to identify impediments to open government.


1 year — Dec 8, 2010 Agencies with a significant backlog of

outstanding FOIA requests must take steps to reduce this by 10% each year.

Each agency’s Open Government Plan shall be updated every two years.

Open Government: Transparency

Memorandum on FOIA (Jan 21, 2009)

A presumption of disclosure for govt records

Executive Order reversing changes to PRA (Presidential Records Act) (Jan 21, 2009)

Only incumbent president can assert constitutional privileges to withhold information, and must submit withholdings to Attorney General and White House Counsel.

ITSpending.gov launched (June 2009)

White House Visitors Log public (Nov 2009)

Transparency: Data.gov

Transparency: Recovery.gov

Viewing Citizens as Partners

Participation + Collaboration How to get people involved to:

Find out citizens’ needs Get citizen input for decision making

Citizen Participation, Old to New

Public hearings Citizen juries FACA committees Requests for comments Idea generation tools

FACA Committees Federal Advisory Committee Act (1972) Small standing committees that advise the govt

on all manner of topics ~1000 of them!

NSF panels are one type of FAC

A complex formal procedure High-level officials, filing of a charter with Congress, notification of

meetings in Federal Register, complicated payment arrangements

One way for citizens to get involved But too cumbersome for quick advice Not feasible for most people

Open Government:Participation

Examples uses of online participation tools just in the last few months: Convert the Initiative into the Directive

Ask for input on specific questions, such as how to do Open Publishing.

Ask govt employees how to save energy.

Critique implementation plans for Data.gov

Important Predecessor:Peer2Patent

MindMap of Summary of Transparency Conversation

Engaging with the Public

Some agencies have more experience EPA makes heavy use of all forms

public forums

requests for comments

Now: social media EPA just released guidelines

http://govsocmed.pbworks.com/Guidance%3A-Representing-EPA-Online-Using-Social-Media

Issues include: Have to print out and manage official records

State facts, not opinions, unless approved to do so

Research Topics

Research Questions:Online Discussions

How to compile and summarize responses How to engage appropriate stakeholders? How to moderate? How to debate topics? How to incorporate new entrants? What are the types of conversations? Are they valuable or not? What role should they play in decision

making? How to evaluate and assess?

Research Questions:Social Media

How to establish policies? How to balance providing official

information with being conversational and responsive? What are the goals of this kind of

communication? How to achieve them?

How to handle archiving rules?

Research Area:Information Visualization

Design guidelines for information dashboards

Automating tools for information mashups

Research Questions:Open Data

How to search large data collections? How to devise shared metadata? What tools can aid in data normalization? How to link the content across datasets?

Role of Semantic Web

How to publish all posted content (such as on web sites) as data?

How to discover who is using a dataset?

Research Area:Web Site Design

Proliferation of web sites No one knows how many. Having many sites is not necessarily a bad

thing, but can cause problems U. K. Government did a massive

consolidation of their web site recently. Should the U.S. do this as well? If so, how?

Research Area:Web Site Design

Parallels between Government Agencies and Universities, as reflected in their web sites Archive vs. Curate? Unique Content vs. Administrative

Structure? Wide ranging audiences for research content

Especially for scientific agencies

Research Questions:Web Site Design

Why is it so difficult and expensive? Is there a turn-key solution for all but the

content?

How to automate Some of the design process? Some of the usability testing process? Updating sites with stale designs?

How to Get Involved

For Students

Presidential Management Fellows https://www.pmf.opm.gov/ 2 year paid fellowship Few people in IT apply! Must apply in the Fall before you graduate

Very few opportunities for non-US citizens

Govt Often Uses Information from Outside Groups

Independent non-profits, bloggers, university groups can have real impact. They do this work on their own initiative.

Examples: Technology developed by OMB Watch for fedspending.org

used in relaunch of USASpending. Sunlight Foundation compiled lists of strategies for govt to

address the OGD. UC Berkeley iSchool faculty posted guidelines on how to

improve the design of recovery.gov; had a big influence. Open gov how-to workshops and websites. Federal Register annotation tools.

New Opportunity: ExpertLabs.org

Goal: provide a way to let outside experts help improve government (use of) IT.

An independent non-profit. But will work closely with Federal govt agencies

Director: Anil Dash Tech Entrepreneur, early blogger

Sponsors: MacArthur Foundation AAAS

ExpertLabs.org

Philosophy is open source / collaborative Ideas generated via open conversations Will document and publish what is learned Code written openly, versionable Work will be seen as experimental, hence

more open to risk.

Designed with govt constraints in mind Plan to release projects via apps.gov

ExpertLabs.org

Who are the experts? Not just academics, but also online leaders

How can you get involved? People will have short-term stints leading

projects. There will be applications for fellowships Being active in the online conversations

and the shared code repository will be key.

Participate with Classwork

Example Idea: Usability Clinic Professors teaching usability courses

Have their students critique a web site as a homework exercise

Commit to a particular time period

Organizations sign up for the clinic Govt, non-profits, small businesses

May turn into longer-term projects

Think it’s a good idea? Organize it!

Participate with Data Analysis

Build tools that use govt data Expose inefficiencies Create new, useful functions

Example: Analyze hiring latency on a per-agency basis Data isn’t there?

Comment on agency’s opengov websites

Ask for time-to-hire data for each agency

Be persistent if necessary

Participate with Code

Example: Write code that makes it trivial to make

beautiful, highly useful, 508-compliant visualizations for web sites.

Offer webinars to explain how to use it

Make the code compliant with govt specific constraints.

Impediments to Adoption of Off-the-Shelf Software

TOS PRA PII OWACS COOP 508 Cookies Gift issues

Impediments to Adoption of Off-the-Shelf Software

TOS (Terms of Service) PRA (Paperwork Reduction Act) PII (Personally Identifiable Information) OWACS (Security requirements) COOP (Disaster recovery requirements) 508 (Accessibility Standards) Cookies (Persistent Cookie Restrictions) Gifts (restrictions on acceptance of)

A New Way to Help:Submit Code to Apps.gov

If you have free code, especially software-as-a-service, you can now offer it to govt on apps.gov

Participate by Writing

Example: OSTP Request for Comments Federal Register, May 21, 2009

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2009/05/opengov.pdf

Also on the OSTP blog

Sought advice on Open Govt topics: What government information should be more readily

available on-line or more easily searched?

How might federal advisory committees, rulemaking, or electronic rulemaking be better used to improve decisionmaking?

OSTP Request for Comments

What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decisionmaking and increase opportunities for citizen participation?

What are the limitations to transparency?

What strategies might be employed to adopt greater use of Web 2.0 in agencies?

What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?

What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of open govt policies?

Summary: How to Be Involved

Join in on the government conversations. Make and teach practical guidelines. Create clinics Help automate information design,

organization, linking, normalization. Mash up, visualize, and/or analyze the open

government data and then publish insightful findings.

Participate in FACA meetings. Set up alerts on the Federal Register!

More Information

Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Beth Noveck and Tim O'Reilly, "A Conversation with Beth Noveck”, Nov 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2JE0vlLTE

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