A new book from O’Reilly media, entitled Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice, discusses the possible ways government can utilize the power of citizen engagement to become more efficient and transparent. The collection of essays features well-known visionaries such as Carl Malamud, Beth Noveck and Tim O’Reilly.

Open Government includes chapters by Sunlight’s Ellen Miller, Bill Allison and Micah Sifry. Their chapters deal with everything from the role of transparency in countering the weight of monied interests to the need for useful and open government data. The forces of co-innovation and transparency must be in government moving forward and this book brings together some illustrative case studies about how to proceed.  Follow this link for a sample of the first eight chapters.

Here’s a nice excerpt from the preface:

What is open government? In the most basic sense, it’s the notion that the people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of government. The idea that the public has a right to scrutinize and participate in government dates at least to the Enlightenment, and is enshrined in both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. Its principles are recognized in virtually every democratic country on the planet.

But the very meaning of the term continues to evolve. The concept of open government has been influenced—for the better—by the open source software movement, and taken on a greater focus for allowing participation in the procedures of government. Just as open source software allows users to change and contribute to the source code of their software, open government now means government where citizens not only have access to information, documents, and proceedings, but can also become participants in a meaningful way. Open government also means improved communication and operations within the various branches and levels of government. More sharing internally can lead to greater efficiency and accountability.

“Rogue librarian” Carl Malamud, scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill tomorrow about the mission of the National Archives, gave this fascinating talk (starting at 1:35) on the history of the Government Printing Office. It's worth watching.

For more background on congressional printing, check out this CRS report.

H/T BoingBoing

Our friend Carl Malamud, president and CEO of PublicResource.Org, which works for the publication of public domain information from local, state, and federal government agencies, has embarked on a new campaign. He’s “running” for the position of Public Printer of the United States, the head of the Government Printing Office (GPO).  Sounds novel, eh, but Carl’s campaign, Yes We Scan, is inspired by Augustus E. Giegengack, a working printer who ran a successful campaign to convinced President Franklin Roosevelt to appoint him as head of the GPO back in 1933. Carl hopes to similarly convince President Obama to appoint him as the public printer. “If I were given the honor to be nominated by the President and the further honor to be confirmed by the Senate, my platform for revitalizing the GPO and rebooting .gov is spelled out in a detailed series of policy papers.”

Those five suggestions for change are: 1.    Rebooting .Gov. How the Government Printing Office can spearhead a revolution in governmental affairs. 2.    FedFlix. Government videos are an essential national resource for vocational and safety training and can also help form a public domain stock footage library, a common resource for the YouTube and remix era. 3.    The Library of the U.S.A. A book series and public works job program to create an archival series of curated documents drawn from our cultural institutions, with full-quality masters of the books and research materials made available for other publishers to draw on.  The program would employ the GPO master printers and would recruit writers, archivists, artists, and other creative workers through a national call for participation. 4.    The United States Publishing Academy. GPO should expand current training programs such as the Institute for Federal Printing and combine them with current workforce development efforts to create a national academy similar to the National Mine Academy and the National Fire Academy, training its own workforce, the government, and the local schools in the art, craft, and science of publishing. 5.    The Rural Internetification Administration. Repurposing the Amateur Radio League, modifying spectrum policy, and injecting capital into rural coops can bring high-speed broadband to 98% of rural Americans just as the Rural Electrification Administration did for electricity in the last century. I am happy to “endorse” Carl’s campaign, along with the likes of Larry Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Tim Bray, Tim O’Reilly, Tim Wu among others. I encourage everyone to go to Yes We Scan and help out by endorsing him. No matter the outcome of his “campaign,” Carl hopes he can launch a long-term dialogue about the public domain and how the US presents itself to the world. Tim O’Brien at O'Reilly Media blogged about Carl’s campaign. Tim also interviewed Carl, which you can listen to here. Run, Carl! Run! Then Scan, Carl, Scan.

Public.Resource.org, founded by Carl Malamud, is a nonprofit working to make government information more accessible. (Sunlight has provided the group funding in the past.) As Tim O'Reilly wrote when Public.Resource.org launched, "Carl Malamud has this funny idea that public domain information ought to be... well, public."

Change.gov, the Obama-Biden transition team, has invited ideas, as long as the presentations are no longer than one page. Public.Resource.org has submitted five. Carl has some really good ideas:

1. Rebooting.gov. How the Government Printing Office (GPO) can spearhead a revolution in governmental affairs.

1. FedFlix. Government videos are an essential national resource for vocational and safety training and can also help form a public domain stock footage library, a common resource for the YouTube and remix era.

2. The Library of the U.S.A. A book series and public works job program to create an archival series of curated documents drawn from our cultural institutions, with full-quality masters of the books and research materials made available for other publishers to draw on. The program would employ the GPO master printers and would recruit writers, archivists, artists, and other creative workers through a national call for participation.

3. The United States Publishing Academy. GPO should expand current training programs such as the Institute for Federal Printing and combine them with current workforce development efforts to create a national academy similar to the National Mine Academy and the National Fire Academy, training its own workforce, the government, and the local schools in the art, craft, and science of publishing.

4. The Rural Internetification Administration. Repurposing the Amateur Radio League, modifying spectrum policy, and injecting capital into rural coops can bring high-speed broadband to 98% of rural Americans just as the Rural Electrification Administration did in the last century.

Carl adds, "All submissions are in the public domain and you may feel free to remix or mashup the ideas as you so wish."

A little while ago I blogged about Oregon Legislative Counsel claiming copyright over their revised statute laws and asking sites like Public Resource.org and Justia.org to take down copies of those laws. On June 19th the Legislative Counsel held a hearing with activist Carl Malamud from Public.Resource.org and others to discuss the issue.  Check out the testimony here.   In the end the Legislative Counsel voted to not assert copyright over the Oregon Revised Statutes.

This is a great victory for openness and democracy.  The idea of restricting how people see, use, and collect laws is absurd and I am relieved that Oregon made the right decision.