We are all very shocked and saddened to learn of the tragic death of our friend and colleague, Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide at the young age of 26 last Friday. Aaron's legacy will live on as a relentless crusader for opening public access to government information and as a champion of fair use and a free Internet. We send our deepest condolences to Aaron's family. I know he inspired and will continue to inspire many.

Our adviser Micah Sifry wrote a touching tribute commemorating Aaron's life, which I encourage you all to read and have pasted below with permission from Micah.

Rest in Peace, Aaron. You left us far too young.

Micah's tribute: Democratic Promise: Aaron Swartz, 1986-2013

Aaron is dead.

Wanderers in this crazy world, we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.

Hackers for right, we are one down, we have lost one of our own.

Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders, parents all, we have lost a child.

Let us all weep.

--Sir Tim Berners Lee, January 11, 2013

Aaron Swartz, a leading activist for open information, internet freedom, and democracy, died at his own hand Friday January 11. He was 26 years old. There is no single comprehensive list of his good works, but here are some of them: At the age of 14 he co-authored the RSS 1.0 spec--taking brilliant advantage of the fact that internet working groups didn't care if someone was 14, they only cared if their code worked. Then he met Larry Lessig and worked closely with him on the early architecting of Creative Commons, an immense gift to all kinds of sharing of culture. He also was the architect and first coder of the Internet Archive's OpenLibrary.org, which now has made more than one million books freely available to anyone with an internet connection. "We couldn't have come this far without his crucial expertise," Open Library says on its about page. He also co-founded Reddit.com, the social news site, and Demand Progress, an online progressive action group that played a vital role in the anti-SOPA/PIPA fight. He also contributed occasionally to Personal Democracy Forum, writing this article on why wikis work and this essay on "parpolity" or the idea that nested councils of elected representatives could be used to represent a whole country, for our 2008 book, Rebooting America. He was a fellow traveler.

Aaron also made gifts of websites the way others might make a friend a plate of brownies. One of his lesser-known legacies, in fact, is a do-it-yourself web platform called Jottit.com, which he built to make it as a simple as possible for anyone to create and publish their own site--or, as he put it, "as easy as filling in a textbox." On it, you can read his explanation on how to become someone like him, a self-made, self-taught disturber of the peace.

We first met in the fall of 2004, when he was 18. I was in San Francisco for a conference and went downtown one evening with my smarter little brother David, who was hosting a Technorati developers hackathon. The idea was to get people working with Technorati's API. At the beginning of the meeting, I spoke up and said that I was looking for someone who could hack together a directory showing which Members of Congress were currently most being mentioned or linked to on blogs. I offered $100 cash to anyone who felt like taking on the challenge. Moments later, there was Aaron, with an impish grin on his face: "I think I can do that." Two hours later, he was done. He was a wizard.

Two years later, we crossed paths in Boston. The Sunlight Foundation, which we had just helped get started earlier that year, was hosting a party for the Wikimania conference, and several of us went out for Indian food together. If memory serves, Aaron was on some crazy diet, limiting his calorie intake to somehow increase his life expectancy. It doesn't matter now. What I do remember more clearly is that it was the start of an attempt at a formal working relationship between Sunlight and Aaron, since his interest in open information as a force for good seemed in close alignment with Sunlight's vision. That relationship led to a six month grant for him to develop Watchdog.net, a noble but incomplete effort at merging campaign finance data with lobbyist information to find the intersections where a lobbyist's intervention appeared to match with an earmark or other special congressional favor.

We never quite saw eye-to-eye about how best to reform or transform politics, and Aaron several times wrote critical blog posts arguing that open data and government transparency weren't enough to make things change for the better. We'd go back and forth by email after each of these posts. He once wrote me:

My core argument is that the problem with our government is not specific misdeeds but systemic corruption. Thus pointing out problems with specific Congresspeople -- whether through wiki pages, pop-up windows, or campaign finance data -- is going to be ineffective, perhaps even counterproductive, because every time you whack at a corruption scandal over here, a dozen more will pop up over there, and interested people will burn out from the impossibility of the task.

The problem is not that Congressman X takes money from the credit card companies and votes for the bankruptcy bill; the problem is that he has to do that to get elected. Forcing him to stop will just force him to be more subtle about it, just as each new campaign finance reform bill sprouts more loopholes. Structural fixes are needed to solve the system problem; fixes like Clean Elections, more independent media, and a more democratic citizenry.

This doesn't mean that forcing him to stop is a bad thing -- if you have to spend resources on individualized projects like this, it's better than not spending them at all. But why constrain yourself in this way? Why not harness the power of the Internet to work on the larger-scale problems?

Think bigger, - Aaron

This isn't the place to go back over those arguments; they're moot. The point is that that was Aaron--pushing everyone he knew to do more with what they had. I don't know where he got the bug, but I understood it. If you have "change the world" disease, there is only one cure. And he tried mightily to change the world using every tool at his disposal, as Cory Doctorow eloquently wrote on BoingBoing, even if it meant being an outspoken critic of allies and mentors. And that was fine.

An icon smasher, he twice took on the content cartel; first in 2009 by releasing a trove of legal documents from the PACER database of U.S. federal court documents, for which all charges were dropped; and a second time in 2011, when he set up a server in an MIT closet and downloaded about 4 million academic documents from the J-STOR library, for which he was charged with wire fraud and computer fraud and faced a potential sentence of up to 30 years. He was arrested on January 11 6, 2011, exactly just over two years before he took his life.

Aaron at 14, with Larry Lessig. Photo by Rich Gibson.

Lessig, one of his closest friends and mentors, writes on his blog that Aaron was fighting to get the government to drop the felony charges--no doubt because he didn't believe he had caused anyone any harm; besides J-STOR itself had declined to press charges. Lessig:

For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it.

If coders are the unacknowledged legislators of our new digital age, then Aaron was our Thomas Paine--an alpha geek who didn't use his skills just to get more people to click on ads, but tried to figure out how to change the system at the deepest levels available to him. He accomplished much in his 26 years, but he had so much more promise.

Aaron's parents Robert and Susan Swartz, and partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, have set up this memorial website for him.

Top photo credit: Aaron Swartz at a Boston Wikipedia Meetup, August 2009, By Sage Ross.

On June 6th and 7th, many of the thought leaders from the open government community attended Personal Democracy Forum 2011 at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Out of this group of big thinkers came a number of wonderful presentations, if you scroll over the image below you can see most of them from PDF '11 (apologies to those left out, there weren't videos for everyone).

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.

Seth Godin, the prolific author and blogger, recently asked a collection of contemporary thinkers to contribute to a project on a word they feel should carry significance in our lives. The anthology of short essays, entitled 'What Matters Now', is freely available as an e-book to download and share.  The collaboration serves as a thought-provoking and inspirational read to begin 2010.

Among the more than seventy authors, the book includes two members of the Sunlight community.  Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and Sunlight Foundation adviser, wrote an inspirational piece on the word 'Nobody' about the power of the motivated few.  Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs, chose the word 'Parsing' and considers the possibilities of accessible government information.  Here is an excerpt from Clay's thoughts:

It is time for us to rationalize the debate.  Let's parse the data and free the facts. Imagine if we organized around meaningful data instead of vapid rhetoric.   What if you could see how much you spent on your commute to work this year, or defending your country, or keeping your neighbor healthy.

Personal Democracy Forum kicks off Monday in New York. This will be PDF’s sixth event, with this year's theme being "We.gov,” as in all the ways that we, the people are using technology and new media to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action. This is one conference I never miss willingly (I think I've only missed one!) and I'm honestly not that much of a conference-goer. I think of it as my annual "brain food." I can't wait.

A “two-day tech + politics brainfest” is how Tim O’Reilly described PDF last week.  PDF will be tracking the state-of-the-art online politics, exploring government 2.0., looking at the new tools for organizing that are being used, as well as looking at the future of political journalism, blogging and networked media.

I’m excited to see old and new friends, many who are keynote speakers. A radically truncated list includes emerging technology expert (and Sunlight board member) Esther Dyson; senior fellow at Demos and PDF senior editor Allison Fine; now-former Washington Post “White House Watch” blogger Dan Froomkin (Dan posted his last earlier today…A must read!); New York State Senate CIO Andrew Hoppin (I blogged about him earlier today); journalism prof and Buzzmachine.com blogger Jeff Jarvis; Obama administration CIO Vivek Kundra; Craigslist founder (and Sunlight board member) Craig Newmark; law professor Beth Noveck; “Here Comes Everybody” author Clay Shirky; campaign re-inventor Joe Trippi and “The Cluetrain Manifesto” co-author and blogger David Weinberger. Really there are too many good people coming and speaking to mention

Congratulations, in advance to Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, PDF’s co-founders, and Sunlight’s senior technology advisors. It’s going to be a very exciting couple of days.

Maybe you can join at the last minute.

The New York State Senate’s chief information officer Andrew Hoppin and his team have been making tremendous strides in opening up the inner workings of the chamber to the public, and are well on their way to achieving levels of transparency and accountability not before seen by any American legislative body, state or federal.

That in and of itself is worthy of great praise. However, they are fulfilling their mission while pitched partisan warfare is being waged over who controls the chamber. Not knowing who your boss is and whether you’ll have a job tomorrow is undoubtedly distracting, to say the least. But as Craig Newmark, wrote on his blog, “Looks like they're getting it done, despite all the drama in NY state politics.” Earlier this week, The New York Observer’s Gillian Reagan highlighted the work of Hoppin and his team revamping the Senate's Web site and services in order to “bring back-door conversations and government data and empower constituents.”

Last month, I blogged about how the NY Senate is building an array of online services that will offer citizens a much clearer window into how the chamber functions and invites their participation, including information such as bill text, budget plans and lawmaker’s expenditures and funding reports. It includes a public database of legislation that’s searchable by bill number, sponsor, committee or keyword. And they’ve added a Plain Language Initiative that translates legal and political jargon into more readable text. The site now includes a weekly calendar, “What’s happening now?” and “Find my senator” functions, info on senators, a listing of committees, data on issues and legislation, photos and videos and a blog.

One aspect I find especially cool is the Markup function that allows the public to comment on legislation that is under consideration, in essence a New York version of Sunlight’s Public Markup.Note that they are using a Creative Commons license. (Sunlight’s senior technology advisors, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, are advising the Senate on their transparency redesign.)

This is really great work under the most challenging of political circumstances.

Within the past week, the New York State Senate has taken some impressive steps toward conducting its business open and online. Earlier today, the Senate launched its new Web site that offers citizens a much clearer window into how the chamber functions and invites their participation. The site now includes a weekly calendar, "What's happening now?" and "Find my senator" functions, info on senators, a listing of committees, data on issues and legislation, photos and videos and a blog. One aspect I find especially cool is the Markup function that allows the public to comment on legislation that is under consideration. This function is a New York version of Sunlight's Public Markup. (Sunlight’s senior technology advisors, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, are advising the Senate on their transparency redesign.) And here's a link to an article from The New York Observer about the launch.

Here's a short video of Malcolm A. Smith, Senate majority leader, introducing the site:

The new Web site launch comes on the heels of strong voices in the Senate calling on Gov. David Paterson to be transparent in how the state spends the federal stimulus funds. Last week, Republican lawmakers, citing a "total lack of oversight and accountability" with regard to the stimulus, called on the governor to adopt a comprehensive plan designed to ensure greater transparency in the spending of stimulus dollars. And earlier this week, 16 Democratic state senators sent the governor a letter calling on him to create an independent auditor to monitor the distribution of stimulus funds. And this all comes after a coalition, calling itself the NYS Stimulus Oversight Working Group, in April, called for the creation of an independent stimulus monitor (pdf).

Back in late February, John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, testified before the State Senate’s Temporary Committee on Rules Reform about the need for states to be open and transparent in their spending of stimulus funds. In his testimony, John promoted standards for transparency that can and should be applied generally to any legislature, and should be examined in the context of state-level disclosure reform.  And he proposed eight questions we at Sunlight believe the New York State Senate should be asking:

1. Is public information online?  Any data deemed public should also be available online.  Government serves the public poorly when it fulfills disclosure requirements by keeping binders in the basement of a public building. Government should post online in a timely manner procedural information, such as bills, committee schedules, transcripts, reports, or calendars to allow lawmakers and citizens to participate in the legislative process.  Rules should require such information to be posted online by those responsible for its creation: lawmakers, the leadership, or committees.

1. Are databases accessible in bulk?  Public databases should allow for advanced access through both bulk data download and programmatic interfaces (Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs).  Limited level of access forces programmers and analysts to examine public data through a needlessly limited viewpoint, effectively spurning complex or creative scrutiny.

2. Is public data accurate and descriptive?  Legislative information must be accurate to maintain its public utility. Votes data, journals, and transcripts should accurately reflect reality, and chambers' rules should enforce this requirement.

3. Is technological infrastructure insulated from political abuse?  Professional qualified staff should create and maintain legislatures’ technological infrastructure with reliable funding and insulation from political concerns.  Committees for technological coordination, inspectors general, and public advisory boards can all provide effective steps toward promoting competent technology infrastructure.

4. Is ethics disclosure sufficient? Public trust is undermined when legislatures fail to enforce the disclosure of ethics information.  Financial disclosures, campaign finance disclosure, taxpayer funded expenditures, and ethics investigations should all be publicly available, in real time, and online.

5. Are individual lawmakers, committees, and leadership offices able to take advantage of online tools?  Just as non-profits, businesses, and other governments can set a useful example, individual staffers and lawmakers will often set good example if they can confidently engage online.  Legislatures should provide the technological support and legal guidance necessary for online engagement to flourish.

6. Is the public well served by the legislature's disclosure? Legislatures often fail to meet even basic needs of constituents, answering questions like "Who is my representative?" or "Where can I find this bill?" Citizens should have a clear mechanism or contact point for transparency feedback, to help identify shortfalls, and develop better disclosure procedures.

7. Are lawmakers and their staffs able to do their jobs? A useful proxy for public access can be lawmakers’ offices themselves.  If lawmakers and their staff are missing an essential piece of information, or relying on expensive subscription services to do their jobs, then citizens are certainly being shut out. Lawmakers should have a similar forum for addressing technological issues, without fear of political reprisal.

As Ingrid Drake writes at POGO’s blog, a strong legislative branch is necessary to provide oversight of the executive branch, as is diligent citizen watchdogging, I would add.  Ingrid reports that the folks at POGO are hearing reports from the Empire State that “information about available stimulus funds is currently being shared mostly with entities that already have long-standing ties to state government through existing grants and contracts, or other existing relationships.”

Congratulations to Andrew, Micah and the Empire State Senate for their new and more transparent Web site. And kudos to the folks in New York working on bringing oversight and accountability to how the state spends the stimulus. The rest of the states should do the same.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

David Herbert with the National Journal (subscription required) wrote about the grades new media experts from across the political spectrum gave the Obama administration’s Web presence. The experts gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+. Although they mostly see it as an improvement from the previous administration's site, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and other interactive features. Herbert quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, "This occasional use of interactive tools" is impressive, but "90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush." Recovery.gov, the administration’s site where citizens can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds, fared even worse in the Journal's poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, Herbert writes, is that it's "the view from 30,000 feet," as Micah Sifry, senior technology advisor for Sunlight and Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) co-founder, told him. Without providing on-the-the ground details, Recovery.gov offers taxpayers few tools for staying on top of where their money is going, reviewers said. Recovery.gov has competition in the form of privately-operated Recovery.org, which has "more granular data and a real search tool, which one assumes we'll eventually see on Recovery.gov," Micah explains. "I don't think it's fair to compare this site to other Web sites yet, as it's just weeks old," Micah added. "Let's take another look in three to six months, OK?"

Chris Lefkow with Agence France-Presse gained a different take by interviewing academics, technology analysts and nonpartisan groups on the administration's technology efforts. Lefkow writes that they all said the first "tech president" is off to a good start. Lefkow quotes John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, "their first pronouncements are very encouraging,” and added that the challenge, however, is going to be the implementation. Andrew Resiej, Sunlight’s other senior technology advisor and PDF co-founder, said the administration been doing as much as it can to fulfill its promises in regards to transparency and technological innovation. “However they've been constrained by decades of industrial-age rules and regulations and procurement protocols that are handicapping the speed at which they can implement that vision," he said.

Declan McCullagh at CBS News' "Political Hotsheet" blog also wrote about how President Obama's follow through on his transparency vow is receiving mixed reviews. In the post McCullagh highlights how Sunlight's Our Open Government List is allowing users to vote on what's most important to see in the 120-day review. McCullagh reports that the winner so far is formal data standards, which would allow programmers to extract government databases to be incorporated in their own applications. McCullagh also mentions that Sunlight hosted TransparencyCamp.

Dan Eggen at The Washington Post wrote about how some of the nation's largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are forging an alliance to try to stop the Obama administration from cutting certain weapons programs. They are arguing that the proposed cuts would threaten 100,000 or more jobs. Eggen cites Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) data to show the defense sector’s influence in Washington, where it gave nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying.

The New York Times republished Robin Bravender’s piece from Greenwire exploring President Obama’s regulatory actions taken during his first 100 days in office. Bravender quotes Gary Bass, OMB Watch’s executive director, "In most instances, the administration has moved away from a presumption of government secrecy to one of government openness, and Obama has scrapped some of the most damaging revisions of the regulatory process that Bush and his team imposed on the nation." The article highlighted OMB Watch’s “Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform” report (pdf), which is one of two reports, both released on Tuesday, assessing the Obama administration’s work on government transparency and regulatory reform at the 100-day mark. The second report, titled “21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda” (pdf) looked at the administration’s follow through on transparency and openness. Overall, the reports state that the president and his team have made significant progress in both the right-to-know and regulatory areas, but much more work needs to be done.

Carol D. Leonnig with The Washington Post reported that U.S. Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, got the Pentagon to spend about $30 million on “the little-used airport named for him so it can handle behemoth military aircraft and store combat equipment for rapid deployment to foreign battlefields.” Most of the improvement, Leonnig writes, were funded through appropriations approved by Murtha's subcommittee, and have not been used for their intended purpose. The article includes comments by Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.  "Nobody wants to say no to Congressman Murtha or make him mad because he controls defense appropriations," she said. "Murtha wanted an airport, and he knew he could get one. It's like he's a billionaire, except it's not his money."

Robert O'Harrow Jr., writing at The Washington Post's "Government Inc." blog, writes about a new report from the Inspector General for TARP, which says the bailout is growing more complex and costly, and is operating with no clear leadership. O'Harrow highlights and extensively quotes from Anu Narayanswamy’s Real Time Investigations report that found the program is shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to determine who is managing it.

USA Today published an editorial about how the federal government, when faced with the option of making information public or hiding it, is predisposed toward concealment. Federal Web sites are usually full of data, the editorial says, but are also notoriously hard to navigate. It mentions Google's new tool, Google Public Data, it launched this week to make it easier to search federal sites. Congressional sites can be even more inscrutable, they write, and mentions and links to Sunlight’s Senior Fellow Bill Allison's Real Time Investigations report regarding U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers disclosing their earmark requests, and how many responded by burying the links or posting unreadable pdf files. Kim Hart with The Washington Post also wrote about Google’s new tool, and quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs director, saying he’s encouraged by it.

Joab Jackson with Government Computer News wrote about how through mashups and Web apps, third parties are remixing and making innovative use of government agencies' information. Jackson quotes Clay as saying there are a lot of developers who are eager to get access to government data. "The nongovernmental sector will likely always have more talent and artistic capability than inside the government," Clay said. The article discusses Sunlight Labs' Apps for America contest, as well as Sunlight’s role in developing OpenCongress.org, OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org, CRP’s OpenSecrets.org and EarmarkWatch.org. Jackson also highlights Josh Tauberer's work at GovTrack.

Federal News Radio interviewed Clay about Data.gov, new federal CIO Vivek Kundra's soon to launch central repository for government data and research, and links to Sunlight Labs' mock up of the site.

Thanks, and see you next Friday!

TransparencyCamp was awesome, but rather than my just writing about just how great it was -- what we all learned, heard, and what we will do about it --  I thought you ought to hear from the crowd itself. So I've randomly selected tweets from the some who attended, and some who didn't who talk about the event and some of what they learned. Here's just a sample of what folks had to say:

justgrimes: I wish transparency camp was monthly; maybe we could do something like CopyNight, a monthly social gathering http://bit.ly/sz4p5 (expand) #tcamp09

Jillfoster: Good to be here at #tcamp09

robertdoyal: Reading a lot of great tweets from #tcamp09. It feels as if I'm there! Transparency is a top priority for Texas Comptroller Susan Combs.

quepol: @Rasiej TransparencyCamp: transformational, connective, invigorating #tcamp09

Tcamp09: RT: @merici transparency camp community resources: transparencycamp.org/community #tcamp09

johnbreslin: Seeing lots of interesting posts from #tcamp09 - http://tinyurl.com/b7t9hp (expand) and @valdiskrebs is speaking...

kmcurry: I haven't been able to tweet out of #tcamp09 b/c too in the moment of the conversation; will have to brain dump later

sitting side by side w/ passionate govies plotting improvements #tcamp09

sharontb: Will transparency and recovery.gov be the stimulus for the next revolution in business, it and world? How fast will it happen? #tcamp09

uigimontanez: This #tcamp09 session really helped me see the practical aspects of the Semantic Web. No longer just theoretical...

jroo: #tcamp09 show us the data! (and we'll give you a beer)

justgrimes: One thing I've learned during transparency camp is the policy problems with procurement, it comes up almost everything session #tcamp09

joebird: Catching the tweets but wishing I was at Transparency Camp in D.C.: https://barcamp.pbwiki.com/transparencycamp | #tcamp09

DavidStephenson: #tcamp09 oops: will have to spend next 2 wks. learning about all apps @chrismessina has mentioned

atomiota: learning about the components of the social web from citizen agency/diso's chris messina. i like when things get broken down for me #tcamp09

corbett3000: @brianbehlendorf: Hill staffers just shown version tracking at http://opencongress.org & http://govtrack.us; "blew their minds" #tcamp09

bashley: Transparency too often conflated as gov visibility. But transparency demands no less than full-frontal gov nudity. #tcamp09

kpkfusion: It is the citizen exchange "in network" that creates transparency - not the mere act of publication and search. #tcamp09

jedmiller: RT @bashley: Transparency is zero without compassion, surrender, confession, humility. Opacity is all too human. #tcamp09

Silona: this crowd has more EEEPC and netbooks than I have even seen before... #tcamp09

laurelatoreilly: Apps for Democracy: This is what democracy looks like! Check out Apps for America competition (http://bit.ly/HoeTx (expand)) #tcamp09

javaun: I wish I could've joined all of you at #tcamp09 . Wife went into labor Thursday night and our daughter was born Friday at 7.

sliqviq: Information and transparency helps alleviate unaccountable power structures standing in the way of change #tcamp09

sarahebourne: Wishing I were in DC for Transparency Camp #tcamp09 but glad I can follow on Twitter + that I won't have to travel in snowstorm to get back

brianbehlendorf: #tcamp09 @cjoh Transparency is a neutralizer of apathy. [brilliant]

craignewmark: Home after Washington; listening to the rain, and over the drops dropping; a robin sings. (not #tcamp09)

Tcamp09: #tcamp09 sticker postcards didn't arrive in time. We would love to mail you some... just ask! http://transparencycamp.org/stickers/

cheeky_geeky: Already saw @davidstephenson @valdiskrebs @leslieann44 @peteodell @ellnmllr @clayjohnson at #tcamp09

GregElin: #tcamp09 wrapping up. It was an amazing event, awesome people, conversations.

rmfretz: Thanks to all that put this together #tcamp09

bashley: Gratitude to #tcamp09 organizers, presenters, tweeters. You kept a Nova Scotian entertained, informed!

stereogab: Personally thrilled abt excitement, new ideas, knowledge sharing, connections being made to open gov, make info usable, efficient #tcamp09

Mlsif: RT @merici: RT @cjoh: @stereogab for MVP of TransparencyCamp. Truly the unsung hero of this event. #tcamp09

Elizabeth Newell, at GovExec.com, writes about how federal agencies are beginning to stick their toes in the social media pool. It’s beginning to dawn on agency leaders that when citizens search for government information, they will want to use the same systems they do in their everyday lives. But as David Herbert at the National Journal writes (reposted here by NextGov.com), many agencies still struggle to make connections online.

Newell cites the GSA’s GovGab, the Defense Department's roundtable with military bloggers, and she referenced the growing list of federal agencies that post on Twitter. Herbert points to the TSA is an agency that gets it. The Evolution of Security blog is an effort by TSA to explain the bizarre airport security system and offer tips for travelers. The agency realizes that in the online world, “if you build it they will come” is not the way things work. At airport security lines they advertise their site with signs saying “Got Feedback?” The site has been up for a year and posts average 3,000 page views and 100 comments.

NextGov.com has posted a "Best Practices for Government Web sites," where they highlight five agencies that pay careful attention to what their users want to see and do online. NextGov.com consulted with online experts who told them, that meeting the needs of the public will always be the foundation for any great government site. The five agencies they selected are: NASA, Library of Congress, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Social Security Administration, and TSA. They have an interactive "Best Practices" presentation where they explain why they picked each agency.

Despite this progress, bureaucratic barriers and inefficiencies still exist to further governmental embrace of social media. For instance, government agencies get hung up on terms of service agreements, legal jurisdiction and issues over advertising. And as Herbert reports, many agencies have put content online, but much of it is useless, boring and unable to attract an audience. He quotes Sheila Campbell, co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, "It doesn't make sense to be using Web 2.0 tools for the sake of using Web 2.0…(they need) to make sure they're developing compelling videos that resonate with their target audiences."

Newell quotes several agency communication and technology leaders as being encouraged by the rhetoric coming from the Obama administration about service, citizen engagement and transparency. And they are hopeful that the administration’s pro-new media attitude will further speed up the embrace of these tools by their agencies. As one observer is quoted as saying, "We really hope . . . the White House from its bully pulpit says, 'This is OK,' and gives agencies the comfort level to make that leap of faith."

Herbert quotes Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and senior technology advisor for Sunlight, about the federal government has a long way to go in embracing Web 2.0, but he remains optimistic. "Right now you can point to some failures of some interesting experiments, but six months to a year from now things will be very different," he said. "And it's about time."