State Freedom of Information laws are in the limelight again. This time from Minnesota. The state's proposed revision's on FOIA have bloggers writing about the importance of accessing government data before a crisis happens. Charles Leck offers his view on how the state's proposal on what constitutes as public data may affect access to information in Minnesota.  He was also invited to attend a meeting (happening today) about the revisions and will give us an update. You can read his blog at ad astra.

Many ordinary citizens, like I, don’t really understand the importance of accessibility to public documents and information; we don’t understand, that is, until, in a crisis, we really need to get our hands on information squirreled away in the dungeon-like depths of government archives.

There is some rumbling over in the State Legislature about revising or altering one of Minnesota’s most important laws, the Data Practices Act – or the Freedom of Information Act (FIOA). That's cause for concern and it should make many of us sit up and take notice. I don’t think we should allow any changes that would make securing public information any more difficult than it all ready is.

Currently, this process of securing government data information goes through the Information Policy Analysis Division (with Apple’s forgiveness, it’s known as IPAD). The current director of that division of state government is Laurie Beyer-Kropuenske. The operation falls under the state’s Department of Administration.

Current state law defines Government Data as: “all data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by any government entity regardless of its physical form, storage media or conditions of use.”

Though the act does not require the data to be maintained in a particular form or format, it is required that the data be “easily accessible for convenient use.” (Minn. Stat. § 13.03, subd. 1)

FOIA requests shouldn’t be seen as a political tool of either the right or the left or, for that matter, the center. They come from everywhere and they are often viewed (and sometimes correctly) as threatening and as attempts to censor.

However, our ability to get at important information in government files is crucial to the process of Democracy – and crucial to the process of protecting and maintaining our rights as free citizens. To repeat myself, the last thing we want are changes to our current law that would make that process more difficult for Joe Blow citizens.

IPAD appears to be pushing for some changes, however, and they argue that the changes are necessary in light of recent budget cuts aimed at “streamlining government operations.”

RED FLAG! RED FLAG! Some of the proposals that IPAD is floating around the State Legislature might redefine what is to be regarded as public data and also changes the procedures that would be followed in applying for and securing such data. Naturally, IPAD argues that the procedures would create a more precisely defined law and make the procedures more efficient.

I’d want to make sure “if I was you” (as my old man used to say). And, if I were you and you live in Minnesota, I’d suggest you start communicating with your State Representative and State Senator right now and ask them to be wary of any changes that might make the procedure of securing public information more complicated. I’m going to send a draft of this blog on to both State Representative Steve Smith and State Senator Gen Olson, my representatives over at the capitol.

It’s already too difficult to secure information. The popular, veteran, and now retired newsman, Don Shelby, wrote in a MinnPost column last April that he “had a career batting average of about .150” on his FOIA filings. “Most of what I wanted to get at, I was told, ‘was none of my business.”

In case you don’t know what a 150 batting average is, it means you have success 1.5 out of every 20 times you come to bat. That’s not very good in one’s attempt to secure information that should be considered public. And, Shelby is not just an ordinary citizen like I am. He’s very familiar with the ins and outs of the current law and its procedures. He also had staff available to wait out the delays that IPAD can create for an applicant.

We simply should not consider changes that would diminish even more the access that is granted to public information. In fact, we ought to be going the other way with FOIA and making access less complicated.

Beyer-Kropuenske claims that IPAD is seeking a public discussion about the policy proposals – proposals, she says, that aren't even written into a proposed bill yet. Nevertheless, she calls the draft that is now circulating, according to Politics in Minnesota (1), a “preliminary proposal that is likely to be introduced this session.”

The IPAD Director is particularly interested in a variety of stakeholders (League of Minnesota Cities and Minnesota Coalition on Government Information). An open meeting was held in December and organizations like the Minnesota Newspaper Association had a representative there. It’s sad, however, that ordinary guys don’t get information about the meeting and we can’t easily get our hands on a copy of the proposed changes.

Even Common Cause of Minnesota, an organization I consider primary in representing my own interests in such matters, heard about the meeting after-the-fact.

A red flag, as far as I’m concerned (having not seen the document) is that a former IPAD director is concerned about it. Donald Gemberling was IPAD’s director for a very long period of time and he now serves as a spokesman and treasurer for the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information (MnCOGI). He alerts us to the fact that the government, under the proposal, could sit on a public data request for six months under certain circumstances.

The proposal also calls for the removal of elected officials from the personnel section of the data law. Currently rules regarding how state legislators and senators should be treated have been up to each body. That, I think, makes them much more accountable to the general public in terms of how they define themselves. A blanket change in the law that defines legislators as “private” would not be wise at all.

At this point, I’m very concerned about just who the director of IPAD considers stakeholders in this matter. There should be many more organizations included in her list and I think members of the press should be included in notices about such “open” meetings. I’d jump at the chance to be included myself. And, I have sent an email to IPAD requesting a copy of the proposals that have been made available to others  that Beyer-Kropuenske considers “stakeholders.” (see copy below)

(1)   Horwath, Justin: IPAD floats proposed changes to public information law [Politics in Minnesota, 13 January 2012]

IPAD Policy Bill Overview

Kicking of 2012 as our guest blogger is Ernestine Krehbiel. Ernestine is the president of the League of Women Voters Kansas. She can be reach at lwv.kansas@gmail.com. This post was published earlier on in the Wichita Eagle.    

A legislator recently asked a League member what we meant by transparency in government since he’d heard it mentioned several times about the redistricting process. To that legislator and all those of our elected leaders, we mean that we demand openness in government and the informed involvement of our citizens in decision making—not decisions by executive or legislative fiat.

Instead of public involvement solving our problems, we now have only hints, rumors and cliffhangers suggesting enormous changes are coming from behind the veil of the governor’s office.

Even the new voting law’s significant changes about what will be required to vote this year still lie largely unexplained to the voters. Calls recently to eight random Kansas counties’ Department of Motor Vehicles offices showed that not even their workers knew about the legal requirement to provide the state-issued, free, photo ID for voting.

In his State of the State speech (1/11/12) will the Governor lead with transparency or will he be vague and then go back behind his curtain to make and push policy drawn up in secret with advice from who knows whom?

The hints suggest big issues. Drastic cuts to state’s income tax which now provides almost one third of the state’s revenue. What will happen to the investments in education, transportation, public safety and other areas crucial to making the state attractive for families and businesses? Will schools have the resources they need to provide an education that helps people compete for good jobs in today’s global economy? Can Kansas really run an effective health care system by putting it into the hands of a rumored for-profit businesses mandated to put income in their own coffers?

To make up for the drastic income tax cuts, will the governor propose putting sales taxes on services? Or utilities and farm equipment as Sec. of Revenue Nick Jordan hinted?

Or will a reduction in state funds just throw the responsibility on local governments to raise property taxes to pay for needed schools and services? (This happened in some counties where his administration eliminated nine SRS offices.) The governor’s plans are secret.

Who will pay more and who will pay less? .

Kansans want their state government to be open and accountable with spending not one penny more than it needs to be. We elect our public officials to be stewards of the state’s future and to do so with open government. We also need an informed and involved public to do this but we can't do this with secret plans. There must be no secrets in a democracy. That’s why it is so important for the speech that Governor Brownback will give to contain more than just numbers and policy ideas. It should also explain how the process will move forward — specifically how interested Kansans can engage in the debate.

Kansas has a strong tie to the Wizard of Oz, a fictional man behind a curtain pulling secret levers. We do not need real Kansas government conducted secretly behind a curtain. Open government is the essence of democracy.

Joining us today as our guest blogger is Jason Hibbets. Jason is the project manager at Red Hat and lead administrator for opensource.com. Sunlight is a great supporter of the CityCamp initiative and continues to highlight efforts in City and State open government.

The theme that emerged from the first CityCamp Honolulu, held on December 3 (the 17th CityCamp held worldwide), was restoring citizen confidence in their government. In a very collaborative and participatory atmosphere, organizers looked to citizens to generate ideas for the City of Honolulu's upcoming Code for America project and to harness the power of design thinking to rapidly prototype ten topics generated during the unconference.

Government panel and first break out sessions

Burt Lum, a CityCamp Honolulu organizer, kicked off the day and kept participants on track during the event. Lum provided a brief introduction about what to expect. The day started with a government panel to provide an update on current and future initiatives in the City and County of Honolulu. The panel included Gordon Bruce, CIO at City and County of Honolulu, Forest Frizzell, Deputy Director at City and County of Honolulu, and Doug Chin, Managing Director, City of Honolulu.

Forest Frizzell, also an organizer for the CityCamp, shared a timeline that highlighted initiatives that have already happened, such as Can Do Honolulu, an online portal for citizens. The timeline then showed the CityCamp event and a 24-hour hackathon scheduled for January 2012. The momentum from these events will feed the Code for America kickoff in February 2012 and an anticipated Open 311 project also in 2012. Bruce talked about the vision to create a smarter citizen. He said if government IT can present a clear vision that improves services, saves money, and manages IT costs, the results will lead to engaged citizens who participate in their government. Bruce also touched on the Office of Information Practices open data policy. If they get a request for open data, they produce the data set and open it to the public. "If media X comes in and asks for data, instead of just giving it to the media, we're going to give it to the public. We'll get it on the Can Do site," Bruce stated.

"It's a real change in how we think and how we do things," he said. It's this type of shift in mentality that is making real progress in open government. More IT departments should take note and look to establish similar policies to provide open data to citizens in this manner. After the panel, attendees transitioned into unconference mode. Voting for the day's sessions concluded, and the first five sessions were announced. Participants moved to the breakout rooms and started to collaborate on their chosen topics. I attended and participated in a session about S.W.E.E.T.S.: Surf, Weather, Emergencies, Events, Traffic, and Services. The idea was to create one platform that brings all of the city and county departments together. It would leverage real-time, location-based data to keep citizens informed on what's happening right now.

Business panel and second break out sessions

After a short lunch break, the second panel of the day provided perspectives from outside of Hawaii. I joined the panel with Alissa Black, Government Relations Director at Code for America and Steve Bretches, a consultant at IBM. Our goal was to provide insight to the audience from what we're seeing around the rest of North America and beyond. Black highlighted Code for America projects like Change By Us, Classtalk, and Where's My School Bus. Bretches helped to draw comparisons between technology and the people who use it. "It's not about technology, it's about the cooperation with the government, community, and businesses," claimed Bretches.

I added lessons we could learn from the open source world, such as creating a participatory and inviting environment that would lead to a culture of transparency and accountability. I also provided examples of what's happening at other CityCamps. In Colorado, they are looking to advance adoption of the Open Government Directive. In Raleigh, we are continuing the CityCamp movement with quarterly meetups and project follow-up. The second round of sessions started. I jumped in and moderated a session on making the City of Honolulu's budget more transparent. The participants and I made an outline of what is currently available from the city and drafted action steps to explore how an open budget would be citizen-friendly by prototyping several use cases and scenarios.

Design thinking

The final charge for the day was to begin prototyping the top ten ideas that had been generated. The organizers prepared a brief introduction by showing a video from NYU Wagner on design thinking for public policy and social impact. Participants then broke into ten different groups began to rapid prototype the ideas from the day that included:

•  S.W.E.E.T.S.: Surf, Weather, Emergencies, Events , Traffic, and Services (real-time city information)
• Adopt-a-node (wifi)
• Real-time bus arrival
• Standard API
• Expand online service
• Trash to treasure
• Pay for parking/find a parking spot application
• Map a bike lane/find a bike route application
• City tax revenue/spending trends (transparent budget)
• City reminders

Each team drilled down into its topic. Some came up with action plans; others developed design mock-ups. All the teams shared their prototypes by presenting to the larger group.

Inspired by CityCamp

CityCamp Honolulu was a huge success. Frizzell reacted at the end of the day, "I'm overwhelmed. I can't believe how many people showed. Today was a huge success. We got a ton of ideas that we could act on—that we could develop in-house or in partnership with the local development community. Citycamp was so useful, and we inspired a lot of people." I was inspired by the attendees, ideas, and the participants at CityCamp Honolulu. And I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one. In closing, organizer Frizzell charged CityCampers with a mission. He challenged the community to help transition the CityCamp event from an emotional movement into a reality. "How do we inspire people to become involved?" he asked.

Frizzell proclaimed, "It's not about the app; it's not about the open data; it's about people taking a more active roll in their community." What can a CityCamp can do for your community? As Frizzell pointed out, it's a movement that can engage your local community. I'll add that CityCamp can restore trust in government. The activities and projects from the CityCamp movement are re-engaging citizens who think they don't have a voice in government. It's giving people a reason to participate and not just the latest hot topic of debate.

From the event

•    Tweet stream
•     Photos on our Facebook page
•    Pictures on Flickr: bytemarks, hawaii, madmarv00
•    Media coverage: Hawaii joins the "city camp" initiative
•    YouTube - CityCamp Honolulu

 

This is the third and last part of Matt's post on the Open Government Partnership

National governments seeking to become open should look not only to smart NGOs, software developers, students and journalists, but to town councils, which generally tend to face more direct pressure for accountability on a daily basis in their communities.

Although varying conditions may dictate different strategies, the ultimate destination is a common one. Any government that wants to call itself open must provide free and accessible public information on taxation, draft and adopted budgets, and actual year-end spending including contract awards. There should be full and open disclosure on government bidding processes, job openings, salaries and benefits, court proceedings and legislation prior to and after passage. Also vital are sharing of key data on economic performance, public health conditions, and fair metrics of student and teacher performance at public schools. A lynchpin of open government is a trustworthy and transparent elections process including impartial and open adjudication of fraud allegations.

A next layer of transparency would include wide promotion of census data, and adopted laws which serve to daylight public records, lobbying, campaign contributions, and ethics and accountability oversight in government.

Girding the whole disclosure framework should be government reports and data created in machine-readable formats, and liberally posted online.

As OGP, its member nations and their domestic partners work to bring ambitious open government plans to life, here are a few more things they should bear in mind.

• Crowd-sourced sites which accent the need for government response also require a formal and public adoption by government. Nobody wants to report into an abyss. "Open 311" sites which allow citizens to report and see resolution of cracked sidewalks, broken streetlights, gaping potholes, broken park equipment can be a huge force for building trust and engaging publics - if reports actually prompt action. To get to this point requires real collaboration between site developers, officialdom, and constituents.

• Most people aren't tech geeks, even in advanced economies. Although software developers are crucial partners, keep the needs of everyday constituents foremost. Throwing 400 government data sets online is not an open government policy. Track what developers do, if much of anything, with all those data sets once posted. How many actually get rendered into browser-friendly Web sites and easy mobile apps? How widely are the sites and apps used? And make sure to look beyond the open data craze no matter how well outcomes of data portals are tracked. As Nathaniel Heller of Global Integrity, an OGP partner, blogs:

  Instead of fetishizing open data portals for the sake of having open data portals, I'd rather see governments incorporating open data as a way to address more fundamental structural challenges around extractives (through maps and budget data), the political process (through real-time disclosure of campaign contributions), or budget priorities (through online publication of budget line-items).

• Another thing: impenetrable gov-speak has got to go. Written government communications including laws, regulations, audits, reports, contracts and more should be in plain language only.

• The trend toward more and more data visualizations, audio and video is good if it's user-focused. Videos of full meetings of legislative or regulatory bodies need should be indexed by main topics and include keyword-searchable transcripts. Prototypes are already emerging.

• Reveal and revile censorship and intimidation of media and activists, first by highlighting the oversight work of organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and second, through vigorous state prosecution of those who seek to censor, threaten or otherwise intimidate reporters and activists. Hello, Mexico?

• Reflecting recommendations in a landmark report issued by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, more foundations and philanthropists should support independent non-profit media doing valuable work on transparency, particularly "last mile delivery" of the fruits of open government.

It's a time of challenge, and of possibility. Every major development right now on the global political scene - including the financial meltdown in Europe, economic troubles in the U.S., the wave of pro-liberty uprisings in the Arab world, even the little noticed efforts of locals and NGOs to shepherd the tiny West African nation of Guineau-Bissau away from the despotic rule of drug profiteer-kleptocrats - intersects closely with the need for open, honest and accountable government. Because the need is so deep and broad, the Open Government Partnership represents an important attempt to bring a multilateral and official hue to the challenge.

But public officials who aspire to wring utility more than huzzahs out of open government initiatives would do well to heed the musty adage,"'dance with them that brought you," popular among the old-time ward-heelers of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.

It's just that the partners and the venue for the dance look a whole lot different these days.

In this second  in a three-part series, guest blogger Matt Rosenberg continues to reflect on the Open Government Partnership

Egypt, for instance, could hardly be expected to commit now to a formal national plan for open government nor is it yet part of OGP. But as the country sorts out its post-Mubarak political future it's already evident that crowd-sourced data, literally from the street, are being used to push for social and government reforms. Women in Cairo are using a site called Harass Map, built on the open-source platform Ushahidi, to document widespread and traditionally tolerated sexual harassment. Reports can be texted, e-mailed or tweeted, to be integrated into the growing and mapped compendium of uncivil behavior. Categories include rape-sexual assault, indecent exposure, stalking or following, touching, sexual invites,  phone calls, comments, catcalls, and ogling.

India is not a member of the Open Government Partnership and given that government corruption is still considered a notorious scourge there, any state-stamped transparency scheme would be met with skepticism. Yet that hasn't prevented a vibrant community of reformers from adapting new tools to an old concern. The transparency site ipaidabribe.com collects firsthand reports on the intimidation by government officials of businesses and citizens through informally-mandated payoffs, and offers related data analytics. It was created by Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based non-profit focused on quality of life and citizenship in urban India. In the Central Gondwana region of India, tribal members report on and learn about problems that citizens encounter with government, through a mobile phone voice portal called CGNet Swara. It has a Web hub and journalists to vet and edit reports. The service's impacts include seeding mainstream overage and sometimes corrective action on problems with worker compensation, food security, public safety and resource extraction. Recognizing the vital role of local intelligence, CGNet Swara has branched into training citizen journalists. India's Association for Democratic Reforms, or ADR, is a pioneering open government group in the country, which has successfully won the right for voters to know the financial, criminal and educational backgrounds of candidates for office. In a country where reformers sadly note that many candidates are criminals, this matters. The information is made available via Short Message Service on mobile phones. ADR also monitors courts and elections, provides counsel to officials on best practices, and reports on a wide range of transparency and corruption issues.

In India open government is a bottom-up endeavor. Perhaps, as the old saying goes: if the people will lead, then the leaders will follow. Which isn't to say leadership from officialdom can't become transformative. One national data initiative unveiled in 2011 has attracted broad notice in "open" circles but it will take time to gauge its social utility. It was launched this summer by the Kenyan government, which will be joining the Open Government Partnership. The Kenyan open data portal covers a wide range of economic, government spending, health, education and other topics and pointedly emphasizes opportunities to drill-down to the state, regional and local level. There are maps and fact sheets, charts and tables and raw data for developers to create new apps. Community apps developed from initiative data so far include tools to scrutinize energy use and progress on Community Development Fund and World Bank projects, and to map and categorize constituent service needs. An especially useful mash-up is BOOST, which presents annual spending in the provinces side-by-side with demographic, poverty and public health indicators such as percent of households with dirt floors, or connections to the main sewer line; and percent of population that has never attended school, or is of pre-primary age. While young, Kenya's initiative shows how trust and collaboration might grow through open data, although that is just one aspect of the transparency agenda. In contrast, Ukraine, another of the 38 nations joining OGP, is trying to get to first base, by establishing rules of law and building civil society, as I learned when I met with a Ukraine delegation visiting Seattle earlier this year through the U.S. State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program and The World Affairs Council - Seattle. The visitors included representatives of Ukraine NGOs working, variously, to provide legal aid to citizens in property disputes with government; to strengthen the climate for small and medium-sized business by modernizing the tax code and fighting government corruption; and to promote freedom of association and civil society organizations. Other participants represented organizations working to fight media censorship, and to develop civic capacity projects targeted to youth. Knowing their animating concerns, and listening to their questions - which showed keen interest in matters as granular as the posting online of local city council meeting agendas before the meetings are held - I could begin to sense what a more genuinely open government in Ukraine would need to look like.

But for the administration of President Victor F. Yanukovich to have any credibility on open government, a major course correction is needed. As two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine observed last March, the nation's reputation for openness is suffering because of a "corrupt, politically-driven judiciary" and state prosecutors doing Yanukovich's political bidding. In October a show trial conviction of his political rival and former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko added to that perception, sparking vociferous protests and threatening the nation's integration into the European Union. Even before the verdict, the case was being read as, in the words of one expert on European governance, "an extremely worrying sign that (Yanukovich) is moving to exert a monopolistic control over politics." The road to credibility for Ukraine is littered with larger boulders. Consider the conditions described in Ukraine via Transparency International's "Corruption Perceptions Index 2010" report issued this year. Ukraine scored only 2.4 on a scale of 10, far more at the "highly corrupt" end of things than the "very clean." Key concerns included: murkiness about the difference between political and government workers; weak laws on conflict of interest for public workers; lack of competition for high-level public sector jobs; poor legal rights for public servants arbitrarily fired; law enforcement agencies and a judiciary which don't prosecute corruption effectively; a lack of whistleblower protections for public employees; and a lack of annual performance and accountability reports required of the legislature and government agencies.

However, farther from Kiev are promising signs. Open government in Ukraine is building from the grassroots up. Earlier this year, Albertville, Minnesota City Administrator Larry Cruse was part of a local delegation of public officials which visited counterparts in Boryspill, Ukraine in an exchange program intended to build skills and capacity around open government. (A group from Boryspil visited Minnesota in late September.) Cruse lived with a local family for a week and immersed himself in local governance. Unlike like smaller and non-partisan municipal bodies in the U.S., the local council of Boryspil had 48 members from 13 political parties. But Cruse observed that caucuses and negotiations to form issue-specific coalitions helped provide order to the process, and that open government in Boryspil had a strong face-to-face component. Cruse wrote:

A good portion of our time was spent in strategic planning sessions with anywhere from 20 to 50 people representing elected officials, city staff and citizens of Boryspil. Throughout the day, the large groups were broken up into small sub-groups to discuss various topics, exchange ideas and then report their finding back to the larger group for further discussions and consensus building. There were elected officials and staff mixed together with members of the community at all the functions. The students and community members were delighted and emotionally moved to be sharing their thoughts and ideas alongside of the Mayor and other officials.

Read the last of these series tomorrow...

Today's guest blog is a three-part series from Matt Rosenberg. Matt is founder and editor of Public Data Ferret, a project of the non-profit Public Eye Northwest in Seattle, Washington.

U.S. President Barack Obama this autumn joined with other global leaders to formally unveil the Open Government Partnership as the United Nations met in New York City. Funding for the partnership so far is $733,500 from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, $350,000 from Google and in-kind contributions from the U.S. government, World Bank Institute and others. The eight charter members have already formalized their commitment to the core principles of disclosure, engagement, integrity, innovation and accountability. The eight are the Year One co-leaders the U.S. and Brazil, plus Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Another 38 countries are committed to joining, many from eastern and northern Europe but also seven from South and Central America, four from Africa and three from the Middle East. An important step in the partnership's agenda will come at a March 2012 Brazil meeting with the presentation by each new member of an open government plan of their own, against which future actions can be measured.

The New York event gave rise to the expected lofty statements. In a speech, Philippines President Benigno S. Acquino III, remarked: "This is what democracy is all about: having a government disciplined enough to imbibe in itself the principles of transparency, accountability, and citizen involvement-the necessary preconditions to poverty alleviation and inclusive and sustainable economic growth."

Who could be against imbibing that? But in an open society the media don't always parrot the party line. Only the day prior, news reporters had chastised the White House in print for an advance briefing on the Open Government Partnership by State Department officials who insisted on being described only as "Senior Administration Official 1" and "Senior Administration Official 2". Standard operating procedure in most high-level briefings, true. But, implied the reaction - from the Associated Press, Tech President, and Politico, to name a few - rather discordant for a big "transparency" initiative. It wasn't the first time in recent months that the gap between words and deeds on U.S. open government efforts had drawn notice.

The day after the partnership's formal unveiling, J. Nicholas Hoover of Information Week wrote:

...the Obama administration's commitment to open government hasn't always lived up to its rhetoric. For example, the White House has aggressively pursued whistleblowers and leakers of information, and in court cases has regularly used the defense that certain data must be shielded from the public as state secrets. (A March 2011) event recognizing Obama for a commitment to open government was ironically closed to the press...Congress' record in recent years has also been mixed. For example, while the websites of congressional committees now nearly universally stream congressional hearings, Congress has slashed a key source of funding for transparency efforts. Federal court records are also difficult to access online, and are often available only behind a paywall. The new National Action Plan and international partnership on open government are positive additional steps pointing toward increased transparency, but will ultimately be judged by their execution, and not the initial plans.

Exactly right. Success for OGP will begin with helping member nations understand how to best harness the passion and capacity of disparate ground-level actors - particularly NGOs, local governments, journalists, students, engaged citizens, artists and social media users. To complement important data they already have on the communications and personal technology preferences of constituents, OGP nations should commission independent surveys on how the civic landscapes in their respective nations are perceived at home.

This qualitative harvesting must be incisive and unflinching because real conditions on the ground greatly shape implementation of open government. Earlier this year I led a conversation on transparency with mid-career government officials from Yemen, Tunisia, Guineau, Djibouti, India, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Lithuania and South Korea, who were among the enrollees in a year-long program as Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs, in Seattle. The dominant concern of the group was how to develop a flexible model for building open government systems, keeping in mind widely varying socio-political environments in different nations. Participants identified some of the big questions that need to guide any open government visioning at national scale. These fell into two broad areas.

1. Political culture. Are political corruption and cronyism an animating concern? How is the national government experienced, on the whole, by the populace? As an authoritative patriarch which discourages close scrutiny? As despotic and dangerous, or unstable? As a work in progress, or  in the best case as genuinely transparent, strategic and collaborative? Do the principles of universal human rights have purchase, and is there true freedom of the press or not?
2. Education, economy and technology. What is the state of education in the country - do scientific and secular views hold sway or not? Are higher ed and institutional R&D in a healthy state, and is there a burgeoning community of public-spirited software developers? Is the economy open or state-run?  What are the particulars of technology adoption and access across class lines?

The answers will help guide whether an  open government planning process can even be credibly launched in a given nation, and how; or whether it may be wiser to take a more incremental approach.

Read the rest of Matt's post tomorrow...

This week we continue our coverage of the rollbacks of Illinois's Freedom of Information law with a guest post from Emily Miller. Miller is the Policy and Government Affairs Coordinator at the Better Government Association, a non-profit, non-partisan government watchdog group based in Illinois that has been closely following this issue.

*** In 2010, during a whirlwind of post-Blagojevich “ethics reform,” the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) went through a dramatic rewrite that strengthened the rights of citizens to access information about their government. From tightening response deadlines and eliminating loopholes, to creating a “public access counselor” in the office of the Illinois attorney general, the new law made accessing information about Illinois government easier than ever.

But the honeymoon didn’t last long. Lawmakers began chipping away at the new FOIA protections almost as soon as the law went into effect. This year’s legislative session saw at least 12 different anti-FOIA bills move through the Illinois General Assembly.

The good news is that, by being involved in negotiations with key lawmakers and staffers, the Better Government Association (BGA) and other advocates stopped some of the more absurd FOIA backsliding suggested during the legislative session, including a provision that would have allowed public school districts to wait all summer until students returned in the fall before responding to a citizen’s FOIA request.

But now, under a new law signed last week by Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois added yet another barrier to access by creating a new class of citizen—the “recurrent requester”—who must wait longer to receive documents requested from public bodies.

Referred to as “vexatious requesters” in earlier versions of the legislation, recurrent requesters are citizens who make more than 50 FOIA requests in one year, 15 in 30 days or seven in seven days.

Once citizens are labeled a recurrent requester—a label they cannot appeal—it’s harder for them to access public information for an entire year. The 2010 law gave public bodies five business days to respond to a request for public information, or 10 days if they get an extension. Under the new law, public bodies can take 21 days to give a recurrent requester an estimate as to when he or she might get the requested documents, and it requires no set timeline by which a public body must respond.

The lack of a set time frame for reply could leave citizen watchdogs without access to time-sensitive information that’s needed to keep a close watch on what’s behind fast-changing or shifting government decisions or plans.

Illinois should be moving toward increased openness and transparency, not away from it. Instead of focusing on ways to punish “recurrent requesters,” public bodies should be focusing on how to make public information more accessible through the Web. If more basic public information, such as meeting minutes and contracts, was available online, citizens wouldn’t need to file as many FOIAs.

Unfortunately, we know this is not the end of the fight to protect FOIA. Without a doubt, lawmakers will continue to try and chip away at FOIA.

The BGA remains committed to shining a light on government, and we will continue to fight for the public’s right to do the same.

Emily Miller is the Policy and Government Affairs Coordinator at the Better Government Association (www.bettergov.org), a non-profit non-partisan government watchdog group in Illinois. The BGA Think Tank blog follows BGA policy work, including FOIA. Emily Miller can be found on Twitter at @EJMill.

Transparency is a cornerstone of democracy: If citizens can’t see the process, they can’t be expected to be informed participants in it. In Illinois, the Citizen Advocacy Center (CAC), a renowned non-profit, non-partisan organization “dedicated to building democracy for the 21st century,” has applied this same perspective to their local and state officials’ cracks at redistricting. Today, Maryam Judar, a Community Lawyer at the CAC, shares more insight on this issue with us.

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Redistricting and the Illinois experience are illustrative of why the people clamor for transparency, and how public officials cynically use transparency to gain advantage. The clamor is easy to explain: Fair redistricting practices drive competition at the ballot. Competition is central to our nation’s democracy: robust debate is a foundational value of our political system. A lack of competitive views reflected on the ballot reduces voters’ choices. The lack of meaningful choice on ballots is a common complaint by voters. Revised redistricting procedures that benefit the public rather than elected officials may ameliorate the public’s frustration with lack of candidate choice, and it may spur more people to vote.

These days the term “transparency” is bandied about at all levels of our government. Some of the clamor comes from the citizenry who are anxious about the activities of their governments and need a means of holding them accountable; and while some public officials jump on the transparency bandwagon and trumpet its virtues in hopes of using it as a political vehicle to gain advantage, others sincerely believe in transparency’s importance and join the discussion. Transparency, while having little-examined benefits for government officials and employees, ultimately protects the people from government mismanagement and unethical behavior. In the national and state-wide debates, the importance of transparency is best told by stories that exemplify what is at stake for all members of the public, and from the public’s perspective.

THE MOST CLOSED OPEN PROCESS

During the 2011 remap cycle, for the first time since the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention, which laid out the current redistricting process, a single party has controlled both the General Assembly and the Governor’s Office. Within days of legislative passage, the Governor signed the Democratically-drawn maps and accompanying legislation in the dark of night. Parenthetically, this meant that the singular feature of our state redistricting process did not need to be employed, namely, the tie-breaking provision and “winner take all” approach manifested by literally pulling a name out of a hat, and, hence, the associated political party that will control the map making process.

In the aftermath of former Governor Blagojevich’s indictment, elected officials could not ignore the calls for transparency during the redistricting cycle. In fact, Governor Quinn’s own Illinois Reform Commission formed in response to his predecessor’s arrest and impeachment reported the current structure of government in Illinois, including the system for drawing congressional and state legislative districts, “does not serve the best interests of the people, and instead functions to protect incumbents and concentrate political power in a handful of officials.” (Illinois Reform Commission 100-Day Report, April 28, 2009, at www.reformillinoisnow.org, p. 47.) During this redistricting cycle, for the first time the public could speak out at public hearings and even had maps that were made available for public inspection before legislators voted on them, albeit just days before their deadlines.

The outcome? Nineteen Republican representatives face elections against at least one other Republican incumbent in the redistricting map signed by Governor Pat Quinn. Democrats have acknowledged their maps result from their consideration of partisan voting data, and they confound the issue of fairness by pointing to the “most open process Illinois has ever had.”

Which, to be fair, is true, as outlined above. The bad news is their measures towards transparency can be described at best as achieving translucency -- ultimately, mapmaking decisions are made outside the public’s eye. In contrast, the Commission recommended adopting legislation to restore fairness to the process by which state legislative and congressional districts are drawn, and it specified that ideally the legislation would exclude the consideration of residency of incumbent legislators, political affiliations of registered voters, and previous election results.

Disturbingly, Governor Quinn, formerly a staunch champion of good government practices, was not troubled by the maps’ outcome. "My view is that the process for redistricting, both the congressional districts and the state legislative districts, is the most open process Illinois has ever had," Quinn said in response to the filing of the LWV lawsuit. "There was ample public participation and opportunity to participate. I looked at both maps in a very careful way and made a decision that they were fair (and) done through an open process. So we're happy to defend that work in any court in the land." (Rick Pearson, Voter group sues over Democratic-drawn districts for lawmakers, Chicago Tribune, August 16, 2011.)

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAPS BEHIND THE CURTAIN

This attitude that the public need not be privy to the actual decision-making behind the drawing of district boundaries is not limited to the State; it is mimicked wherever its false reassurances can be invoked, whether at the municipal or county level.

As in other redistricting cycles, lawsuits challenging the final maps attempt to hold accountable the Illinois state officials who are responsible for redistricting. To date, two lawsuits, now consolidated, challenge the Democratic legislation redrawing the state’s legislative and congressional district boundaries. Illinois State Republican Leaders filed a federal lawsuit to invalidate the 2011 maps and included the novel legal theory that the map violates the First Amendment of our United States Constitution by diluting the voting power of Republican voters across the state. The League of Women Voters of Illinois filed a federal lawsuit alleging that both the state legislature and congressional districts violate the First Amendment by discriminating according to a person’s political viewpoint.

Unfortunately resources are scarce to hold the local officials accountable for their redistricting behavior. A low cost method of holding officials accountable where the likelihood of an expensive lawsuit is slim is through enforcing strong transparency measures. Recently the Illinois Attorney General found that the McHenry County Board violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act by holding a closed door meeting in which five members took turns in pairs to rotate out of the room in an effort to skirt the legal definition of a meeting. (Attorney General: County Board meeting violated Open Meetings Act Kevin P. Cramer, Northwest Herald August 13, 2011.) In DuPage County, the board members practiced the safer alternative of meeting between each 3 member district and the consultant, causing piecemeal district creation and ensuing public accusations by public officials of political gerrymandering. While DuPage County’s redistricting practices did not garner a scolding Attorney General opinion, allegations of political gerrymandering pitted representatives from the same district against one another, where the whistleblower stood to lose little from revealing what he witnessed in the closed door redistricting process because he planned to run for government office in the next election cycle. The board ultimately voted in the arguably offending map,appropriately named the Fitzpatrick Finger in honor of the opposing candidate that was drawn out of the district.

The better way, and to repeat, the low cost way, to hold our state and local governments accountable for their redistricting methods is through strong transparency measures that provide meaningful rationales for the best interest of the public behind district boundaries.

Our guest blogger today, is Sid Burgess. Sid is the Director of Government Relations at DotGov, Inc -- the creators of YouTown-Putting government in your pocket.

For some time now, mobile government has been touted as the next big thing for agencies striving for better connection with citizens.  After all, mobile communications are growing as the tools become more affordable and common.  If people are already using their smart-phones for social, business, and consumer purposes, it makes sense for governments to reach out this way -- but many agencies don’t know where to begin, especially if resources and funds are limited.  It’s one thing to create a Facebook page, but mobile technologies can seem to be an elusive goal for your average local gov.

Enter the newly launched, fast-growing mobile gov app YouTown  -- making open government more easily achievable for agencies at the municipal and county levels.  It functions as a platform that allows governments to publish news, maps, events, and services to the smart-phones of citizens, so an agency can go mobile without a long app development process.

Combining a familiar user interface with customizable settings that cater to specific people groups (i.e. Families, Tourists, Seniors, Residents, etc.), YouTown delivers a mobile citizen-to-government connection that has been difficult for most agencies to achieve -- until now.  This isn’t an app that has a long ramp-up phase either. Governments can sign up for free and go mobile the same day.

For end-users, YouTown provides a mobile resource for things that are sometimes hard to find -- schedules for council meetings, information on licenses or recycling programs, traffic or police updates, maps for city facilities or libraries.  Cities like Prattville, AL are finding the app useful for tourism as well -- visitors can download the app free, gaining immediate mobile access to local attractions, events, sports schedules, or shows.

Openness made easy

Governments aiming to increase transparency and openness will find YouTown an inexpensive, easy-to-use platform that allows them to leverage any open data feeds or calendars they may already be publishing to a website.  By simply pasting the feed into the YouTown interface, the data becomes viewable on the mobile devices of citizens.  The app also supports real-time data, like the “911 Map” in Shawnee, OK, which allows citizens to view the location and nature of recent police incidents in the area.

No website?  No problem!  Even small agencies with little or no web presence can go mobile with YouTown in just a few minutes.  Governments have the option of manually creating content right in the YouTown interface -- news articles, events, service descriptions, even maps.  Publishing mobile data allows agencies to take that first step toward open government, regardless of whether the agency already has an online presence. It’s not uncommon for big cities like open-data leader San Francisco to develop dozens of their own customized mobile apps .  Smaller agencies don’t have the resources for this, but YouTown acts as a platform so cities can provide an “app experience” to citizens without breaking the budget.  “We bundle mobile development efforts for all these cities, so agencies don’t have to create their own apps.  They can sign up and start publishing, skipping the whole development and design process,” said Michael Riedyk, CEO of DotGov, the Seattle-based company that created YouTown.

Helping citizens understand their governments

YouTown opens a world of information and services to residents, making it easier for them to understand the workings, schedules, and offerings of their local governments.  For services like paying traffic citations, licensing pets, or probating a will, citizens can view info on cost, what to bring, how long it takes, and more.  Some cities have even integrated their online bill-pay services, so people can make payments right from their mobile phones.  Agencies across the U.S. and Canada are publishing unique information to help residents get the most out of their communities:

• Nanaimo, Canada publishes information about their parks department under “Recreation Services.”  This is an example of a city that uses the YouTown app to connect citizens to a portion of the city website (essentially creating a mobile version of an existing site).  Clicking into recreation services, residents and visitors to Nanaimo can browse Activity Guides, Trails, Parks, and more.

• Morris County, NJ provides directions for their historic Downtown Walking Tours on the YouTown app -- useful for tourists.  In addition, they publish county-specific services like how to get a passport, probate a will, or seek career services in Morris County.  All these services contain links to further information and contact numbers.

• Enid, OK has focused on providing excellent maps for their citizens.  They’ve grouped their maps into categories that make it easier to “browse” the city geographically.  The map labeled “Family Fun in Enid” provides locations for a water park, golf courses, planetarium, country club, bowling, speedway, etc.  Local “Dining” and “Shopping” options are contained in maps of their own.  For everyday needs, the city has also published maps pinpointing local schools, fire stations, and lodging.  Citizens and tourists will all benefit from the convenience of having these maps waiting for them at the literal tap of a fingertip.

Mobile communications continue to expand, reaching a broader segment of the population than ever before, with a heavy focus on data and interaction.  It just makes sense for governments desiring greater connection and transparency to “go mobile” in some form.  YouTown combines open data and mobile communication -- making it easier for even “little govs” to achieve their open government goals.

 

We welcome Daniel O’Leary as our guest blogger today. Daniel is the Vice President of Global Solutions for LincWare, an electronic forms and document assembly company that specializes in replacing paper forms with dynamic, electronic forms that integrate with a wide variety of ECM systems. You can follow him on twitter at @danieloleary.

     

Meeting minutes from public entities like city councils and public universities provide citizens with almost floor-to-ceiling windows of insight into the goings-on of tax-payer supported efforts. Problem is, elected officials and those working on our dime are prone to pulling the shade, allowing the sun to shine on only portions of the minutes they deem fit to share.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

Enter electronic minute recording forms.

Since some meeting minutes in public environments are recorded, there is no reason they can't be entered into text fields as part of a customized, searchable form that can be made web-accessible. In fact, this can be a powerful time saver for the secretaries and interns charged with keeping up with the ramblings and tirades of those sitting around the table.

The process most commonly used today (not electronic) is still rather “old school”. A tape machine (cough! 1980! cough!) or digital recorder is used to capture the audio as it’s happening. (Today, we call that "real time.") Post-meeting, they are put down on paper to be approved at the next meeting. Well check this out: What if the completed minutes form was hung on-line in a password-protected place for the requisite board members to access prior to the meeting? This saves paper and tons of e-mails and calls needed to verify items. Once a board member gives them a quick review, the next meetings approval goes smoothly, sans debate about contextual mistakes or semantics. Then -- and here's the cool part -- the minute taker simply "submits" the form to the Web site, where it's now available to the press and public, with rays of sunshine beaming all over it.

All interested citizen parties and media can subscribe to that page to receive alerts as soon the minutes form is updated. Every form can be archived, as is legally required, via a cloud-based repository. Because everything is digital, people can search for keywords within the minutes to rapidly find the appropriate subject area. Individually titled fields can be created for each meeting topic. Attendee lists with links to public bios, scanned hand-outs and even custom voting record lists could also be embedded into such a form.

(Take a look at the demo below for an idea of how an eform can be used).

                                         

Now, whether we like it or not, there are categories of information that can be held in the dark such as any public record or information prohibited by federal law or regulations from disclosure including an injured worker’s social security number. (Chapter 7 of the Social Security Act explains it in details).

Okay, fine; we're not here to argue that. Via the very cool minutes eform, the minute taker can assign a "closed" status to fields that are not accessible on the published version. That way, even more time can be saved by not having to manually redact or edit just those portions that people are not allowed to see. Who hasn't run into delays when requesting information because a public employee needs to pull information from a document?

So folks, are we starting to see the light on the power of eforms in the public information arena? If so, then we should push for more minute recording using eforms!

(The views expressed in this blog post are entirely the guest blogger’s. This is not an endorsement of any product mentioned in the blog)