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IT Research Challenges to Advance Open Government

IT Research Challenges to Advance Open Government. Marti A. Hearst UC Berkeley School of Information iConference 2010. Disclaimers. I am speaking only for myself, not my employer. Any views or opinions are solely my own.

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IT Research Challenges to Advance Open Government

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  1. IT Research Challenges to Advance Open Government Marti A. Hearst UC Berkeley School of Information iConference 2010

  2. Disclaimers • I am speaking only for myself, not my employer. Any views or opinions are solely my own. • I am new to most of the topics I'll cover, so my statements may be naïve and/or shallow at best, and incorrect at worst.

  3. What’s the Excitement About? “Government 2.0”

  4. What's the Excitement About? • “Government 2.0” • Three main areas for IT innovation: • New technologies for public-govt communication, • Open data and other techniques for govt transparency, • Cost savings and efficiencies from new approaches to using technology.

  5. Outline • Background • U.S. Govt Agencies basics • IT-related legislation • What is Open Government? • Research Topics for iSchoolers • How can you get involved?

  6. 1% 97% 2% Proportion of employment (Bureau Labor Statistics)

  7. U.S. Government Agencies • Agencies are like large public universities • Serve the public • Relatively autonomous • Slow to change • Similar in structure and operation • Lots of replicated functionality • Lots of sub-agencies that replicate functionality • Depend on the state for their funding

  8. U.S. Government Agencies • The nation’s largest employer • 15 executive cabinet agencies(1.9M employees) Defense Homeland Veterans State Justice Education Health Energy Interior Agriculture Commerce Treasury Labor Housing Transportation • ~70 independent agencies(180k employees) • Social Security, General Services, EPA, NSF, NASA, … • The Executive Office of the President (EOP)

  9. Executive Office of the President OMB Management and Budget OSTP Science & Tech Policy e-Gov and IT CTO OIRA Information and Regulatory Affairs CIO And many other offices

  10. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) • Used to be the Bureau of the Budget • Assists the President in budget formation, review • Now, an expanded role, with IT spending as a “hook” for linking reforms to management: (according to P2PC Group’s Newsletter, October 2002) • procurement policy • accountability for management results • information security • shaping management priorities

  11. E-Govt and Open Govt

  12. E-Govt / Open Govt • Recent timeline: • 1998: Govt Paperwork Elimination Act • By 2003, agencies must provide the option of submitting required information electronically. • 2002: E-Government Act • 2006: Transparency Act • Requires a single searchable website of federal spending award information. • 2009: Open Government Directive • Jan 21: Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (Open Govt Initiative) • Dec 8: Open Govt Directive itself

  13. E-Government Act of 2002 • Purpose: • Improve the management and promotion of electronic government services, • Establish a Federal Chief Information Officer, • Establish a framework of measures that require using Internet-based IT to improve citizen access to government information and services, • Reduce costs and burdens for businesses and other govt entities.

  14. E-Government Act of 2002 • Purpose: • Promote access to high quality govt information andservices across multiple channels. • Make the Federal govt more transparent and accountable. • Transform agency operations by utilizing, where appropriate, best practices from public and private sector organizations. • Promote inter-agency collaboration in providing electronic govt services.

  15. Open Government Initiative • Inauguration Day, 2009 • Three pillars: • Transparency • Participation • Collaboration • Approach: • Use cutting-edge tools • Use cutting-edge practices

  16. Open Government Approach • Use cutting-edge technology, e.g. • Online dialog tools • Visualization and dashboards • Cloud computing • Use cutting-edge practices, e.g. • Social media for communication • Challenges and prizes

  17. Open Government Directive • Goal: change the default stance in govt agencies to one of exposing information. • Designed to require action.

  18. Open Government DirectiveFirst 45 Days — Jan 22, 2010 • 3 high-value datasets from each agency • A senior official must take responsibility for accuracy of information in usaspending.gov • An OMB working group.

  19. Open Government Directive60 days — Feb 6, 2010 • An Open Govt web page for each agency • A framework from OMB for describing spending data • The CIO and CTO will make an Open Government Dashboard.

  20. Open Government Directive90 days — Mar 8, 2010 OMB will make a framework for challenges, prizes, and other incentive-backed strategies to find innovative or cost-effective solutions to improving open government.

  21. Open Government Directive120 days — Apr 7, 2010 • OMB will issue a longer-term comprehensive strategy for Federal spending transparency, including ARRA. • Each agency publish an Open Government Plan that will describe how it will improve transparency and integrate public participation into its activities. • OIRA will review existing OMB policies, such as Paperwork Reduction Act guidance and privacy guidance, to identify impediments to open government.

  22. Open Government Directive1 year — Dec 8, 2010 • Agencies with a significant backlog of outstanding FOIA requests must take steps to reduce this by 10% each year. • Each agency’s Open Government Plan shall be updated every two years.

  23. Open Government: Transparency • Memorandum on FOIA (Jan 21, 2009) • A presumption of disclosure for govt records • Executive Order reversing changes to PRA (Presidential Records Act) (Jan 21, 2009) • Only incumbent president can assert constitutional privileges to withhold information, and must submit withholdings to Attorney General and White House Counsel. • ITSpending.gov launched (June 2009) • White House Visitors Log public (Nov 2009)

  24. Transparency: Data.gov

  25. Transparency: Recovery.gov

  26. Viewing Citizens as Partners • Participation + Collaboration • How to get people involved to: • Find out citizens’ needs • Get citizen input for decision making

  27. Citizen Participation, Old to New • Public hearings • Citizen juries • FACA committees • Requests for comments • Idea generation tools

  28. FACA Committees • Federal Advisory Committee Act (1972) • Small standing committees that advise the govt on all manner of topics • ~1000 of them! • NSF panels are one type of FAC • A complex formal procedure • High-level officials, filing of a charter with Congress, notification of meetings in FederalRegister, complicated payment arrangements • One way for citizens to get involved • But too cumbersome for quick advice • Not feasible for most people

  29. Open Government:Participation • Examples uses of online participation tools just in the last few months: • Convert the Initiative into the Directive • Ask for input on specific questions, such as how to do Open Publishing. • Ask govt employees how to save energy. • Critique implementation plans for Data.gov

  30. Important Predecessor:Peer2Patent

  31. MindMap of Summary of Transparency Conversation

  32. Engaging with the Public • Some agencies have more experience • EPA makes heavy use of all forms • public forums • requests for comments • Now: social media • EPA just released guidelines • http://govsocmed.pbworks.com/Guidance%3A-Representing-EPA-Online-Using-Social-Media • Issues include: • Have to print out and manage official records • State facts, not opinions, unless approved to do so

  33. Research Topics

  34. Research Questions:Online Discussions • How to compile and summarize responses • How to engage appropriate stakeholders? • How to moderate? • How to debate topics? • How to incorporate new entrants? • What are the types of conversations? • Are they valuable or not? • What role should they play in decision making? • How to evaluate and assess?

  35. Research Questions:Social Media • How to establish policies? • How to balance providing official information with being conversational and responsive? • What are the goals of this kind of communication? How to achieve them? • How to handle archiving rules?

  36. Research Area:Information Visualization • Design guidelines for information dashboards • Automating tools for information mashups

  37. Research Questions:Open Data • How to search large data collections? • How to devise shared metadata? • What tools can aid in data normalization? • How to link the content across datasets? • Role of Semantic Web • How to publish all posted content (such as on web sites) as data? • How to discover who is using a dataset?

  38. Research Area:Web Site Design • Proliferation of web sites • No one knows how many. • Having many sites is not necessarily a bad thing, but can cause problems • U. K. Government did a massive consolidation of their web site recently. • Should the U.S. do this as well? If so, how?

  39. Research Area:Web Site Design • Parallels between Government Agencies and Universities, as reflected in their web sites • Archive vs. Curate? • Unique Content vs. Administrative Structure? • Wide ranging audiences for research content • Especially for scientific agencies

  40. Research Questions:Web Site Design • Why is it so difficult and expensive? • Is there a turn-key solution for all but the content? • How to automate • Some of the design process? • Some of the usability testing process? • Updating sites with stale designs?

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