Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Ten Great Government Web Sites
Joab Jackson at Government Computer News has, for the second year in a row, pulled together a compendium of 10 government Web sites that he says are embracing both social networking tools and transparency. (He produced his first list last August). This year’s list includes sites that embrace the Web’s full potential, Jackson writes, and they can offer ideas for other agencies seeking to improve their own sites.
Governmental agencies have realized that a Web presence is essential, since most citizens are now beginning to interact with government online. “By and large, agencies have responded to that demand by creating richer, more interactive sites,” Jackson wrote. He quotes Sheila Campbell, co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, saying agencies are starting to see that they need to social media revolution and its larger information ecosystem. “Managing the Web isn’t just managing the Web site. It means putting the content out where people are on the Web.”
Making Jackson’s list are:
Data.gov for fundamentally shifting how government interacts with the Web.
Forge.mil which provides an online meeting place for military agencies to build software in a collaborative fashion.
San Francisco’s Trasit.511.org combines the schedules of dozens of subway, light-rail, trolley and bus systems to provide a one-stop shop that can help users plan a route from doorstep to doorstep.
The State Department’s State.gov for using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media tools to get the word out about the agency’s activities.
Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System offers public access to documents from all three branches of government through a single portal. “It is a Web site of sweeping scope,” Jackson writes.
The State of Utah’s Web site for pulling off what “is perhaps the most amazing trick of all: not looking like a state-run Web site.”
Science.gov, out of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information within the Energy Department, presents information and makes it accessible by subject matter rather than by the office or agency that generated the information.
The U.S. Postal Service’s site for making it possible to do online about 80 percent of everything you can do by taking a trip to the post office.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ two sites Women’s Health/Girl’s Health that uses plain, easy-to-understand language, to address more than 800 topics related to women’s health, such as fitness, nutrition, breastfeeding, pregnancy and reproductive health.
Federal Web Managers Council’s WebContent.gov provides most of the information Web managers need to bring “uniformity and quiet sophistication” for federal Web sites.
It’s highly encouraging to see government agencies responding to the public’s demand for more helpful and easy-to-use online tools.
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Weekly Media Roundup – May 1, 2009
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.
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Kundra’s Mission
It’s an understatement to say that us open government advocates have placed great hope on Vivek Kundra. We take President Obama’s chief information officer at his word when he says he wants to radically change the way the federal government communicates with citizens, and vice versa. “We’re going to be publishing government data and [operating on] a default assumption that information should be [available] to the people, not with the default assumption that information should not be in the public domain,” he said during a speech he gave last month in Washington.
On Thursday, Government Computer News published a fascinating article by Joab Jackson, GCN’s senior technology editor, that looks at two main themes that have emerged regarding Kundra’s approach. Jackson also looks back illustratively at Kundra’s brilliant tenure as chief technology officer for Washington, D.C., as a guide as how he will approach his new role with the feds.
Jackson writes that cloud computing is first on Kundra’s list, the idea of taking advantage of services already available on the internet. He envisions putting government images on Flickr, videos on YouTube and having government offices using Google Apps. Jackson points out that this is the exact approach Vivek took for the D.C. government, cutting the cost of buying new software and allowing District employees to interact with each other. No doubt challenges exist that would have to overcome, such as setting up private clouds for sensitive data and changing bureaucratic aversion from opening up and fear of losing control.
Kundra says he will follow through on Obama’s promise of opening up government data, calling it a “key agenda item that we’re going to be pushing in this administration.” Again, Jackson looks back at his time with D.C. government. Not only did Kundra put on the Web 240 data feeds from District government internal systems (everything from bus and subway train schedules to crime statistics), he set up a contest to have developers design applications from government data. Apps for Democracy motivated volunteers to build 47 new apps for the Web and hand-held devices. Kundra also plans to build Data.gov, which he promises will be the go-to site for government data feeds.
Not only does Kundra promise to open up the data, he wants to make it much easier to use by increasing the power of government servers and making sure it’s accessible in formats that are nonproprietary and don’t require a computer science degree to use and understand.
This is getting really exciting.
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The Feds and Social Media II
Here’s an exciting development! Last week, I blogged about an encouraging report by Doug Belzer at Federal Computer Week, where he wrote about how Twitter, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools are revolutionizing government business. The General Services Administration had determined that Twitter’s standard terms of service is compatible with federal use.
Two days ago, Doug has another exciting article, this time in Government Computer News, about GSA announcing that it has signed agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv that will allow federal agencies to use new-media tools. Agencies can now begin using these tools to better communicate, network and share information via the Web.
Chris Snyder at Wired’s Epicenter blog termed the move, “Web 2.0, meet dot-gov. Dot-gov, this is Web 2.0.” He’s right in calling it a “big step” for agencies attempting to become more transparent and interactive with citizens. “Now that the bureaucratic brush has been cleared, government agencies will be free, for example, to embed videos and create photo widgets that citizens can embed into their MySpace or Facebook pages,” he writes. An example of a government agency already using Web 2.0 tools successfully is the Centers for Disease Control alerting the public about the recent peanut better product recall.
Chris quotes Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Sunlight’s senior technology advisor, as saying it’s another example of why it really matters who’s president of the United States. “Because we have the country’s first tech president, the speed at which the government can catch up with the private sector and use of technology is exponential.”
Each individual agency will determine their own guidelines for how their employees can use the tools. “The new agreements make it easier for the government to provide official information to citizens via their method of choice,” according to GSA’s administrator, who is in discussions with other new-media providers. They started with these four because of their popularity and large number of users.
We’re excited about this development. You should be too.
