Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington (D.C.) Examiner, and strong  ally of Sunlight’s thirst for more transparency of information, attended the Personal Democracy Forum 2008 conference in New York, to appear on the panel that I convened. It was his first, and based on the refection he posted to his blog, it sounds like PDF has a new convert. Mark reports that it was not only quite memorable, but he also became infused with “a heightened sense that we are on the cusp of profound, even revolutionary changes in government and public policy thanks to the Internet.”  He adds that, as a conservative, he doesn’t use the word “revolution” lightly.

He writes that two things struck him at the conference: one being the staggering magnitude of the possibilities as a result of the explosion of information technology, and the other being how progressives have embraced this revolution quicker and more thoroughly than conservatives.

Mark, as a good classic conservative, fears what he calls “Leviathan,” or “the all-powerful central government.” Seeing how inept the federal government is currently with information technology it’s very easy to get lulled into a false belief that there is no way it could ever get so deviously savvy to pose much of a threat. But of course Mark is correct to fear the potential of an Orwellian Internet-empowered centralized power. You’ve got to believe that sooner rather than later the feds will wake up and embrace this technology. The question is, will it be used for good or ill? And here at Sunlight, as well as with our friends and colleagues, we are dedicated to opening up the government with these new tools so that we can achieve a much more robust democracy, preventing Mark’s monstrous scenario.

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Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News reminds us that Friday July 4th is the 42^nd anniversary of Lyndon Johnson signing the Freedom of Information Act into law.  Interesting, but frankly, FOIA hasn’t aged well.  Meant to be “Democracy’s X-Ray,” allowing journalists and other citizens to ferret out waste, fraud, abuse and corruption the reality is that FOIA plays into the notion that government shouldn’t automatically provide information. I think it should.

This spring, I wrote an essay The Merciful Death of the Freedom of Information Act and the Birth of True Government Transparency: A Short History that was published in Rebooting Democracy, a compendium of some 44 essays, was released last month at the Personal Democracy Forum conference.  In the essay I keyed off a Jeff Jarvis blog post where he called for the abolition of FOIA. “Why should we be asking for information about and from our government?” he wrote. “The government should have to ask to keep things from us…Government information-every act of government on our behalf-should be free by default.” Digital technology and web-based tools now allow business transactions to be digitally captured, stored, and opened to search and analysis, he argued. This was not possible when the information was stored on paper in file cabinets.

But to get there, there has to be a sea change in the attitude of government. I think we are moving in the right direction but it will take time. But citizens are getting used to getting more information via the Internet and it makes them want more.

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Rebooting Democracy, a compendium of some 44 essays, was released earlier this week at the Personal Democracy Forum conference. It virtually - and for real (there was actually a real book produced. You can download it too) — seethes with the hopes and possibilities of re energizing, reorganizing, and reorienting our government for the Internet Age. It focuses on some fundamental questions: Is it possible to redesign our government with open doors and see-through walls? How can we leverage the exponential power of many-to-many deliberation for the common good?  It’s a really terrific collection with a remarkable group of authors.  My contribution is about what real government transparency means as FOIA dies.

The Merciful Death of the Freedom of Information Act and the Birth of True Government Transparency: A Short History

Looking back, maybe it was inevitable. Perhaps the well-intentioned yet fatally compromised Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was doomed from the start, well before it died this year, in 2015. And yet, while FOIA was dying, true government openness was emerging to take its place.

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PDF on Day Two is great. Great morning presentations by Lessig and Zittrain (two folks whose work I already know) and two excellent ones from folks who are new to me – Doug Rushkoff and Morley Winograd.

We had a great press briefing yesterday, showing off our Lawmaker Profiler and the work of OpenCongress.org and Metavid. Several good stories resulted (Links coming) Today, Speechology.org, a Sunlight mini-grantee, is launching their site.  Founders Dan and Matt created Speechology as a community-based fact checker for campaign season television. They’re archiving every debate and campaign TV ad, and inviting the public to cut through the candidates’ rhetoric and call them out when they fudge facts. Their aim is to create a viewer’s guide for this election year and beyond.

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Sunlight’s blogging will likely be light the early part of this week. Many of us are attending the Personal Democracy Forum annual conference in NY. This is one of the key conferences that addresses the world that is the focus of our attention — the intersection of new technology and politics, particularly technology’s impact on governance. This year the entire second day is focusing on just that. We’ll pull together the best of our insights and post them periodically as we are all twittering.

Join us if you are in New York.  You can observe many of the sessions, including Sunlight’s press conference, live on the main site of TechPresident.

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