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.

Here’s a good 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.

For those italian citizens  involved in an open data project, I say that  we need to point  out what we’re trying to accomplish: whatever your goal, you’ll be better able to decide what to work on.

Second,  we’ld aim to build  open data  project around users: the best way to convince politicians to open data is to show an open data project that’s useful to real people. Not a catalogue or similar tool aimed at insiders, but something that’s making citizens, voters, constituents happy.

Obviously if the government releases data that is incomplete, erroneous or otherwise leads to bad conclusions, it doesn’t matter at all whether we got it via the coolest realtime XML pubsub serialized comet-streaming architecture imaginable. Garbage put into a useful container is still garbage. websites like data.gov provide tools for users to rate the quality of datasets, agencies responsible for maintaining datasets should take on more responsibility for noting any data quality issues. For example, agencies should make clear any known limitations of datasets such as poor survey response rates, grossly inaccurate data or outdated in- formation. Similarly, online tools, such as expert fo- rums, should be provided so that user communities can assist each other with identifying problems in data- sets, rather than the current system which only allows online users to report errors to the agency

Jake Brewer of the Sunlight Foundation, a transparency in government organisation, said “Better data is a better path to job creation than a government stimulus package. We can create more jobs with open data than government stimulus plans”, at a recent event in Washington DC.

How would data work in creating jobs? Unless people are free to access and make use of information, then the value of the data is zero. Making it available makes it valuable.

This is the cycle, according to Brewer’s point of view:
Government -> Public Data
Public Data -> Online
Online -> Transparency
Transparency -> Accountability
Accountability -> Trust
Trust -> Engagement

As each element of the Cycle of Transparency moves forward concurrently, bringing about the changes we need to create a more transparent government, we also identify new needs. the process that the Cycle of Transparency describes is about creating a government more deserving of our trust, and ultimately, a government that allows its citizens to fully participate and hold government accountable as our Founders intended.

What’s next for Open Governemnt?

On President Obama’s first day in office, he released a memo calling for “an un- precedented level of openness in Government” and increased “transparency, public participation, and collaboration.” The Obama administration has used a variety of online tools to increase public participation including hosting a town hall meeting on YouTube, and using an online crowd-sourcing platform to let users submit policy proposals (i.e. IdeaScale).

It is not enough simply to create online forms that allow citizens to submit and rank ideas and questions. Digital tools  should be used by the government to extract meaningful information, not just collect a “mass of electronic data.” While the Open Government Directive has yet to create radical transformations in government, its most important contribution may be a new culture of openness in government that embraces technology [E-Government Bulletin issue 309].

Looking forward Linked Open Data.