Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

The long awaited Open Government Directive was launched at 11am this morning. No hoopla, just three passionate protagonists sitting in front of the White House equivalent of a webcam oozing enthusiasm for a policy change they clearly think is transformational.

You could be forgiven for wondering if issuing it with 12 hours notice and holding the interview 30 minutes before a speech by the President on the economy suggests it isn't thought important. My guess is that the White House thinks that for a directive that is most interesting to information geeks it's nigh on impossible to launch it to the big wide world without sounding nerdy. Launching it to the people that care (and do they care - Did you see that twitter and facecbook stream of questions!) is probably your best approach.

They want the public to focus on how government is better once it is launched. A laudable aim (more on that below) though my interest is more for signs that this might have an impact an democracy in our digital age than governmental efficiency.

The four steps - publish government information online, improve the quality of government information, create and institutionalize a culture of open government, and create an enabling policy framework for open government all suggest good intentions, more importantly the detail provides a timetable for action. If they're executed in the hoped for manner then we may well see a much less opaque government with openness as a core value.

The only thing that might prevent this is a a lack of capacity within the government to take the abstractions of the memo from "the plan should include proposals for new feedback mechanisms" to "click on this button." If you speak to anyone who has tried to implement the cultural change that is implicit in having that button somewhere you'll here that it's tougher than it looks.

Can they deliver on the promise?

My sense is that they certainly think they can and given that all of them have done this before (Vivek Kundera in DC ,Anesh Chopra in Virginia at the state level, and Macon Philips at Obama for America) it certainly seems worth a wager.

What made me even more optimistic is that they, tech geeks all, seemed (a) focused on getting results (b) articulated examples where progress is ongoing (My sense is that we should watch the Veterans Administration as it sounds there is a process ongoing and moreover, Secretary Shinseki is a management science kind of guy who likely gets what they're trying to do and knows the levers to pull) and (c) they had a good grasp of the objections they'll face.

On the latter point their answers suggested they're aware that openness runs smack into questions of citizen privacy. They have heard the objection, recognize its importance (in a mash-up world anonymity is very hard to preserve - see Paul Ohm for more), and likely will work through issues with agencies.

As to whether they understand the possibilities it could yield for democracy. They sounded like they see that stories showing how "openness saved X dollars," or "reduced this wait time by Y days." The slightly more nebulous, "it allowed better democratic oversight" isn't easily quantifiable, and as it will be perhaps most easily quantified in the number of heads that role because of waste uncovered isn't something keenly measured and may get lost in the mix of measurements.

If there was one point that only got scant attention in the Q&A was the model this sets for state and city government. If the approach is repeated there (and Vivek and Anesh clearly want it to be) then democratic oversight in an area where there are ever fewer resources day on day might just get a whole lot easier.

As for me I'll just content myself with suggesting that even distributing the memo provides an opportunity to improve government information. It only took them a few hours for the obvious error of the incorrect date on the memo to be corrected.