Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
If you haven’t seen it already, be sure to give a read to Friedman Prize winner Hernando de Soto‘s recent piece in Business Week, “The Destruction of Economic Facts.” It’s a fascinating perspective on the economic and financial turmoil that is wracking the United States and the world. As de Soto perceives more easily from [...]
Here’s a quick excerpt from an interesting press release sent out over PR Newswire last week—it sounds like someone is angling for a fat government contract: EMC® announced the 2011 Data Hero Awards winners and finalists First annual Data Hero Visionary award goes to Vivek Kundra, the first Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States [...]
Late last week, the Project on Government Oversight‘s Danielle Brian took a little umbrage at a Huffington Post piece by former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Beth Noveck, who had been implementing the Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative until she recently returned to New York Law School. Brian’s piece suggests a slight schism in the [...]
From the Politico’s “Politico 44” blog: President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday. The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to [...]
Last year I was asked by the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to author a study on models for local online hubs or community web portals. This paper was one of several commissioned by the Knight Foundation to implement the 15 recommendations found in the [...]
A headline in the USA Today earlier this week screamed, “Hello, Big Brother: Digital Sensors Are Watching Us.” It opens with an all too typical techno-panic tone, replete with tales of impending doom: Odds are you will be monitored today — many times over. Surveillance cameras at airports, subways, banks and other public venues are [...]
So I say in Politico today. Highlights: During his first two years in office, the president generated a lot of heat in the transparency area — but little sunlight. House Republicans can quickly outshine Obama and the Democratic Senate. It all depends on how they implement the watch phrase of their amendment package: “publicly available [...]
This morning, a database of FY 2011 earmark requests was released by Taxpayers Against Earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and my own WashingtonWatch.com. With House Republicans generally eschewing earmarks this year, members of Congress and senators still sought over 39,000 earmarks, valued at over $130 billion dollars. Learn more on the relevant pages at Taxpayers [...]
Earlier today I spoke at the Brookings Institution event “The Future of E-rulemaking: Promoting Public Participation and Efficiency,” which was co-sponsored with the Administrative Conference of the United States. I made two points: we have not yet achieved regulatory transparency, and wiki-government does not overcome Hayek’s knowledge problem. What follows are my remarks. When we [...]
As he noted, Adam Thierer’s lead article in the most recent Cato Policy Report is called “The Sad State of Cyber-Politics.” It goes through so many ways tech and telecom companies are playing the Washington game to win or keep competitive advantage. It’s a nice set-up to a Washington Post opinion piece from this weekend [...]
May 22, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
