On this week’s show, we discuss government transparency—a topic a number of us here at the TLF have written about lately. Among other things, we discuss:
- Why transparency is important
- What data the government should provide and how
- Good and bad examples of transparency
- President Obama’s promise to have the most accountable administration in history
- Obama’s plans to appoint a Chief Technology Officer
My guests for this show are:
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In early December, Jerry Brito asked whether Obama’s proposal to create the post of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should be feared or welcomed:
I think the question turns on whether this person will be CTO of the United States or CTO of the U.S. Federal Government. While I personally believe the former should be feared, the latter should be welcomed.
I agree completely—and it now seems that this is in fact where the incoming Administration is heading. BusinessWeek reports that the Obama Administration has narrowed its choices down to two Indian-American CTOs:
- Vivek Kundra, D.C.’s CTO
- Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s CTO
Judging by BusinessWeek’s short descriptions, both candidates sound terrifically well-qualified to lead implementation of Obama’s oft-repeated promises to bring the United States government into the Web 2.0 era. More importantly, the fact that the two likely candidates are CTOs—rather than, say, advocates of any particular technology policy agenda—strongly suggests that the Obama administration isn’t contemplating giving the CTO authority to set technology policy outside the Federal government.
Whomever Obama chooses in the end will have his or her work cut out for them. While free marketeers may indeed have much to fear from Obama’s technology policy agenda in terms of over-regulation, increased government control and market-distorting subsidies, e-government is one area where we ought to be able to cheer the new President on: The Federal government could be made much more transparent and democratically accountable if Federal agencies simply adopted some of the tools users take for granted on private websites-such as RSS feeds and standardized data.
Let’s just hope that Obama makes it very clear in creating the CTO post that its responsibilities are indeed strictly limited directing adoption of information technology
inside the Federal government, so that the position doesn’t mushroom into the more powerful “Technology Czar” some rightly fear.
First, Jim Harper would kill me if I didn’t begin this post by mentioning that I’ll be speaking at a Cato Institute lunch panel entitled, “Just Give Us the Data! Prospects for Putting Government Information to Revolutionary New Uses,” on Wednesday, Dec. 10, along with Ed Felten of Princeton and Gary Bass of OMB Watch. RSVP here. That said, I want to talk about CTOs.
A while back I engaged in a debate about whether Barack Obama’s promise to appoint a national chief technology office should be feared. I think the question turns on whether this person will be CTO of the United States or CTO of the U.S. Federal Government. While I personally believe the former should be feared, the latter should be welcomed.
The good news is that in all of Obama’s pronouncement’s on the matter the position has always been described as having a brief to open the government by employing online tools. Here’s how the position is described in Obama’s campaign position paper on technology:
Bring Government into the 21st Century: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will use technology to reform government and improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of our networks. Obama and Biden believe in the American people and in their intelligence, expertise, and ability and willingness to give and to give back to make government work better. Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.
To me this sounds more like a Chief Transparency Officer, and that’s a good thing. Most federal government websites are terrible relative to the state of the art. Any effort to make them as useful or informative as the barackobama.com website should be welcomed. We can see the beginning of this transformation at the new change.gov site for the Obama transition team.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.