E-Government & Transparency

Transparency at the FCC

by on January 27, 2009 · 9 comments

Speaking of transparency…  My colleague Barbara Esbin has a great piece on the PFF blog about changes being implemented by Acting Chairman Copps to make the agency less dysfunctional and more open to the public:

the new Acting Chairman has confirmed what FCC insiders, outside practitioners, and the House staff investigating former Chairman Kevin Martin’s management practices have long known: Commission staffers were not permitted to freely communicate either with one another, or with the other Commissioners. The liberation of the staff, together with changes concerning how the Bureaus and Offices work with each other and how the Commission communications with the public, certainly falls under the category of “change we can believe in…”

Acting Chairman Copps has outlined other important changes in how the FCC does business, including establishing a calendar for regular open meetings in advance, and updating the FCC’s website to be more user-friendly, particularly its Digital TV Transition pages. These and other changes and commitments together constitute an extremely promising start for Acting Chairman Copps, and his commitment to transparency and order bode very well for the FCC, its staff, the companies the agency regulates, and the American public.

Great news.  Let’s hope the FCC also gets to work soon on updating its painfully antique website, with its proliferation of databases.

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TPW 40: Obama, e-Government & Transparency

by on January 27, 2009 · 25 comments

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:

You can subscribe to our podcast here or through iTunes here.  Or, you can play or download this podcast using the online player below.

[display_podcast]

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Obama and Openness: Conference Thursday

by on January 27, 2009 · 6 comments

Only last week, President Barack Obama issued a new government-wide policy on FOIA requests mandating a “presumption in favor of disclosure” and directed his OMB to get to work fast on an “Open Government Directive,” with specific mandates for agencies, that achieves “an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” That task is a tall order for the 120-day deadline Obama set.

So no doubt this week’s day-long conference presented by the Collaboration on Government Secrecy and American University’s Washington School of Law will attract some attention from those within the Administration charged with getting the new policy out the door. Indeed, the conference’s aim seems particularly pragmatic–organizers intend to end the day with “an on?site consensus prioritization of policy changes, to be formally delivered to the Obama Administration.”

For a clue of what to expect in that “prioritization,” look to the agenda. Participants include representatives from OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Constitution Project, and the ACLU. (It is a bit disappointing that no one from Mercatus–e.g., co-blogger and transparency guru Jerry Brito–or Cato or the like is on the agenda, as there’s a lot of consensus on these issues across partisan and ideological lines.) Also participating are many journalist-types and several current and former officials (though only one that I can tell with much experience in a transparency-averse agency).

So expect a tight focus on national-security matters and executive branch records–i.e., the bugaboos of the Bush era–with perhaps less attention paid to openness in the regulatory policymaking process. Then again, Obama’s choice of Cass Sunstein as regulatory czar may drive the discussion in that direction, given his strong work on the value of openness and dissent.

For those in town interested in attending the event, registration still appears to be open.

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Seeking Transparency in the Economic Stimulus

by on January 27, 2009 · 9 comments

Chris Soghoian has the story.

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“Will Obama Have A Computer?” Seriously?

by on January 24, 2009 · 17 comments

I can’t believe we’re actually asking whether Obama—the candidate who promised to bring the Federal government (and perhaps everyone else) into the Web 2.0 era whether they like it or not—will have a “personal computer.”

The “webiness” of Obama’s predecessors is just embarrassing:   

Clinton famously sent only two e-mails while he was president, one to test whether he could push the “send” button and one to John Glenn, sent while the former Ohio senator was aboard the space shuttle…

During his presidency, George W. Bush didn’t have a personal log-in to the White House Internet server, nor did he have a personal whitehouse.gov e-mail address. (He gave up his private e-mail account, G94B@aol.com, just before his first inauguration.) When he did go online, there were some things he couldn’t access. During Bush’s tenure, the White House’s IT department blocked sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and most of MySpace. The ability to comment on blogs was blocked, as was certain content that was deemed offensive. According to David Almacy, who served as Bush’s director for Internet and e-communications from 2005-07, only two people had access to the iTunes store during that period: Almacy, who had to upload speeches to the site, and the president’s personal aide, so that he could download songs for Bush’s iPod.

Pipes and tubes, pipes and tubes, my friends…  

If Obama decides not to implement whatever legal or technical changes would be required for him to do something so simple as having a computer on his desk, I suppose we’ll know that he’s not really all that interested—at least on a personal level—in all his rhetoric about the power of the Internet to make government more transparent and accountable.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

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The Sunlight Foundation is Looking to Hire

by on January 23, 2009 · 6 comments

. . . a Senior Program Coordinator.

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The Transparency Dog that Didn’t Bark

by on January 22, 2009 · 11 comments

My post yesterday wondering aloud whether the Obama administration was walking away from its transparency commitments was slightly premature. Memoranda were being issued/reported on as I wrote, and this morning’s Washington Post describes some of the technical glitches that befuddled White House staff on day one. The texts of the executive orders President Obama signed yesterday are now online, but his memoranda on transparency aren’t yet. Helpfully, they’ve been posted by the Sunlight Foundation.

But I think my post was sound in the main, because I was looking for actual pro-transparency deeds from the new administration, and they haven’t materialized. I appreciate the sentiments voiced in these documents, but don’t find myself wholly impressed with the actual transparency measures the White House has taken.

What I’m hearing is the transparency dog that didn’t bark: The Obama team set a great precedent in the transition with the Seat at the Table program, but there’s no sign that such a thing will be implemented in the White House. Why not?

We can expect an “Open Government Directive” within 120 days and new guidelines for the Freedom of Information Act, but I would have appreciated seeing President Obama’s commitment to openness illustrated the best way possible: through the direct and immediate commitment of his own White House operation.

The White House will not be run as openly as the transition was. The agencies, already predisposed against transparency, will see this as a sign of weak commitment and will whittle away even more fiercely at the good sentiments President Obama’s expressed in his transparency memoranda.

(“Thanks for inviting me!” said the skunk at the garden party.)

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Is the New Obama Administration Walking Away From Transparency Already?

by on January 21, 2009 · 13 comments

The new Whitehouse.gov went live shortly after Barack Obama became president yesterday. It has much of the look and feel of his transition Web site, Change.gov.

Among the featured items on the homepage today (they will change regularly, of course) is the site itself and the new administration’s commitment to transparency. However, the actual terms of that commitment come up pretty anemic.

In a post on the White House blog, Director of New Media Macon Phillips says:

President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Executive orders and proclamations? Information about senior leadership and the President’s priorities? That’s not breaking any new ground on transparency.

The transition’s “Seat at the Table” program required “any documents from official meetings with outside organizations [to] be posted on our website for people to review and comment on.”

The decision to port this practice over to the White House has either not been made, or has been decided against. Given that meetings are already happening, it will be a tough policy to implement if it is not implemented right away.

There is an “Office of Public Liaison” (and intergovernmental affairs) on the Whitehouse.gov site, but it’s nothing more than an email submission form at this point. “More ways for you to interact” are promised.

Words aren’t deeds, and it’s already too late to demonstrate a day-one commitment to transparency. Let’s hope the first steps of the new administration are not steps away from the important transparency precedents set by the transition.

Update: As I wrote this post, news stories were coming out about new executive orders coming out dealing with ethics and transparency. Though I haven’t been able to find them yet – hint hint, Whitehouse.gov – the change to the interpretation of FOIA sound like a welcome, if modest, step in the right direction.

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Obama’s CTO: Fixing Government IT or Setting Nationwide Policy?

by on January 16, 2009 · 10 comments

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.

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The 12 Days of Christmas

by on December 24, 2008 · 12 comments

EFF-style.

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