As those steeped in the policy wonk geekery of open data are likely already aware, last Thursday the President of the United States issued an Executive Order Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.

This is, quite frankly, a big deal. Further down in the post I’ve got some links and some further explanations why.

That said, the White House called and asked if I would be willing to provide some context about the significance of the order – which I did. You can read my reaction, along with those of a number of people I respect, here. Carl Malamud is, as always, the most succinct and dramatic.

Here are some further thoughts:

Relevant Links

A link to the press release

White House CTO, Todd Park, and CIO, Steve VanRoekel, explaining Open Government Data and its significance.

A fact sheet on the announcement

A link to the Executive Order

A policy memo about the Executive 

And, perhaps most interestingly, a link to Project Open Data, a site with a TON of resources about doing open data within government, including job descriptions, best practices and even tools (e.g. code) you can download to help with an open data deployment in at the city, state or national level. Indeed if you are a public servant reading this (and, I know many of you are), I strongly encourage you to take a look at this site. Tools here could save you tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in software development costs for a range of projects. I love this example, for one: Kickstart – “A simple WordPress plugin to help agencies kickstart their open data efforts by allowing citizens to browse existing datasets and vote for suggested priorities.”

What the White House did right

Here is the genius of this executive order. At its core it deals with something that is hard to communicate to a lot of people in a meaningful way. Here is the executive order for dummies version: This is essentially a core change to procurement and information publication. From a procurement perspective it basically means from now on, if you work in the US government and you buy a computer or software that is going to store or collect data, it sure as hell better be able to export it in a way that others can re-use it. From a information publication perspective, having the ability to publish the data is not sufficient, you actually have to publish the data.

This change is actually quite wide ranging. So much so that it could be hard for many people to understand its significance. This is why I  love the emphasis on what I would refer to as strategic data sets – data sets on healthcare, education, energy and safety. While the order pertains to data that is much, much broader than this, talking about datasets like the 5-Star Safety Ratings System about almost every vehicle in America or data on most appliances’ Energy Star rating brings it down to earth. This is information the average American can wrap their head around and agree should be made more widely available.

The point is that while I’m in favour of making government data more available, I’m particularly interested in using it to drive for policy outcomes that are in the public interest. Finding better ways to get people safety, health, energy or education data in their hands at the moment they are making an important decision is something open data can facilitate. If, when you are making a purchase or about to create a new project, there is some software that can filter your choices by safety rating or prompt you to rethink your criteria in a way that will enhance your safety or reduce your carbon footprint, I find that compelling. So more availability to government data for research or even just access… yes! But access to specific data sets with the goal of improving specific outcomes is also very important, and this is clearly one of the goals of this order.

What this executive order is not

It is important to note what this Executive Order is not. While I think it can help citizens make better choices, improve access to some types of information, offer researchers and policy wonks more data to test theories and propose solutions and improve productivity within and outside government, I do not think it will not change politics in America. Had this order existed, it would not have magically prevented the Iraq War by, for example, making CIA analysis more scrutable. Nor will it directly rein in lobbyists or make money matter less. This is more about changing the way government works, not the effect that politics has on government decisions. Maybe it will have that impact in the long run (or the opposite impact), but it will be through second and third order effects that I’m all too happy to confess that I currently don’t see.

No one is claiming that this release somehow makes the US government “open” – there are still lots of examples about policies and processes in the White House that require greater transparency. Transparency and openness in government move on several axes. Progress along one axis does not automatically mean there is progress along all axes. And even progress will foster new challenges and demand new types of vigilance. For example, I also suspect, over time, the order may impact what data governments elect to collect, if, by default, it is to be made open. The order could, in some cases, make the data more political, something I’ve argued here.

This is to say that there is no panacea and this order does not create some perfectly transparent government. But it is an important step, and one that other governments should be looking at closely. It is an effort to reposition government to better participate in and be relevant in a data driven and networked world, and it does foster a level of access around a class of information, data, that is too often kept hidden from citizens. For that reason, it is worthy of much praise.

Often when I meet people, they ask me what I do.

The challenge is, there is no easy answer to that question. I advise companies and non-profits on strategy, I do advocacy work and serve as an expert on open-innovation, open government and open data, I also work a negotiation consultant and mediator, I do some work with open source communities around community management, and then there are about another dozen projects and boards that I sit on.

In reality, my work actually does tie together quite nicely, just not in a “this is my job title” kind of way. I also feel bad about the confusion. It doesn’t feel polite to take 5-10 minutes to explain one’s career and frankly, from a business development perspective, it isn’t very savvy. It’s part of the reason why I created the venn diagram at the bottom of this page. So people could see how my the different parts of my work relate to one another (or at least how I think they relate to one another – and yes, I should update it).

So it was somewhat fun to get this email from LinkedIn about jobs I may be interested in. I appear to have them vexed, or at least confused. I mean check out these jobs! What a mix! If only I WERE qualified for all of them.

The coolest one, by far, is the Chief Administration Officer for the Musqueam Nation. But I’m definitely scrambling LinkedIn’s algorithms. Will be interesting to see if/how they evolve to produce results that likely make more sense.

I’ve never thought of myself as a underground mining engineer…

For those who missed it, which I suspect is most people, there is a fantastic Op-Ed in the New York Times by Peter Ludlow of Northwestern University.

Titled Hacktivists as Gadflies it is a scary look at how much legal power the US government has over people who use the web (e.g. pretty much anyone) since almost all of us are, via one way or another probably violating law as interpreted by US prosecutors.

Here’s a juicy line:

“The law, as interpreted by the prosecutors, makes it a felony to use a computer system for “unintended” applications, or even violate a terms-of-service agreement. That would theoretically make a felon out of anyone who lied about their age or weight on Match.com.”

And its scary conclusion:

“In a world in which nearly everyone is technically a felon, we rely on the good judgment of prosecutors to decide who should be targets and how hard the law should come down on them. We have thus entered a legal reality not so different from that faced by Socrates when the Thirty Tyrants ruled Athens, and it is a dangerous one.”

Basically, there is a real risk that everyone is in legal limbo. All it takes is the government to decide they want to attack you, since they already have the means. Scary, scary stuff.

Yikes, two days in a row! I’ve got a piece on open data up on Tech President…

If you haven’t had the chance, check out saveourbridges.com. It’s a simple but wonderful example of data journalism that shows both the effectiveness and the limits of opening up data….

I’ve got a post up at Tech President assessing the accomplishments and challenges facing the Open Government Partnership on its first year of operations…

Yesterday, the Globe and Mail had a very good editorial about online death threats. In short, the piece argues that death threats made online matter and shouldn’t be treated as somehow “inferior” to those that happen in “real life.”

Death threats made on the Internet can be as serious as death threats made in person or by other forms of communication; some other threats less so. Police, prosecutors and judges need to assess the gravity of the threats and apply their common sense, from the decision to prosecute through to sentencing. There is no need to amend the Criminal Code in order to treat Internet threats as if they were less serious, as some lawyers have suggested.

Of course, my hope is that this treatment of online behaviour isn’t selective. I mean, if online threats should be considered seriously, shouldn’t other forms of online behaviour – like political behaviour – also be treated seriously?

I remember just two years ago, during the initially online prorogation protests many journalists and pundits deemed them as silly and unimportant. Back then the online editor of the Globe was kind enough to publish two pieces of mine (here and here) that attempted to counter this narrative. But this ran against the grain. Even at the Globe there were pundits who thought that treating online protests and petitions seriously was, well, silly. It was fascinating to see how stories about a 200,000+ plus facebook group focused less on how disgruntled many Canadians were than on how online politics didn’t matter.

Of course that was before the Arab spring when all of a sudden it became vogue to write about how online politicsdidmatter. It would be fascinating to see how the prorogation protests might have played out in the media if they’d occurred after Egypt.

For many of us, we’ve known for a long time that what happens online matters. Its why we care so much about the virtual space and demand it be taken seriously.

It is great to see the Globe’s editorial board feel the same way. Frankly we’d love to see more of it since the online world is very much part of our world, and the threats to it as a space where citizens and consumers can be in free are very real as well.

Threats online matter, and so does commerce, politics, free speech, and the infinite other activities that humans engage in, and will engage in online. Let’s treat it that way.

For those stopping by my page because of my OSCON keynote here are some links on community management that might be of interest:

Structurelessness, feminism and open: what open advocates can learn from second wave feminists (this is in part about why open source communities are not pure meritocracies).

Developing Community Management Metrics and Tools for Mozilla (using data to better understand participation)

Community Management as Open Source’s Core Competency (an oldie, but still some good stuff in here)

Wiki’s and Open Source: Collaborative or Cooperative? (on why open source works, in part because we are anti-collaborative)

Remixing Angie Byron to create the next Million Mozillians

How GitHub saved Open Source (okay, maybe not saved – but I do think it turbo charged innovation and breathed new life in OS by teaching us the fork is not a four letter word)

Design Matters: Looking at a Re-themed Bugzilla

Okay, I’ll stop there. I tried to include a little something for everyone – hopefully some stuff here will at times challenge readers, at times confirm their thinking and always be helpful.

I’ve got a post up over at TechPresident on Ushahidi. I’m basically responding to a new site called DeadUshahidi that points out a lot of Ushahidi maps never generate a lot of reports:

What has the people at DeadUshahidi concerned is that long tail of “dead” projects. I mean, look at all those unsuccessful maps! What a waste! In part I agree. There are lots of people running around believing that rolling out a map will solve a problem when, without at least plan, it probably won’t.

There is of course, another way to look at that power law distribution. One could also say it is a sign of enormous success. Perhaps Ushahidi has made the cost of deploying a mapping platform so low that it is worth the risk of losing what is now a negligible investment of time and money to spin one up. I mean, isn’t this the effective application of Eric Reis’ “lean startup” Silicon Valley methodologies?

You can read it all over here.

Oh, I’m also keynoting the International Open Government Data Conference at the World Bank in Washington on Wednesday morning – in case you are around.