The Obama Administration's Office of Science & Technology Policy and the National Academy of Public Administration is running a real time experiment in crowdsourcing this week and next.
The Open Government Brainstorm comes the same week as the launch of Data.gov and its companion mashup competition. The Brainstorm begins to model what the President had in mind when he issued the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government on January 21, 2009.
The live brainstorm also begins to demonstrate what Dr. Beth Noveck, deputy director for Open Government within the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, described in a recent speech to NASCIO as using social networks to move from complaining to changing government through an outcome-oriented platform. She outlined a short list of principles about the art of the possible in this regard (summarized nicely by Public CIO editor Tod Newcombe here).
At the midway point of the experiment, the Open Government Brainstorm had attracted 197 entries, which have been rated and ranked by other users. The rankings reflect a clear preference for unrestricted access to government records and data. Openness on the Internet is consistently highly rated, a proposal for openness through a CSPAN-cable news hybrid is getting a big thumbs down. While most of the entries are at least tangentially related to theme of transparency -- including one plea to define terms such as transparency, openness, collaboration and participation lest the experiment results in a festival of unmanaged expectations -- the limits of a public forum are also clear. No amount of rating and ranking can remove rants about Islamic banking, workers compensation and credit card abuse that are shoe horned into the forum.
The Brainstorm runs a new crowdsourcing tool called IdeaScale from Seattle start-up Survey Analytics. Its a coup for SA that competes in a crowded market of 60 or so online survey software companies, including Salesforce.com's Ideas application.
The official online dialogue continues through May 28. The results of the experiment itself, and whether it is a catalyst for any noticable change in the way the federal government acts, may provide the clearest answer to the project's central question, "How can we strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative?"
The Open Government Brainstorm comes the same week as the launch of Data.gov and its companion mashup competition. The Brainstorm begins to model what the President had in mind when he issued the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government on January 21, 2009.
The live brainstorm also begins to demonstrate what Dr. Beth Noveck, deputy director for Open Government within the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, described in a recent speech to NASCIO as using social networks to move from complaining to changing government through an outcome-oriented platform. She outlined a short list of principles about the art of the possible in this regard (summarized nicely by Public CIO editor Tod Newcombe here).
At the midway point of the experiment, the Open Government Brainstorm had attracted 197 entries, which have been rated and ranked by other users. The rankings reflect a clear preference for unrestricted access to government records and data. Openness on the Internet is consistently highly rated, a proposal for openness through a CSPAN-cable news hybrid is getting a big thumbs down. While most of the entries are at least tangentially related to theme of transparency -- including one plea to define terms such as transparency, openness, collaboration and participation lest the experiment results in a festival of unmanaged expectations -- the limits of a public forum are also clear. No amount of rating and ranking can remove rants about Islamic banking, workers compensation and credit card abuse that are shoe horned into the forum.
The Brainstorm runs a new crowdsourcing tool called IdeaScale from Seattle start-up Survey Analytics. Its a coup for SA that competes in a crowded market of 60 or so online survey software companies, including Salesforce.com's Ideas application.
The official online dialogue continues through May 28. The results of the experiment itself, and whether it is a catalyst for any noticable change in the way the federal government acts, may provide the clearest answer to the project's central question, "How can we strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative?"
keep it up but try to give the exact information
which is asked for.
Thanks,
Kaushik