UK: Cabinet Office driving Open Data (including procrurement in local authorities)

Kudos to the Cabinet Office making sure they ask for input from the public on which datasets should be made open.  Would love to see them guide a bit more and there is some great work that Harvard’s Kennedy School has done on different types of transparency and which ones are the most powerful and effective.

Also glad to see that Local government procurement data is going out on the site.  It is a few steps away from citizens have a full view of the costs of government in the UK so that they can make a fully informed decision on the nature of their government, costs and any investments that are sorely needed to support the citizens of the UK.

UK Cabinet Office Government 2.0 and Open Government

UK Cabinet Office makes Government Data into Open Government Data

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Australia: Open Government Perils and a Way Out?

Great post down under about some concerns about Open Governmnet initiatives.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/open-government-isn-t-open-yet-339304632.htm

The best part is that it doesnt simply provide a critique of the situation, but rather describes some potential solutions.  The post describes the concern for journalists to be able to protect their confidential sources within Governmnets if all such contacts are logged and released to the public.

This concern is not new and we discussed it at our event this past month at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in some deeply personal ways.  Folks from multiple elected officials staffs expressed safety concerns in global environmnets where a release of their income in public could make them a target for kidnapping.

These concerns are very serious and need to be addressed, but just like at our event at Harvard, we cannot let these objections halt the progress toward a more open governmnet structure throughout the world.  In the US they long ago committed to “a more perfect union” not a perfect one.

Maybe we need to commit to a more open government globally, not simply an open one.  These issues that have arisen are serious concerns and our efforts to open data in government cannot suffer as opponents use these examples as ways to stop the movement.

OpenGov Government 2.0 gov20

Open Government or More Open Government

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The Internet of Things in Public

Continue to be transfixed by the Internet of Things and its application within the Gov2.0 context. 

Can we utilize IPv6 addressing to make sure we categorize our public goods (streets, streetlights, parking meters, wheelie bins) and created sociable items out of each of them.  By design, can we make the public goods interactive and can we integrate citizen engagement technologies so that citizens can interact, in real time, with the public goods that they have helped to create (and fund)?

Internet of Things: Gov20

Internet of Things can be complex, but can it organize the public sector?

But to be successful in the public sphere, we will need to do some things right that we have never been very good at.  We need to get governance right.  As we open up the public world to crowdsourced impact and potentially crowdsourced management of public goods, we need to ensure that communities are included in the planning, deployment and managment of these assets.

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