Dec/090
White House releases Open Government Directive
The Obama administration, as of December 8th, 2009, is requiring every government agency to release three high-value data sets to the public within 45 days.
The Sunlight Foundation reports:
In a livestreamed chat, blogpost, and document online, the White House has announced a bold new plan for openness in the Executive Branch. The result of months of interior conversations, and three public components, the new policy introduces sweeping goals and initiatives aimed at bringing citizens closer to their government, through technology, information, and public interaction.
I’ve been impressed by the Obama’s emphasis on opening the door to the raw numbers of government. Data.gov was the first great leap forward. And now this directive to institutionalize his spoken priorities looks promising.
However, I do have one lingering question: how do we ensure accountability when we are allowing the agencies themselves to choose these “high value” data sets? We ought to ask the media, or the general public, to vote for or at least suggest data sets that will be of high value — and let the aggregation of those (filtered) suggestions form the strict directive that agencies must follow.
Allowing the departments themselves to discriminate among what data they choose to release (out of the thousands of data sets within the scope of their work) will almost guarantee that they will release inconsequential data sets so as not to make their department “look bad”. Unless agency leadership carries an ethos of constant improvement and critical self-evaluation, all we will get is the gristle.
If we are not ruthless, we could find ourselves with a dangerous new level of Washington “doublespeak,” where the White House hails a new era of unprecedented transparency, but citizens are only let in on 10% of the data that is actually available from the billions of dollars and many decades of agency operations. Erstwhile we are steered clear from the federal bureaucracy’s most egregious inefficiencies and problems.
Dec/090
Opportunity for reform?
An interesting article in the New York Times on the current opportunity for reform.
“In recent years, ethics reform, especially at the state level, has become a priority,” said Caitlin Ginley, a staff writer at the center who helped prepare the rankings. “But it really needs to come from citizens calling for this. Legislators are not going to write a law to give themselvesmore work.”
Dec/090
FBI Official: Corruption is America’s No. 1 Problem
The Palm Beach Post reports that John Gillies, FBI official with 22 years of experience, gave a spirited talk to the West Boca Chamber of Commerce:
Gillies regaled about 70 attendees with tales of his work investigating politicians, judges and attorneys in prior FBI postings across the country. These FBI targets all displayed an unhealthy thirst for money, power and greed, he said.
…
Gillies said transgressors are adept at rationalizing their untrustworthy behavior. He gave examples of the types of excuses that FBI agents typically hear: “I’m not hurting anybody.” Or “I deserve this.” And especially: “Everybody does it.”But rationalization isn’t OK, Gillies said, whether it’s coming from an elected official, [or] an attorney.
Do these rationalizations sound familiar to citizens in Massachusetts? To this day, for instance, indicted former House Speaker Sal diMasi — even after resigning under a growing corruption cloud — continues to claim he’s always acted in the best interests of the Commonwealth, and apparently without ever addressing the damning evidence before him pinning him to a kickback scheme involving tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.