From: [email protected]
Subject: [DW] Sunlight's bold move ... public = online ... I thank the Soviets ;-)
Date: 16 marzo 2010 17:08:08 GMT-05:00
A few years ago when I was in Estonia, I was amazed to learn about
their plans for a "Document Register" which would be an index of all
public documents and eventually provide remote public Internet access
to those documents even in draft form.
I was shown the section of
their parliaments website where they voluntarily published the
salaries of staff managers on up. I was also amazed by the smart chip
embedded government ID cards and not how they were being used to
control people, but used by the people to help control the government.
Or in this case (along side the e-voting option), slip your card into
a reader in your computer, enter in their PIN and see the **private**
information held by government agencies about them, have the ability
to submit corrected information, see when it was accessed and have the
right to ask why it was accessed.
Before Obama was elected, at the Personal Democracy Forum the New York
Times - http://nyti.ms/bjHRvd - picked up on my comments:
“Maybe 50 years of Communism made them realize they needed to give
their citizens these rights,” Mr. Clift said. In a true democracy, he
said, everything should be online “unless the law says otherwise.”
The Estonia story is one that I and folks like Micah Sifry and Andrew
Rasiej with the Personal Democracy Forum (and top advisers to the
Sunlight Foundation) have repeated a number of time. My guess is that
it has directly or at least indirectly inspired "public = online." And
for that we have to thank those who appreciate freedom and democracy
in a more contemporary basis - those under the oppression of the
Soviet Union and communism for decades. As Americans we must
continuously refresh our democratic system or it will atrophy.
While I've repeated this future vision in statements and articles over
the years - I didn't expect to see anyone put real resources behind it
as the Sunlight Foundation has so simply described as the "public =
online" campaign. The Public Information Online Act campaign Ellen
Miller introduces below will be viewed as a historic turning point in
the future of American democracy. Government will be fundamentally
accessible to all online or we will instead abandon the spirit of the
American revolution and choose to live in a lesser republic. Public =
online is inevitable unless those in power stop it. The questions is
will be there in 5 years at _all_ levels of government on our terms or
take 50 years where generations to come continue to live under less
responsive, less effective governance.
For those new to the field of open government/e-democracy, I do
encourage you to make use of the many many articles and resources in
the space rather than recreate the wheel. While for many, this all
started with the 2008 election, here are a few things I've shared in
the past that are relevant today:
* 2002 - The Future of E-Democracy – The 50 Year Plan:
http://stevenclift.com/?p=83
"..we will also see a radical growth in transparency in places where
laws are currently predisposed toward access and accountability such
in most U.S. States and in the Nordic countries ... Ultimately, the
less democratic a country is today, the more a threat the Internet is
to the status quo tomorrow."
* 2008 - Sidewalks for Democracy Online : http://stevenclift.com/?p=152
"While the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) continues to have its
place, I predict a fundamental shift: By default, all taxpayer-funded
government information from a memo by a township clerk to the town
board to ethics filing by Members of Congress, will be available
online. Period. That’s it. Only legally narrowly defined private or
secret information, such as military and national security
information, will be offline."
However, I want to point out my view that deep transparency is only a
_starting point._ The Obama Administration's Open Government Directive
has three pillars - transparency, participation, and collaboration.
So, real engagement relies on the ability and active use of
information online (and off) by groups of people. That's participation
and collaboration. The freedom of assembly remains the most important
aspect of the Internet to me in democracy. This was really hit home by
the use of #iranelection on Twitter with the past elections in Iran
just as it in in blogs, forums, etc. and other local spaces all around
the world where people are helping set real the local political agenda
from anywhere at anytime online.
* 1998 - Democracy is Online: http://stevenclift.com/?p=33
"Perhaps the most democratizing aspect of the Internet is the ability
for people to organize and communicate in groups. It is within the
context of electronic free assembly and association that citizens will
gain new opportunities for participation and a voice in politics,
governance, and society.
In the next decade, those active in developing the Internet and those
involved with improving democracy have an opportunity to sow the seeds
for democracy online in the next century. Like the founding of any
modern nation, the choices made today, the ideals upheld, the rules
adopted, and the expectations created will determine the opportunities
for democratic engagement for generations to come."
Go Sunlight! Go!
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072
From: Ellen Miller
Date: Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:49 PM
Subject: Today, Public = Online
Happy Sunshine Week!
We have some very good news today in the fight to make government
transparent and accountable.
Right now, I'm up on Capitol Hill with a lot of Sunlight's staff to
announce the Public Online Information Act. This new legislation will
require Executive Branch agencies to publish all publicly available
information on the Internet in a timely fashion and in easy to use
formats.
When we get this thing passed, it will represent a sea change for one
very big part of government. Everything you need to know about the
bill - including a great, short video - is here:
http://thePOIA.org
Put simply, government information is still way too hard to find,
difficult to understand, expensive to obtain in a useable way, and
often available in only a few locations.
We need good information available online, 24/7, to hold our
government officials accountable - and that's not even close to what
we have right now.
It's the 21st century for crying out loud, and we expect to find just
about any kind of information online at any time. I can book an
airplane ticket from my laptop at 1 a.m. and I can check my latest
credit card transactions, view the weather forecast, or get local
traffic reports from my phone. I can even buy shoes off a website and
have them delivered to my house less than 24 hours later.
However, if I want to look up most government information, I have to
travel to Washington and view it on paper or on the screen of a bulky
vintage computer in the basement office of a government building, open
only on weekdays from 9 to 5. Or I have to file a formal request and
wait for weeks or even months for a response - and this is for
government information that is already required by law to be made
available to the public! This can no longer be the way Washington
operates.
The solution to this problem of government information access is, of
course, the Internet, and today we're excited about introducing the
Public Online Information Act as one big step in the right direction.
http://thePOIA.org
We also want to make clear that we couldn't have gotten to the point
of introducing a bill like this without your public support.
Each of you has supported the Sunlight Foundation in some way since
our founding 4 years ago - from making sure Congress reads their bills
to looking up government earmarks in your spare time or tracking
lobbying contributions - and we can't thank you enough.
We're going to continue to need all of you, plus tens of thousands
more, to make sure legislation like the Public Online Information Act
gets passed, and on Thursday, we're going to be announcing a national,
non-partisan campaign that will help us do that.
We hope you'll join us. Stay tuned!
Ellen Miller
Co-founder and Executive Director
Sunlight Foundation
PS Are you a blogger? You should join us in the Open Government Blog
Swarm we're creating this week: http://bit.ly/BlogSwarm
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