• Italy | Is transparency compatible with “robots.txt”?
  PDF friends David Osimo and Alberto Cottica point us out a story from Italy about a “transparency project” launched by the Italian government.
  The initiative, launched some time ago, aimed at publishing relevant information about civil servants, such as paycheck and days of absence. But, as this article points out, most part of this data (including those about the ministry itself) has been published in a directory which is not possible to reach by search engines – using the robots.txt file with “disallow:/operazionetrasparenza/”.
  Here’s David’s take on the story: “The implication is that searching with google the name of a person, you will not find these data. You will have to know that the person is employed by a public administration, and visit the website and check the name. This is obviously limiting the real transparency of the public data.
  I assume the excuse is related to privacy: there are different privacy implications if a personal information is searchable or not. This is an important matter, which I would like to understand better. Yet in this case it appears as an excuse. Real transparency needs machine-readable data, and using robots.txt is a clear contradiction of the principle of transparency."
  Plus, David has another point to make: why is transparency applied first of all to (against) public sector workers and their behaviour instead on how the P.A. spend public money?

“All innovation involves the application of new ideas – or the reapplication of old ideas in new ways – to devise better solutions to our needs. Innovation is invariably a cumulative, collaborative activity in which ideas are shared, tested, refined, developed and applied. Social innovation applies this thinking to social issues: education and health, issues of inequality and inclusion.”

Charlie Leadbeater, Social enterprise and social innovation: Strategies for the next ten years

In a recent post over on Techpresident, Micah unpacked the three branches of We.Gov. The first is the idea of government 2.0, or government-as-a-platform. The second is on whether the net is better for campaigning than governing. And the third is on what happens when you open up the process with real-time transparency.

While I agree with Micah strongly on all 3 points, for me what none of these quite get to is perhaps one of the most powerful uses of the web within the realm of We.Gov – the ability for people to use the Internet to come together and reimagine public value, not (just) public services per se.

Tim O'Reilly announced a government 2.0 conference to be held in DC via twitter saying "Looks like the word is out, just before my #etech keynote where I was planning to announce it: Gov 2 Summit in DC http://www.gov2summit.com/." This is the latest in a whole series of events in DC focused on how technology will influence governance in the Obama age. Looks like we'll get "change we can believe in" or at least talk it to death.

We came, we saw, we ate slightly frightening amounts of Pizza Boli. Transparency Camp '09 happened in Washington DC this weekend. At any given moment, you could step out in the hallway of GW's Media and Public Affairs Building and see a Library of Congress web dude chatting up an advocate for persistent legislative tagging...who's standing next to GSA's web director...who's chatting with Tim O'Reilly...who just finished a conversation with a DHS procurement guru...who spent the morning session brainstorming with the guy who built StimulusWatch...who spent breakfast kibitzing with Recovery.gov's lead architect...who's sneaking away to whiteboard with an open-source advocate...who will spend the afternoon deliberating with the author of Obama's Open Government Directive...who just shared ideas with the new New York Senate CIO...so on and so forth. Sure, for an open-government event, the un-conference snuck under the radar of many people who might have liked to attend. And there's a good chance that you could have counted on two hands the number of John McCain voters in the 300-plus person crowd.

But after two days of brainstorming and back-and-forth, you might be forgiven for looking upon the scene and indulging in some grand thoughts like Craig Newmark's reflection that you were "watch[ing] actual big history being made in real-time" -- or at least signs that a certain transparency-driven model of governing was getting much closer to critical mass. (You Golden Bough fans out there might get a particular kick out of the fact that Transparency Camp kick-off was held in the very same auditorium where the Carville/Novak/Begala/Carlson show Crossfire was filmed.)

I'll point you to roundups and recaps by attendees as they get written, but for now you might like to dip into the Twitter stream. Or, if time is of the essence, check out this tweet word cloud. A Google Group has been established to keep conversations going. And most importantly, here's where you can order commemorative stickers. Next up, in slightly different fashion, is Government 2.0 Camp later this month. Video after the jump.

(Photo credit: kenyaoa)

From time to time (like, every other day it seems), I get email from a reporter or an academic or a student with questions about the impact of the Internet on the 2008 election, or similar themes. Usually, if I have time, I try to answer those emails (and if I don't do it right away, they often fall by the way side). This morning was no different. A senior majoring in politics at Occidental College wrote saying, "I'm writing my senior thesis on the impact of new media in youth participation in national politics and I would love to get your thoughts to a few questions." But it occurred to me as I was responding to her questions that this was a blog post (or, as Doc Searls likes to say, blogging is just sending emails to the world). So, keeping in mind that these are the quick top-line responses I tend to give when asked these questions, here goes: