Gov 2.0 Summit: Tom Steinberg on .gov Sites as Public Goods

Micah L. Sifry | September 9, 2009 - 9:38am | 1 comment | Email This!

I'm attending the Gov 2.0 Summit today and tomorrow, and the program is thick with great speakers and topics. Posting may be in snippets.

Here's my favorite from the first hour. Tom Steinberg, the intrepid guiding force behind Britain's invaluable MySociety group, which makes brilliant, easy-to-use and highly effective sites aimed at improving how government works like FixMyStreet and TheyWorkForYou*, gave us a powerful new way to argue for turning government websites into platforms for civic engagement. I'm paraphrasing slightly:

"If the government said that people can't drive on the roads to go to a rally to protest something, because it would lead to bad press, everyone would protest. Yet when government says that it can't let people using government websites connect to each other, in order to challenge the status quo, no one says anything."

He's talking in the context of Britain's experiment with enabling e-petitions on the Prime Minister's website, 10 Downing Street. When MP Tom Watson was involved in the Labor government, there was some talk of going the next step, and allowing petitioners to connect to each other. (Sadly, that initiative appears to be a victim of the Labor Government's larger problems.) Steinberg argues that if government websites offered this function, a vibrant array of new NGO groups would spring up, offering fresh competition to the existing NGO sector.

He's right. As long as government websites simply act as neutral platforms, there's huge civic potential here that right now is being left on the table, unorganized and untapped. Steinberg has just given us a powerful and simple new way to change that.

*Tom, this quote's for your encomium file.

P.S. I donate $10 a month to UK Citizens Online Democracy, mySociety’s parent charity. If you agree with me that their work is invaluable, you can join in supporting them by clicking here.

Comments

I’ve organized a conference

by williamsacott on September 16, 2009 - 4:51am

I’ve organized a conference on “Government 2.0″ to be held in DC on September 9-10. Seehttp://gov2summit.com for details . (I’ve also added some additional information below.)

As I’ve done with past O’Reilly conferences, I’d like to offer five free passes to the first IP readers to respond by email to Patrick Dirden telemarketing, our registration coordinator: pdirden at oreilly.com

The event features on-stage conversations with leaders from government and industry about how government can use technology more effectively to catalyze both innovation and citizen participation. The overall theme is “government as a platform,” which I’ve written about below. Here are some of the people featured at the event:

* Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and Federal CIO Vivek Kundra on their visions of technology in government

* Open gov pioneers Carl Malamud of public.resource.org and Tom Steinberg of mysociety.org, plus Ellen Miller and Clay Johnson from the Sunlight Foundation

* What can government learn from successful technology platforms: a panel with Vint Cerf, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, moderated by John Markoff

* Microsoft’s Craig Mundie asking will be the “killer app” of government as a platform

* Jack Dangermond of ESRI discover credit card and a bunch of geohackers who have at least one good answer to Mundie’s question

* Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, on real time economics

* A conversation between Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and GSA CIO Casey Coleman about the government’s cloud computing strategy

* Jo Anderson, special advisor to the Secretary of Education, on data driven measurement of education practices

* Kojo Nnamdi one-on-one with White House director of new media Macon Phillips

* John Podesta – an old hand looks at the new landscape and reflects

* innovation in the military with Army CIO General Jeffrey Sorenson

* Broadband policy with the FCC term life insurance (speakers not yet announced)

* British Foreign Secretary John Miliband on gov 2.0 in the UK

and lots more. See http://gov2summit.com for details. There’s also a related event on September 8, the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase http://gov2expo.com.

The events explore how government can use technology to catalyze innovation, and to build frameworks for participation by citizens and the marketplace. As I wrote in my column homeowners insurance in Forbes earlier this week: