[open-government] National open dataset on all government jurisdictions and ...

Mon Nov 15 13:58:04 UTC 2010

I want to thank everyone for their responses.

I invite those particularly interested to join our online working group:

   http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/democracymap

We are plotting a webinar/teleconference update and input session in the
near future.

Do folks see a need for generating such a dataset in their countries?

To me the weakness in the open government movement is that it is more or
less focused on the "output" of government and far less on the
democratically empowering "input."

Other than legislative assemblies, the input side of governance isn't very
systematized data wise. So in order to move from gotcha government
accountability after scarce tax dollars are wasted, what might we do to
generate or aggregate data to improve government decision-making in the
first place?

This where DemocracyMap and similar ideas come in. To me the key
citizen-centric starting point is to help the public quickly discover which
government bodies serve them specifically (where do they have a right to
service based on the taxes they pay or the jurisdiction covered by the
body), where to find them on the web, and how to contact them.

The second level is who specifically represents them as elected or appointed
officials, info about their duties and general activities, how to contact
them and interact with them publicly online.

The third level is being able to both interact online within the context of
each body's governing process and how to connect with fellow members of the
public similarly represented to have exchanges that allow you to better
influence the decision-making process. In an embryonic form, that is what
E-Democracy.org does in isolated efforts - http://e-democracy.org/if , but
how might this be made far more systematic and organic rather than one off
with extreme labor intensity.

Does this make sense?

My experience is that without some fundamental building block building on
the input side of governance, current open government data efforts will not
have 1/10th of the impact we seek for everyday citizens.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
On Nov 10, 2010 7:56 AM, "Tracey P. Lauriault" <tlauriau at gmail.com> wrote:
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