[open-government] What open government public opinion survey questions would you ask?

Tue Jul 29 07:46:59 UTC 2014

Hi Steven, thanks for giving us the opportunity to participate.

For me as a coordinator of a group of developers, I would like to be able
to priortize the tasks I have ahead, and for that I need to know which is
more important and for how many people. So I would ask about specific needs
or wants people have, like:
-Have you ever done statistical analysis on an open dataset?
-Have you ever used (or felt the need for) a tool to compare two versions
of a bill's text?
-Can you work with CSV data?
-Have you used interactive visualizations of open data online?
-What kind of information released by the government was useful to you?
-What kind of information can the governmnet release that you think will be
useful to you?

A good question to split the samples would be:
-Are you satisfied with the amount of information you get from the
government?
If they say yes, then we can assume that all the work we do will seem
irrelevant to them. If they say no, then we should listen carefully.

Another important question to split groups is:
-Do you think it is easy to work with data released by the government?
People that say yes -should be a small minority- are proficient enough in
digital that don't need our help right now, people who say no are the ones
we should be helping.

Another thing I would do is to get people to tell stories around data, so
we can gather use cases from there. A question could be:
-If you have ever used open data for a specific goal, please describe how
you found out about the data, why you needed it, what you did with it, and
what was the outcome for you of using this data.

Looking at the way this questions are written, I don't think this is the
best way to ask them, but I'll leave that to Pew, at least they could get a
sense of what I expect to read.
I'm not really familiar with Pew research, but I would expect that the
results of this study are shared freely online in a way that would be able
to influence our communities.

Martín.

2014-07-28 14:05 GMT+00:00 Steven Clift <clift at e-democracy.org>:

> I am helping Pew Research's Internet and American Life project gather
> your ideas on public survey questions about open government:
>
>     http://bit.ly/pewopengovquestions  -  Details and comment via this
> Facebook topic
>
> This is a very exciting opportunity to provide input this week.
>
> When Pew Research releases survey results, I know of no project which
> generates as much technology and society media attention. Also,
> questions asked by Pew Research tend to trickle around the world. So
> let's help them ask some insightful questions that tell us more about
> what we really need to know about public support for open government
> efforts and related issues.
>
> Thanks,
> Steven Clift
>
> Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
>   Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
>   Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
>   Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072
> ᐧ
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-- 
*Martín Szyszlican*
Desarrollo web usable y accesible
martinszyszlican.com
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