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January 15, 2011 Sponsored by Adobe
Governments today have a remarkable opportunity to revitalize themselves and respond more fully to citizens' needs. They can tap new sources of information and ideas to assist in their work, and do this on a much larger scale than ever before.
The opportunity arises from the notion that a government belongs to the people it serves. Citizens want to become active in the business of governing.
Of course, "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is a basic principle of democracy. In the U.S., we have always tried to live up to that ideal. Today, though, government institutions and their constituents are better equipped to work together than at any time in the past. A wealth of new technologies, continually evolving and becoming more powerful, is encouraging citizens to engage with government. Individuals can make their influence felt more quickly, more easily and in much greater numbers.
The movement to take advantage of this opportunity is known as open government.
Open government certainly is not a new concept. In the 1960s, many states passed laws giving the public greater access to records of government activities. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), allowing individuals to access U.S. government records upon written request, in 1966. One aspect of that law is especially critical: It assumes that government information should be open to the public. Agencies must comply with information requests unless the information falls under one of nine very specific exemptions.
Today's open government movement is an attempt to better fulfill the spirit of FOIA and related legislation, taking advantage of new tools that allow information to flow more easily among government institutions and the citizens who own them.
In January 2009, just a few days after his inauguration, President Barack Obama published a memorandum on "Transparency and Open Government." It instructed the departments and agencies of the U.S. government's executive branch to start implementing the principles of open government. These principles, the memorandum said, are designed to produce government that is transparent, participatory and collaborative.
A transparent government agency informs the public about its activities, using broadly available technologies to provide this information in formats people can use. The material it shares might include: data on revenues, spending and program performance; information on contracts and grants; community data such as school test scores and crime statistics; environmental data; and a great deal more.
In the old days, government agencies stored data in massive banks of file cabinets. They shared selected bits of information only on request, or when someone forced the agency's Introduction to Open Government hand. Even when agencies routinely made information available, getting hold of it wasn't easy. A citizen who wanted information on, say, the latest defense appropriation bill, or local property assessments, had to visit an office to file a request with a clerk or page through thick record books. If an in-person visit wasn't feasible, the citizen might pay a public servant or commercial service to retrieve, copy and mail the information.
Those days are gone. Today, citizens increasingly expect governments to share information routinely, promptly and conveniently.
Citizens of a democracy have always participated in government. In the past, they have done this by voting, of course, and by volunteering in political campaigns. They also wrote letters and placed phone calls to representatives, voiced their opinions at public meetings, sent letters to newspapers, staged demonstrations and used other tactics to share ideas and influence government decisions.
Today's brand of open government continues to encourage
