No Monopoly on Expertise
Beth Noveck Discusses the Open Government Initiative
SOURCE: Whitehouse.gov
Last week, the Obama administration unveiled its Open Government Initiative, a set of online tools and a process of public engagement for making its operations more transparent. This podcast takes a look at what it means for citizens and scientists, who are now asked to share their knowledge and ideas.
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Last week, the Obama administration unveiled its Open Government Initiative, a set of online tools and a process of public engagement for making its operations more transparent.
Beth Noveck was a member of the transition team and spent the 120 days following the president’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government of January 21 working to ready this project, which she joined us this week to discuss (see the sidebar for the full conversation). She is now the deputy chief technology officer for open government in the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The January memorandum, the first of the administration, outlined the three guiding principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, she explains. “The reason we want to have transparency is to create more accountability in government.” And participation from citizens, according to Noveck, is not solely a matter of inclusion; it also ensures that those working in government are getting the best expertise so they can make decisions about health care reform, environmental sustainability—and be certain those decisions are based on the best possible data and science.
Addressing the importance of the effort for the scientific community, Noveck pointed to Data.gov, the new catalog of bulk technical information created as part of the initiative. “If we don’t make it easy to find that information,” she said, “it’s very difficult for the scientific community to do research on it, to analyze it, to assess the quality, and then, in turn, to hold government accountable.”
Noveck has first-hand experience using technology tools to crowdsource research that informs government decisions. She spearheaded the successful Peer-to-Patent pilot project that allows volunteer experts to assist with the prior art research for patent applications. Their suggestions get voted on by other participants and the top finds became part of the docket of materials sent to the overworked patent examiners who might not otherwise know about the valuable resources or preexisting intellectual property.
The lesson from the project for the current initiative is clear: “The intelligence and expertise that we need to make the best quality decisions is not all located in Washington. We don’t have a monopoly on all the good information that we need to make decisions,” she said.
The administration’s government transparency work has drawn some criticism for hosting discussions with stakeholders behind closed doors—though information on the content or results of those talks, as well as other ideas on transparency, is now available on OSTP’s “From the Inbox” page. “For far too long, too much of the way that we have made policy has happened behind closed doors, without adequate opportunities for participation,” Noveck said, “and also without adequate rationale and feedback at the back end when decisions are made that actually justify and explain why a certain decision was made.”
The first public phase of the transparency idea-generation process is an online brainstorming session at the Open Government Dialogue. The final day to submit and vote on ideas is tomorrow, May 28th, after which the second “discussion” phase begins on June 3. When the coordinators—the White House Chief Technology Officer in OSTP, the Office of Management and Budget, and the General Services Administration—have digested all the input from this multi-stage process, OMB will prepare a set of open policy directives for federal departments, which have already been asked to create more of what Noveck calls “open government innovations.” A gallery of such innovations already in place appears on the White House website.
But part of open governance, Noveck emphasizes, is decentralization, and transparency is not the sole responsibility of any one person or single office. “Everyone is in charge. We’re all responsible,” she said.
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“The January memorandum, the first of the administration, outlined the three guiding principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, she explains. “The reason we want to have transparency is to create more accountability in government.” And participation from citizens, according to Noveck, is not solely a matter of inclusion; it also ensures that those working in government are getting the best expertise so they can make decisions about health care reform, environmental sustainability—and be certain those decisions are based on the best possible data and science.” This is Great!
This approach, I believe, would have made a current serious and growing problem more unlikely, in time,
this approach could be extended in scope and depth and stop the growing problem we that is mushrooming in the San Francisco Bay Area rapid transit system (BART).
First, let me state at the beginning I think BART is terrific, there are better systems now but they did not exist when it was build, some 30 years ago.
The Problem, Part I.
I follow the news on BART but was surprised to learn they had hearings, a few weeks ago, on building an extension from a nearby station to the Oakland Airport.
I am familiar with the local bus line (Tri-Delta Transit) and they have hearings on route and fare changes a few months before they are implemented and this time they said that they had to cut service and fire bus drivers.
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At the BART Meeting the plan to finance the new Airport Connector would be financed from internal funds and a loan for $150 Million. There was no mention of benefits and others said that the current bus, AirBART, takes only about 7 minutes. I have used this bus about 10 times and the estimate seemed reasonable. How much time could be cut from 7 minutes that justify a total cost of $400 Million?
Can you imagine the response if this information had been available to the public before the meeting?
Also, in a negative sense, there was no mention of projected traffic at the airport, it took me a few minutes to find the data that shows a continuous decline in traffic at the Airport for the last few years. The trend does not oscillate, at all, it looks like an straight line decline.
Also, I learn that Oakland Airport lost two-thirds of its traffic in this period, an straight line extrapolation would intercept the zero traffic line in a couple of years.
I spoke at the meeting in favor of using that money to support the bus lines that bring workers to BART and used the parallel between large airplanes that need traffic from many places to fill enough seats to be profitable.
I tried to explain that BART depends on local bus lines for the same reason, but I expected them to know that already from planning studies of the Airport Connector.
The meeting was filled to capacity and they decided to have a second meeting a week later. I went to that one too and they had more than twice as many present. The speaker list reached over 90, many supporting other bus lines.
There was no mention on whether the funds could be used in such a different matter.
A week later, the BART Board of Directors approved building the connector disregarding the views of about 80 Percent of the speakers. One, a Minister, said that to disregard the urgent needs in Oakland to reduce a trip by a couple of minutes was “Wasteful and Immoral”.
Today, BART announced a plan to increase in fares by 6.1%, a trip from Bay Point, where I live, to SFO Airport would go from $8 to $10.40 and other increases are planned.
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Why are they doing this?
A. Did someone made “a proposal they could not refuse”?. Last year, the BART Directors changed their rules and made it legal, for the first time, for Directors to accept contributions from Private Contractors.
B. They never mentioned the traffic at the Airport and its constant decline in recent years. They never mentioned the risks, for example, American Airlines left, could more airlines leave?
The “Hub and Spoke” traffic centered in SFO is driven by the biggest long range passenger airplanes that depend on feeder traffic probably more than local traffic. The Aerospatiale 380 airplane carries over 500 passengers and serves SFO, it will never land in Oakland.
Its first flight to SFO by the French A380 was on the 2007 Anniversary date of Sputnik I (4 Oct 1957).
The real reason I like your plan to promote “transparency, participation, and collaboration” is that in recent months I became aware of other organizations, private and public, that are acting in a self-defeating manner. In time, if enough organizations self-destroyed, the consequences would add to the Recession but, these problems will not be solved by “bailing out” BART, where the Average salary was over $100,000 a year and they have a choke hold on the entire commerce in San Francisco, therefore, the Bay Area. In the last strike, politicians competed with each other to give them everything to end the strike. One rule the passed was to exclude Management personnel from driving the BART trains. Yet, BART was originally designed to be automated. Curiously, the Airport Connector is said to be “automated” too, but nobody expects that to be the case.
May 28th, 2009 at 2:38 pmCan you imagine replacing a bus driver, possibly earning like a Tri-Delta bus driver in Bay Point, with a Conductor that gets paid many times his, or her, salary?
Your plan is a courageous First Step with a clear path to address the other problems.