Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Open government means freedom of information, not opaque data

The Obama administration has been a "significant failure" when it comes to making the spending of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars transparent and accessible to the public, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
Also absent from the new instruction is a requirement to make raw data public. By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure.
A healthy level of transparency is in the best interests of our government and our citizens. By making raw data available for things like procurement, over/under budget projects and time lines, our public servants can benefit from the constructive feedback of a fully-informed populace.

Making this data machine-readable will enable entities inside and outside of the government to build software, new media, and web applications that will ensure that money and time are being used effectively.

We are getting closer and closer to a more open and transparent government. Progress is being made. The challenges we face domestically and abroad can be solved more quickly and comprehensively the more we work together. So let's continue to advocate for more openness and more transparency, more quickly.

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