Tag Archives: open government

The downsizing of data.gov: learning to manage expectations

Tim Berners-Lee at TED giving the famous "Raw data now" talk

Bad news for open government and open data activists everywhere. data.gov, the Obama administration flagship open data portal, is being ~~taken down~~ downsized on the wake of the recent federal budget cuts. So is former White House CTO Vivek Kundra’s IT dashboard. Especially data.gov is a hard blow: that is the template, imitated by the faster-moving governments and envied by the citizens of the slower-moving ones.

What went wrong? Steve O’Keeffe summarized it like this: GIGO and overpromise. I am not qualified to judge GIGO in this case, but overpromise rings a bell. The movement is wired along Tim Berner-Lee’s “Raw Data Now”: release the datasets, civic hackers and market forces will do the rest. Decision makers in the faster-moving administrations were all too happy to comply: the number of datasets you release is an easy to monitor measure of acitivity, and it looks great on press releases.

The demand-side has been sagging. This is unsurprising: interpreting data to tell causally convincing stories is hard. Civic hackers need to know their measurement theory, probability theory, statistics, econometrics; computer prowess does not take you beyond download. We did have some good examples of data driven journalism, but most of the media ignore the data and stick to interviewing academia and gov brass when they want coverage of economic/social/environmental issues. Makes sense too: there is not enough readership for data driven journalism yet.

Worse, we were told that new ecosystem of innovative services would arise from the availability of government data, leading to growth and jobs. Hard to resist: the package of innovation, growth and jobs in one phrase is one of the very few passwords that will unlock serious funding these days, and proponents and funders alike went with it. Couple of years down the road, we do have some cool apps and some companies that use the data. We even have some jobs generated around data availability, but the numbers are unimpressive. The most I’ve heard trumpeted is 60 employees for a single company. That, too, is hardly a surprise: if your business is based on an open-access, unexhaustible resource like gov data, economic theory tells us it’s going to be hard to bake any seriouse margin into it. You tend to get undercut and outcompeted by non profits and zero-overhead college students operating out of laptops. Profit requires scarcity, not abundance – just ask music recording studios. Keefe’s post contains an interesting little fact, and that is the private business has indeed invested in data, but private and very muck locked down.

Given all this, and in the light of the ~~demise~~ downsizing of data.gov, I would recommend the open gov movement to resist the temptation to promise anything we are not sure we can achieve in any scenario. Envision low-cost, low-hype operations; offer the collaboration of nonprofits and the civil society; emphasize that, while people are welcome to make money out of value-added-on-open-data services, that is not the point of the exercise. The point is increasing the transparency, accountability, and efficiency of public policy. It will be less cool, it will take us off the spotlight and the big funding grants, but it will keep the movement going, almost invulnerable to disenchantment, budget cuts and lobby capture. If I am wrong, great: another year from now, we can make a comeback and boast all the jobs open data will have created in the mean time.

Wikicrazia Big Bang: no need for gurus, thanks

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Many people wrote me to congratulate for a high profile article on Repubblica (three full pages on one of the main national daily newspapers) on the topic of open government (called “Wikicrazia”, after my book, in the title)and of the interest it is attracting in the national debate. The article itself contributed to such interest: a very strong endorsement induced new curiosity in people previously unaware or uninterested, and prompted some who were already intrigued to take action.

I think the open gov movement, though still a niche one, is going to be irresistible in the long run. Why? Because the work can be divided in packets so small, and the tools are so cheap, that even a single person committing a little time can make a small, but noticeable difference, here and now, without having to wait for systemic reform or cultural change. But I also think that much credit for the present wave of interest should go to Riccardo Luna, former editor in chief of Wired Italy and author of the article in question. Riccardo is not only a good journalist and an excellent communicator; he has become an activist and an organizer of this movement. We talked a lot to each other in these latest few months, and I have seen his enthusiasm grow and become vision. He has an inclusive style, always taking care to give credit where credit is due and to avoid overpersonalization, has won him a lot of sympathy and credibility.

If I am allowed to offer advice – not so much to Riccardo, as to all of us – I think it is important to try to keep the focus on mass collaboration based on self-selection, avoiding to personalize the issue and resisting the temptation to make good, effective contributors to this movement into gurus. It would be misleading. With each project I start, I know that the most valuable collaborator is a person I don’t know yet. It for him or her that I design: so that they can find their way to the project that needs exactly his or her skills, and can be engaged in a useful, respectful and fun way.

Gurus, on the other hand, are just about the last thing we need.

Blog like it’s 2004 (Italiano)

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Da diversi anni partecipo a vari social networks. Ma non ho mai smesso abbandonato i blog, nè come blogger nè come lettore, e non ho nessuna intenzione di farlo. Dopo settecento post e duemila commenti, sono molto grato al mio blog: mi ha messo in contatto con persone e idee che sono diventate importanti per me (tra l’altro, gli devo il mio lavoro attuale). Scrivere mi aiuta a organizzare i pensieri, e a non perdere il filo di un percorso che non è sempre lineare.

Ma sono anche grato ai blog altrui. Negli anni i blog che leggo sono cambiati quasi tutti (anche perché alcuni che seguivo hanno chiuso i battenti, come quello di Luca e Mafe); ma continua a piacermi il rapporto che ho con i blogger che leggo, certo intellettuale ma stranamente intimo. Nel confronto serrato e prolungato nel tempo con una persona e le sue idee mi sembra di riuscire meglio a fare crescere le mie. Voglio quindi dedicare questo post alla seconda generazione del mio blogroll, i blog che leggo (e commento) adesso, in pieno spirito del 2004 e della breve età dell’oro del blogging.

Sui temi delle politiche pubbliche Internet e del governo aperto continuo a leggere David Osimo. David scrive da Bruxelles, e ha una bella prospettiva europea, anche se nell’ultimo anno, credo preso da altro, ha scritto meno che in passato. Da qualche mese ha ripreso a scrivere anche Beth Noveck, dopo una lunga pausa durante la quale ha diretto il progetto open government alla Casa Bianca di Obama: spero non si stanchi di nuovo, il suo contributo è davvero importante.

Grazie a Dave Kusek e a Francesco D’Amato riesco a tenere nel radar anche l’economia industriale della musica, uno dei miei primi interessi professionali. Il primo, americano, insegna alla Berklee School e ha una prospettiva generale sulle tendenze di mercato; il secondo, italiano della Sapienza, si interessa in particolare di crowdfunding: su questo tema è diventato molto esperto. Leggo anche un paio di blog tecnologici: quello di Alberto D’Ottavi, uno dei primissimi blog che abbia mai letto, e quello di Vincenzo Cosenza, molto forte sul tema Facebook e social media.

Sono un lettore fedele anche di due blog non specialistici ma ben scritti e che mi fanno pensare pensieri per me insoliti. Uno è quello dello scrittore di fantascienza britannico Charles Stross: intelligente, immaginoso e speculativo come solo la migliore fantascienza sta essere. L’altro è stato aperto recentemente dall’economista italiano Tito Bianchi, una specie di Tristram Shandy dell’economia che salta con leggerezza da un argomento all’altro riuscendo sempre interessante. Infine, se usate Google Reader, vi consiglio di seguire Costantino Bongiorno (si autodefinisce “engineer and troublemaker”). È troppo timido per tenere un proprio blog, ma fa un ottimo lavoro di filtraggio e condivisione dei blog che si occupano di hardware hacking, Arduino e affini. Grazie, amici bloggers, continuate così.

E voi? Volete suggerirmi qualche bel blog?