A quick post to point out something I’ve noticed. Open communications structures lead to expanded roles, which leads to unusual allegiances that form outside formalized power structures. For this reason, the Open House Project has seen alliances between all of the following despite the immensely different incentives under which they function:
The GAO has just released a report on the development of the Electronic Records Archive under the National Archives and Records Administration.
The ability to find, organize, use, share, appropriately dispose of, and save
records—the essence of records management—is vital for the effective
functioning of the federal government. In the wake of the transition from
paper-based to electronic processes, records are increasingly electronic,
and the volumes of electronic records produced by federal agencies are
vast and rapidly growing, providing challenges to NARA as the nation’s
recordkeeper and archivist.
This may be connected to yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee NARA oversight hearing. (whose testimony I haven’t had a chance to read yet…)
Update: check out the testimony from the HSGAC hearing, looks like the ERA oversight was probably requested of GAO.
Ars Technica has an article up about the “hyperconnected”–defined by the Interactive Data Corporation as those people for whom the line between work and personal has been blurred to the point that they’re “willing to communicate with work on vacation, in restaurants, from bed, and even in places of worship.”
The article offers some criticism of the purportedly overworked, suggesting offhandly that the hyperconnected will pose new challenges for IT departments, and possibly have questionable effects on workers’ personal lives.
While these concerns over productivity and relaxation are certainly valid, there’s another side of merging personal and workplace that’s ignored by the commentary: the same breakdown that leads to work email being written in bed also leads to the breakdown of the limitations on the role of the “professional”. Just as communications technology leads to more work being done at home, the Internet allows for the intellectual entrepeneurship of the online volunteer researcher, the blog-based organizer, the midnight advocate. As Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody makes clear, individuals who can organize without centralized leadershp form a new, powerful, agile force, harnessing what has been dubbed the “cognigitive surplus” to redefine the way we organize our ideas and ultimately ourselves.
While this may have some effect on the modes of our relaxation, the effects on business, government, and society will more than make up for them.
(full disclosure: I often work in the middle of the night.)
As distributed and online-based media develop into a more effective counterbalance, will the “traditional” media’s public value to decrease even further?
Via OpenCRS, here’s a new Congressional Research Service Report about CRS. It outlines basic legislative structures from an unusually thoughtful perspective.
I just discovered DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market project. The idea has me wondering what the place is for market based deliberations solutions, and when it’s appropriate to give actors a self-incentive that isn’t already inherent to a situation.
There’s a strong argument to be made for the predictive power of markets, and their stabilizing incentive structures, but their application beyond economics hasn’t really been worked out yet. Some examples of market-like political models include Fantasy Congress, and National Journal’s Political Stock Exchange.
When success isn’t able to be neatly defined as profit (as in financial markets), and when motivators and strategies are as complex as they are in a legislature, sometimes, paradoxically, it’s profitable to operate at a loss. Indeed, one could suggest that all non-profits are the pure form of incentives being isolated from broader incentive structures.
(hat tip to this tweet from “hytmal”; my initial response is here)
Chopra described his rather unusual job, a sort of newly styled state-CIO position, and gave us his vision for government and the development of the surrounding areas in the process.
Chopra began by listing the three priorities in his job as a cabinet member under the Governor. He sees his job in thirds. The first third deals with tradition IT manangement (are the servers working). The second third is his role as emissary and cheerleader for technology in government, soliciting, recognizing, and fostering creative new ideas, like combining forms to orient agency workflow toward a citizen-centric model. In his description of this aspect of his work, Chopra really shined, probably a sign of someone engaged in something new and constructive, full of ideas, and seeing potential everywhere he looked. He said “just scratching the surface” and “really simple things” repeatedly, more signs of someone enchanted by the possibilities of technology, and in the right position to make things happen. About including the public in his work, he said:
We have failed to tap the hidden talent of the uncredentialed.
I’ve tried to say this before in other ways–distributed expertise is disconnected from policy creation, etc–but his formulation captures the real potential for transparent and receptive institutions. Chopra sees analysis from bloggers as having huge potential for stimulating reform (and should check out the Open House Project), and, as I often do, bemoans the focus on the political and wonders about people’s capacity to add to substantive policy debate and deliberation. His plan to integrate public policy ideas amounts to a small e-suggestions box for now, but Chopra is certainly deeply involved in the practical fight of how to make Virginia’s government function more effectively though technology.
He’s not just trying to get the government running smoothly, though. Chopra sees the development of the IT sector of our area’s economy as the third major goal in his work, and has grand ideas to test about how young people given a real chance and a computer might find their way into the new tech economy.
Virginians are lucky to have such a proactive visionary leading their tecnological development.
From Congress Daily, on IG reform: p. 12, monday may 5, 2008. My review of this issue is available here.
House and Senate negotiators might start talks this week over separate versions of legislation aimed at ensuring the independence of federal inspectors general, though staffers said a deal is unlikely before budget discussions are completed. Both the Senate and House have passed IG bills, with backers of the Senate bills — in a bid to win a floor vote — recently agreeing to a number of amendments aimed at addressing White House concerns. With the White House opposed to the House’s slightly stronger bill but apparently willing to swallow the Senate bill, aides expect the House to largely accept the Senate version.
HR 5593, which would amend the Congressional Review act to mandate publication in the Congressional Record.
An incomplete listing of public OLC memos is availble from the DOJ here.
I’m currently reading this book on administrative law: Principles of Administrative Law. I recommend it enthusiastically, after reading the first chapter and its overview of administrative law and its history of the American administrative state.
In the month since PublicMarkup.org launched, we’ve gotten 121 comments on our draft reform legislation, the Transparency in Government Act of 2008. The media and blog coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable, but not without a healthy dose of skepticism.
The main questions we’ve faced attempt to locate the bill within a traditional reform process: Who will sponsor it? When will it pass? What are its chances?
As I wrote when we started encountering these hesitations,
As it stands now, though, we’re happy to not have all the answers about where the bill is going. Just like legislation itself, we’re not pretending to know the best strategy for the bill, and we recognize that best ideas will be the ones that can benefit from a large community of experts and stakeholders
Now that we’ve gotten some real feedback about the bill’s provisions, we can make some decisions about how to advocate for the package’s implementation. (more)
We’re delighted by the value of the comments. The comments repeatedly point out specific improvements or suggestions that we’ll be glad to integrate into a new version of the bill. Participants have suggested everything from wording changes to improvements for the interface and Web site. We’re also happy to see public proof that broad scrutiny can have a constructive influence on legislative work.
To integrate the community’s suggestions, we’ve decided to let comments open for about another two weeks, and to then craft a new version of the legislation, taking suggestions into account. We want to be sure that public involvement is credited for the improvements, continue to allow at least general commentary on the new version after it’s prepared.
Thanks again to everyone who has participated, and if you have more feedback to offer, you have until about May 19th to leave it!
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