I moderated a panel today (I guess yesterday, at this hour) at IPDI’s Politics Online Conference, proudly featuring Greg Palmer, Peggy Garvin, and Derek Willis. There wasn’t any official recording of the event, but a reporter from Mashable in the front row more than took up for all of our slack, deploying what was basically a one-person portable recording studio laptop system, sort of reminiscent of the gargoyle characters from the novel Snow Crash. (I make that comparison in the best possible sense.) His video and liveblogging are available on his post.

Some memorable parts of the discussion for me:

*Greg gave recommendations to government-based developers, recommending a focus on solutions to simple problems, relaying how putting things online as simple as even calendars can be transformative. He also warned against using disclosure as a synonym for transparency, a point I heartily agree with; citizens online can engage in the substance of legislation just as much as they can engage in the spectacle of corruption. Greg likes mysociety.org’s work very much too.

*Peggy talked about some of the longer standing institutional challenges of creating public access to public information, and added the perspective of a librarian (a perspective I’ve come to respect a great deal). She remarked both that we’re a long way from experiencing radical transparency, and that, compared to the 70’s, what we have could understandably called radical transparency. She brought up the recommendations of the government data working group, and also brought up the responsibilities that fall on the new providers of information, explaining how data’s provenance adds legitimacy and function.

*Derek offered us a number of anecdotes from his time on the Hill and at the Washington Post, setting up their votes database. Particularly pithy was his remark that we shouldn’t assume to know all of the uses our Web sites will be put to, noting that the profiles of lawmakers functioned as a de facto congress member identifier, becoming a standard where none existed. Also, apparently a FOIA for the FARA database was once refused on the basis that copying it would ruin the data. (this got big laughs.) A sort of Schroedinger’s Cat of lobbying disclosure.

Some audience questions (among many): How does data portability and open access play into government information, especially with APIs? (I swear I didn’t plant that.) What resources exist for local government IT administrators? When should modern media outfits look to crowdsource their content? (The superdelegate transparency project came up here.)

I had a great time at the conference. Thanks to IPDI for putting everything together.