I’ve been writing and rewriting a more formal response to the paper, but I’d like to share my thoughts first, especially as “The Invisible Hand” gets more coverage (with an Ars Technica article today).

First, I’d like to say that I’m delighted to see this topic addressed in an academic setting, and I also see nothing but potential for expansion from third party government information providers.

Probably the reason that I find Government Information and the Invisible Hand as provocative as I do is that the paper seems to imply that empowering third party sites will involve reducing the federal IT footprint.  Specifically, when the essay lists its strategy as to “reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens.”

My issue with this suggestion is that government information providing sites are also service providers, and that the services they provide are often a demonstrable public good, or justified monopolies, and the regulations that govern these services’ provision are reflective of their societal role, rather than the information’s position in an information ecosystem.

Certainly, data based services have only to gain from better data management practices, more open policies, and the innovations of the digitally public marketplace of ideas and creative problem solving.  The image, however, of government service providers as defenders of outdated inefficient turf may have some truth to it, and government IT contractors are likely just as entrenched and as dependent on public money as defense contractors.

My note of caution comes from what I see as somewhat of a conflation of government service provision and government data availabililty.  The essay suggests that “elaborate” government Web sites stand in opposition to the sort of well-considered data policies that lead to creative third party sites, like govtrack.us.  This strikes me as a somewhat dangerous simplification.

Framing the choice as one between overwrought government sites fraught with bureacratic complexity on one hand, and open efficient creative data sharing on the other, overlooks the importance of the restrictions and reliability that we justifiably demand of our government services.

The essay suggests that authentication is a valid concern, and that public mechanisms may develop to take this into account, using electronic signatures or trusted intermediaries to filter out trustable information.  This may be a sufficient solution, but the myriad of regulations promulgated on government web sites each exist for a reason (although they may be imperfect).  As creative data sharing moves into a broader public domain, the accountability mechanisms that govern those services need to be translated into the same public realm.

The handling of private information, the archiving of historical documents, and many many other concerns that have been well established within a government context, and a solution that to public administration problems needs to acknowledge that third parties don’t operate under the same mechanisms of public accountability that the government does (or at least should), and never will.

All that said, I agree with the tone and focus of the Invisible Hand. I’d just like to caution against conflating data and public service provision, and to suggest also that public accountability mechanisms are indispensable.

In fact, I think those same mechanisms should be used to foster exactly the type of online creativity that the article describes, and I’m looking forward to seeing more reviews of just how the specific policy suggestions in the paper might work in government — specifically the government employee/public citizen data parity requirement.