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Open government (View details) Perritt, H Government Information Quarterly, 1997, Vol.14(4), p.397-406 [Peer Reviewed Journal] updating... Full text available (GetIt) Add to e-Shelf

The issue of data leaks through new communication channels is not a negligible concern within the Office of the CIO, particularly as open government efforts move forward. Asked about that issue, Baitman said: "Open government is about communicating with the public, not sharing sensitive data. To the extent that we do share data, we extensively scrub it. Open government has nothing to do with personally identifiable information (PII). That has to do with what government is doing for and behalf of its citizens."

"will of the electorate"

Governments must consider the total electorate

Candidates can concentrate their campaigning energies on issues rather than encouraging voters to attend the poll

The Administration is reducing the influence of special interests by writing new ethics rules that prevent lobbyists from coming to work in government or sitting on its advisory boards. The Administration is tracking how government uses the money with which the people have entrusted it with easy-to-understand websites like recovery.gov, USASpending.gov, and IT.usaspending.gov. The Administration is empowering the public – through greater openness and new technologies – to influence the decisions that affect their lives.

When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish. The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

the federal government is not attached to Moore's Law

Here's an area for both some disruption and some lobbying. Let's build tools that allow members of Congress to aggregate messages being sent to them, and to associate those messages with congressional districts. Let's come up with a way for a member to see what their constituency is saying about any particular issue they'd like, and let's provide that as an open service so that anybody can see what a particular constituency is saying. That way, when a member has a track record of voting against the desires of a substantial portion of his or her district, we've got a record of it, and it can get brought up in the next election.

Right now, your voice online -- in the mediums you participate in, not only don't matter: legally they can't matter. Online identities don't count when it comes to the official record

 To do just that, on his first full day in office, the President signed two critical documents that have shaped the Administration: the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government and the Executive Order on Ethics. As a result of the Memorandum on Transparency, we have since Day One, worked to empower the public – through greater openness and new technologies – to influence the decisions that affect their lives.