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The summit focussed mainly on open data, open access and open knowledge, although there were a lot of interesting ideas, many of which we have since tried to incorporate here (such as microfinancing via flattr). To whet your appetite, here’s the opening discussion.

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."

We thought maybe we’d put together a few temporary, informal memos on network protocols, the rules by which computers exchange information

Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called “rough consensus and running code.”

Still fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a “Request for Comments.”

The spirit of these principles is that there should be transparency to the methods, observations, data collection, data access, communication, collaboration and research tools.  Instead of limiting the sharing of the practice of science to publication of selected results, the entire scientific process should be exposed to potential users, collaborators and extenders of the work.

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.

"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