Open Government Dialogue
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michael

User Profile Image michael
Member since : May-22-2009 (Verified)
3 Ideas, 46 Comments, 36 Votes

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The Open Government Dialogue here suggests two different takes on how technology changes public governance. The first is that Internet technology makes government more efficient; the second is that technology completely transforms the democratic governing process.

This contrasts 20th century “command and control” with 21st century “open source” government and the best analogy would be Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia. EB is (was?) a typical command and control, hierarchical, corporate institution. It provided the capital and coordination required to produce and distribute that physical product of encyclopedic volumes. EB has a CEO, a Board of Directors and an organizational structure of departments under a strict hierarchy. (Much like our federal government and bureaucracy.) It’s a 20th century top-down corporate governance model that reflected the technology of the time.

Wikipedia employs a radically different bottom-up model. It’s content is controlled by its users, there is no CEO or management hierarchy. It is not financed by shareholders or a complex ownership structure, but by grants and charitable contributions. Yet, it supplies the desired good so efficiently that it has obliterated the old model of command and control.

This suggests that eGov will take us far beyond making government more efficient to shifting power away from command and control to users (voters). This should make political leadership, parties, interest groups, etc. less relevant and more accountable to the public will. It also suggests that the current shift to bigger, more efficient centralized government control is a futile attempt to revitalize an obsolete model by tweaking it around the edges. But Wikipedia didn’t make Britannica more efficient – it annihilated it. The ultimate irony may be that the failure of 20th century command and control governance has yielded an odd nostalgia for more of the same. Hopefully the OGD can help us change direction - the debate over universal health care will be the prime test case.
Wikis help opinions converge on solutions and enable widespread participation. A policy wiki should require a verifiable registration for participants to deter abuse and create positive value for productive contributions.
Wikis can expand into a network to include all issues and constituencies, making crucial citizen information available at one integrated and standardized site.
The US census determines the apportionment of voting districts. This process is being overseen by the executive branch, which has a partisan interest in the outcome. We should do everything to insure the US census process is not politicized.
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Comments Posted

michael 8 months ago
Uh, I don't think this post is about changing the constitution regarding the structure of government. I don't even think most posters are talking about a pure majoritarian democracy. Most of them just want to add more voices to the mix, though I believe that will just muddy the conversation.

As you say in so many words, we have a representative democracy and governing institutions based on a republic of 50 equally represented states. I think the major point of this post is how to get all those representatives to listen to their masters (the voters).
michael 9 months ago
JMC:
1. First, we should state that no voting system is perfect or even pareto optimal. All involve trade-offs so we must discuss the trade-offs in question.

2. What is the objective? Is it to find a social choice that the majority can accept and creates a stable political order? Or is it to favor multiple parties?

3. Is our objective to help racial minorities or to create a cohesive society?

4. Technology is not a barrier to a better voting system.

5. Cost is a matter of priorities.

6. The majority failure you cite is a function of either strategic voting or low turnout - neither of which violate the desired objectives of the voting system to arrive at a single choice acceptable to all.

Re: your weblink. I'm not convinced IRV is not a positive reform for our voting system.
michael 9 months ago
I agree. Instant run-off voting rules would have a much bigger impact than open debates. With alternative media, the debate forum will probably change anyway.
michael 9 months ago
Philip,
I don't think we really need to open up this can of worms on campaign funding all down the line as it would be struck as a violation of free speech. Instead, I think we need to look at how technology readdresses the financial imbalance. Public media time sounds like a possibility. But the best thing is to empower the people with forums like this, or wikis, or alternative media, so that voters don't have to wait passively for the parties and candidates to set the agenda and then give their narrow, biased positions. I kind of like freedom in my politics. I just want to remove financial barriers, not take control of campaign finance.
michael 9 months ago
Juan,
I think we agree on what the problem is not. It's not about poor people who come here to find work, of whatever race or creed. It's about American business and political elites in conflict with American taxpayers and communities who must absorb the costs of uncontrolled immigration. The demagogues don't want us to know this - those on both sides of the issue.

It would be nice if every time someone stood up and said "this is racist" or "these newcomers are criminals," someone else would stand up and say, "This is not about racism or about the illegals - it's about who benefits and who loses among American citizens and who has political power. Illegals are just caught in the middle."

The solution may mean less work opportunities for illegal labor migrants, but more opportunities for legal immigration. Economics will mainly determine what happens in immigration, but the politics will forever be getting in the way.
michael 9 months ago
I agree. Taking control of the issues and using technology to help set the media agenda are both positive steps to taking control of the political agenda. Politicians and parties are productive when they are forced to focus on the demands of the electorate and find workable solutions and then build support for them. But if politicians and parties control the agenda they will pursue what suits their interests best and most effectively (i.e. split the electorate into "us" vs. "them"). Both parties do this incessantly and voters should just turn away from them when they do. (Even Obama, who is often quite smooth when he does it. Remember "bitter folks who turn to guns and religion" and those "evil, greedy folks on Wall Street"? - this is political demogoguery and everybody does it because it often works. We voters need to say "enough" and deal with differences honestly. There is loyal opposition - it's not evil.)

For this to work the voters will have to learn to listen to their opposition (their neighbors) and figure out common ground. As long as we divide ourselves, the easier it is for politicians, parties, media hounds and interest groups to fan the flames. Frankly, I think we need more frequent turnover in our political class. Maybe in parts of our bureaucracy too.
michael 9 months ago
Halinator:
Agree with your first statement. So the solution is to empower the non-aligned voter base so that parties must respond and the direction of change comes from bottom up rather than top down. But power is a function on being able to coalesce and find unity - splitting up the non-aligned voter base into many parties and choices does not enhance that - it weakens it and plays into the divide and conquer strategy of the 2 major players. Instead, we need electoral reform that shifts control of the agenda towards voters and away from party leaders. We can do this with voting reforms, but not with the wrong ones.
I like instant run-off voting, term limits, campaign finance reform, independent redistricting, more independent media sources, etc. I would eschew reforms that merely delude the electorate into thinking they have more of a voice when in fact they will have less.
I think focusing on the two-party system and the Electoral College is misguided and counter-productive.
michael 9 months ago
Halinator:
Voting is not about personal therapy - it's about arriving at one choice out of many. There is no restriction on ideas imposed by a 2 party system. And the single choice we must arrive at is not enhanced by increasing the pool of possibilities.
Lastly, somehow we have to educate our public that "One Man (person?), One Vote" is not the basis of our national voting system - it's merely one important value that informs our concept of democracy.

Opening up debates may make us feel better and increase the infotainment value of media campaigns, but it won't solve our political problems one wit. See also Electoral Reform.
michael 9 months ago
Bill,
We do have laws against hiring illegals - that's why they need a Social Security number. But we have no enforcement that fines companies for willfully violating these laws. Why? Because many politicians benefit from illegal migration as certain sectors of the economy benefit. These would be agriculture, construction, and personal services. Pols also fear being branded as racist for vocally opposing illegals and losing votes.

Illegal immigration is a conflict between Americans who benefit and Americans who pay the costs. The politicians would like the whole issue to go away.
michael 9 months ago
Juancalcala,

I should add that racism has little to do with the illegal issue, but the emotional power of racism is used by both sides to win arguments and silence the opposition.

Legal immigrants of all races and creeds have been embraced by the American system and will continue to be.
michael 9 months ago
Juancalcala,
Unfortunately, while your case may be perfectly accurate, the general point you make is disproven by the factual evidence. Illegal immmigrant children are in the schools and are people in medical need are NEVER refused service at the emergency room in hospitals.
I happen to know a doctor who works in free clinics in Southern Ca and she says illegals show up at the hospital with maps to show them where to go for medical care.
I don't object to these realities in principle, but we can't deny the fact that somebody has to pay for them.

And yes, most illegal immigrants are hardworking and honest, but that's not the point. The illegal immigration conflict is not between Americans and illegals, it's between Americans that pay the social costs versus Americans that reap the economic benefits of cheaper labor. The illegals are just caught in the middle.
michael 9 months ago
Doffy:
Well, no, all issues do not have a clean compromise. But deciding to disagree hopefully falls short of civil war. That will depend on whether participants accept the voting system and political process. But multiparty systems with proportional representation do not solve this problem. They tend to lead to erratic, unstable governments that suffer from centrifugal rather than centripetal forces. Think about it - how is a third party with a third of the vote going to get anything it wants?

On your two points, there actually is a compromise position on abortion when it comes to public policy. Unfortunately its drowned out by both extreme positions. If you look at survey data the compromise position is "legal, but highly restricted." Neither extremes will accept this compromise and they are the most vocal in defining the issue. Extreme interests will never accept compromise unless they are forced to. This can have negative results but it's far preferable to an outright civil war. Compromise on policy does not necessarily admit a compromise on principle. A pro-life person can accept the judgment of a fair political process and still never cease to lobby for a stricter pro-life policy. But democracies must favor persuasion over compulsion in order to survive.

On taxes there are an infinite number of possible compromises because, unlike abortion, the issues are infinitely divisible. I.e., should the tax be 10% or 11%, or maybe 5% or zero? But in general, your questions carry an assumption that these private economic decisions should be managed by a central government, when in reality most economic exchanges should be private in a free market. We've dealt with all these public issues of war and natural disaster for the past 200+ years without any lasting problems.

Your last comment reveals the weakest common assumption of this thread - that the democratic process is supposed to make everybody "happy." No, it's supposed to work. Nobody gets everything they want in a democratic society - give and take is the nature of living together in peace. If we want to get things done it's about time we stopped whining about not getting our own way 100% of the time.
michael 9 months ago
P.S. If anyone wants to investigate the real causes of polarization in American politics - the empirical evidence and bibliographic resources can be found here:
http://www.redstatebluestatemovie.com/promoreel.html
www.redstatebluestatemovie.com/politics.html
and
www.redstatebluestatemovie.com/news.html
or
www.purplenationblog.com
michael 9 months ago
This won't help eliminate polarization. We should be clear on this. Polarization is a partisan technique to gain votes that promotes the interests of parties. It also serves the interests of media who must use conflict and controversy to attract audience share. It will only end when voters reject the false stereotypes promoted by both parties. The real political conflicts in America flow from different lifestyle choices that can best be captured by the rural vs. urban divide. Look at a presidential voting map colored by county and voting preference (red v. blue) and this will be obvious. These issues can find common ground, but not in a political atmosphere that casts the opposition as evil or immoral. The ideological issue between traditionalism and progressivism is mostly a false one. Ideologically Americans are mostly "tolerant traditionalists."

To get voters to reject this tribalism we need a VOTING SYSTEM that forces them to compromise on issues when they really don't want to. (Instant run-off voting would help.) Opening up political debate can be benign, but it doesn't force people to move toward compromise with their opposition. It only temporarily allows people to feel better about the process, but the result will be the same. We should remember that compromising on policy issues by finding common ground doesn't necessitate compromising political principles.
michael 9 months ago
No real argument with the desire for breaking down the duopoly, but the problem we have with the two-party system is a systemic problem of elite insulation. This system is controlled by cultural, business, and media elites to the detriment of middle class voters.

I don't think we need more voices on the podium, but rather an empowerment of the electorate with technology to force those politicians who lead their respective parties to be responsive to a larger constituency. Let's face it, now they pay deference to whoever has the money and manage the voters with divide and conquer partisan BS.

By sending up 3rd and 4th parties we make it even easier to divide and conquer. Instead, we need to use the power of the ballot box to call the shots. The two-party system is good in that it forces the electorate to coalesce on important issues - the problem is that the politicians have then been able to ignore the voters by controlling the agenda. The break-up of media is making this more difficult for them.

I agree that Obama is not an outsider, but an insider par excellence. With his unique racial background and talents he figured out how to ride the wave of elite power, not break it down. He is the liberal powerbase's great black-and-white hope and it's not clear yet who is playing who. In the end, it's just another power play and we voters are really meant to be spectators, rooting for the team we think will pay off for us.
michael 9 months ago
I support the spirit of this idea, but I'm not sure it would effectively level the playing field. I have a feeling that new media, if anything, will do that eventually. (YouTube is free?)

4-8 weeks before an election that starts 2 years prior, the top two candidates will already be flooding our consciousness, driving out facetime with low probability alternatives. This is not just about money, but organization and the private MSM's desire to amplify compelling narratives. Everybody wants to follow the story of a likely winner - only one Cinderella story a cycle can probably overcome this.

But the public airwaves should be used in some way to remove some of the financial imperative to high value media campaigning.
michael 9 months ago
Spiral: A popular vote doesn't solve the problem you cite or deliver the scenario you think. With a popular vote CA and NY would have much greater weight because they have high population density. Why? Because that's where the votes are! You win the urban regions, you win the election. This is bad because our politics is often split between urban and rural interests.

Take CA for instance - with a popular vote CA becomes much more important to a presidential candidate than Wyoming or Arkansas. So campaign strategies have to focus on SF, LA and SD. To get those votes the candidates would have to promise to meet those voters' demands. Right now CA and NY are in the worst budget crisis of most of the states. With a popular vote they would be able to force the Fed govt to redistribute resources from the 48 states to their two states or risk losing their votes to the opposition. Would this be a good thing? Definitely not because the level of resentment of voters paying taxes in those other 48 states would rise to the temper of a revolution.

If a voter wants its state to have a bigger impact all they have to do it make the state competitive, i.e. a swing state. This means centrist on national political priorities. It means being far left (CA, MA) or far right (WY, OK) won't work. Don't we want to encourage people to come to the center of compromise on national political issues? Our system rewards that while punishing people who prefer to live on the fringe. Fringe politics can only pull a society apart.

The popular vote is a psychological/emotional crutch that really doesn't accomplish what people hope. Readers here have to understand that no voting system is perfect (google Arrow's Impossibility theorem and the Voting Paradox) but all have strengths and weaknesses. The strength of the voting system we have is that it forces compromise and movement toward the center. With a large heterogeneous population across a wide geography this is very important. In the USA voters living in San Francisco and rural Alabama must come to a mutually acceptable understanding on national politics or the whole union thing falls apart.

When it comes to national priorities, voters in America should realize that they don't matter as individuals, only as a part of the greater whole - that greater whole is the integrity of the union.
michael 9 months ago
It doesn't seem like you have the dynamics right or understand the rules. The EC actually prevents a tyranny of the majority. Majority is based on some notion of the most votes, yes? So the EC prevents highly populated regions - say the 10 largest cities in America, from controlling the outcome. (This would be bad because urban political interests differ from rural and suburban. All must be taken into account for the democracy to be just.)

A simple majoritarian voting rule, which we have never had in US national politics, would allow the majority to exert its will on the minority. That's seems fine when picking a president, but not when making laws. But the EC will only come into play when the vote is close to 50-50. Then the EC will measure how support for a candidate is dispersed geographically. The widest distribution insures the most politically stable result.

There is nothing anti-democratic or unjust about this. It does not increase or decrease the value of any individual's vote. This is a misinterpretation. Every state resident is equal. This is how it should be in a federation of states.
michael 9 months ago
OK, I'll try again, but you have offered no argument against the way the EC functions - only that you don't like it. But that doesn't matter.

When do the EC and popular results differ? Only when the popular vote is too close to determine a clear winner according to the will of the people. A few thousand votes here and there are statistically insignificant in a voting population of 130 million. To argue that a result that close is definitive is absurd and invites greater conflict over the result.

The distribution of support then becomes the more important criterion.
michael 9 months ago
sobi: you don't see it because you're not looking. Why do you think we have a US Senate?
michael 9 months ago
Brett:
Your point is well-taken but I'll explain why it doesn't apply on the national level. Political interests vary geographically. In the USA regional political divides have existed for over 200 years - they're not going away. Our governing units are cities, counties, and states, and that's how we vote.

In the past the political divide has been between the midwest and the east, other times between the south and the north (Civil War?). You know that red-state, blue-state thing? - it's a division between urban and rural politics. But all are part of this great big union of several states.

The EC (and the Senate) help insure these geographic divides don't tear the union apart. That's a good thing. And all during our history the party that loses a presidential election wants to abolish the EC. (Most recently Republicans in 1960, Democrats in 2000) Big surprise.
michael 9 months ago
Merveilleux: Sorry, but why? Why replace or eliminate what works? I haven't read one cogent argument why the EC doesn't work the way it was intended. Most objectors think it's undemocratic (it's not).
michael 9 months ago
Jbristor: Thanks for a fresh breath of reason. Ignorance about our system of voting is probably the most egregious failing of our educational system and our popular media.

I teach political science to university students and more than half of them don't even know what democracy is. They mostly grasp at the "one person, one vote" definition, not knowing that even Iran and Venezuela can claim that.
michael 9 months ago
Why do we think the Obama administration is not in on the game here? He seems to want to pick winners and losers and acts very much the party animal. And its true that 70% of the nation's voters never voted for him. Either way, I would be more inclined to empower individual voters through technology and make political leaders subservient to their collective will, at least on all non-national security issues.

But we need a technology that converges and concentrates that power and insures it cannot be hijacked by the gatekeepers. MoveOn, KOS, HuffingtonPost, etc. are not grassroots institutions, they are strictly controlled hierarchies that serve the interests of their gatekeepers. The parties are the same way.
michael 9 months ago
I see we've veered away from the subject of this post - from opening up presidential debates to contesting the two-party system. It makes sense to open up debates - in my recollection there were numerous candidates from different parties in the 2008 elections. But at some point, as national priorities over candidates converge on the front runners, it doesn't make sense to have too many voices on the podium.
michael 9 months ago
Martin: you're ignoring how the democratic process works. Minority voices are heard if they strengthen either of the parties in their ability to win elections and satisfy those voices in tandem with their base of support. If not, they are rightly ignored. In other words, minority advocates must convince the majority to adopt their positions, most likely with compromises.

Two-party politics forces all interests toward a common center by forcing compromise - a good thing in my opinion. If a minority position cannot be accepted by the majority, it would be undemocratic to enforce it, no? Of course, the constitution defends minority rights, but all interests are not rights.

Why do you think both the Democratic and Republican parties are trying to respond to Hispanic voters? Do you think instead we should have an Hispanic Party? Of course not, we want to converge on national American interests, not splinter into separate enclaves defined by narrow interests.

Anyway, the US politic system IS open to third parties - the problem is they just don't make any sense given the voting system we have adopted. Our system has not failed because some people feel left out. These people only feel the system has failed because they themselves have failed to define their priorities together with their fellow citizens. In other words, their interests are narrow, not broad. God help us if we become a nation of narrow interests.
michael 9 months ago
A wiki is specifically for collaborating and shaping the conversation - not voting on an existing proposal. Naturally, legislation can be posted to a wiki as information and cannot be revised willy-nilly. But voting can be used in a wiki to determine best options and discarding those that lose. A wiki replaces bad ideas with better ones and thus converges on solutions.

Take this OGD - this is not a wiki, it's a community message board that after time will get so cluttered that nobody can make sense of it. On message boards the discussions will go around in circles and get hijacked by the most active and adamant participants.

michael 9 months ago
The libertarian position of open immigration is appealing from a position of history and theory, but runs into the problem of guaranteeing modern social benefits. Our original immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries got no free medical care, higher education, Social Security, food stamps, welfare, unemployment, disability, etc. Thus their arrival and hard work was overwhelmingly to the nation's economic benefit.

No nation can guarantee all these things to any and all who arrive within our borders. It's a simple reality. All of this stuff has to be earned by someone.
michael 9 months ago
Social choice (i.e voting) has nothing to do with technology. It's all about how to discover the general will and also how to get people to accept the process. If you fail in either objective, your method fails. (BTW, so far most people accept the voting process we have.)

Once more, the USA has never instituted a simple majoritarian national voting system. Perhaps it would be better to ask why, than to condemn the status quo.
michael 9 months ago
It's not a racist proposal. It's a populist proposal. The illegal immigration conflict is between populists (against) and elitists (for), not between parties or between races. Pulling out the race card doesn't help the conversation at all.
michael 10 months ago
It has them. The problem is enforcement.
michael 10 months ago
This misunderstands the history, logic and dynamics of the Electoral College voting system.
michael 10 months ago
This is just a false argument. Rural residents don't control anything with 10% of the vote. What voters do control is how their state as one of 50 represents their interests in the national union. To deny them this is certainly neither democratic nor morally justifiable. Making hyperbolic arguments about different minority groups that make up our nation don't get us anywhere. One person, one vote is not the historical basis of our United States. We are not a nation of US citizens, we are a united nation of states' citizens. Ever notice you register to vote as a state resident, not with your American passport?

P.S I've always been an urban dweller.
michael 10 months ago
Ultimately it's about shifting power and control over citizens' lives from elected and appointed representatives back to those same citizens. That's what social media is all about. It's not just about information processing and dissemination. The struggle for power will not be an easy one and it will not be freely transferred by those who now hold that power. And I fear that probably includes the folks who initiated and "control" this project.
michael 10 months ago
I think the whole point of open government and eGov is that control comes from the bottom up. People keep trying to apply the new technology to the traditional top-down model of command and control, but network technology turns this model upside down. Ultimately, we don't need federal bureaucratic agencies except to execute the public will. Bureaucrats whose power is based on their budget and regulatory reach will never willingly fall on their swords and surrender that power for voters' eGov.
See the discussion on New Governance Paradigm.
michael 10 months ago
I like instant run-off voting.
michael 10 months ago
P.S. For example, in Minnesota they should have a new Senate election because now the data from the 2008 election doesn't really tell us anything about what choice Minnesota voters really made in choosing their Senator. Right now it's a coin-toss.
michael 10 months ago
Proportional EC voting just introduces a bias of a different nature. Then the EC just mirrors the popular vote, which it was meant to check. With PR EC voting, numbers wield more influence than geographic distribution, so high population density regions wield more power over political choices. I'm not sure this is a good thing. We have checks and balances in our electoral and governing structures to create long term stability and preserve the strength of the union. A situation where one region controls outcomes usually leads to secession movements and the breakup of nations. Since our nation has held together so well with the balance between the popular vote and the EC vote, the motivation to change just isn't there.

If you think about it, the EC distribution of support only comes into play when the result of the popular vote is statistically indeterminant. In other words, in 2000 the popular vote did not give us a clear preference between Bush or Gore, so we needed to weigh EC votes and then make a judicial determination on how those critical votes were counted. The popular vote really didn't tell us what we needed to know.
michael 10 months ago
I'm not sure exactly why people would vote against a "vital discussion" of what the new paradigm is and how it works. It would be nice if those opinions were expressed in comments and arguments.

That is the power of wiki, rather than a simple voting register - which is more like a thermometer of opinion. I thought eGov gets us away from that.
michael 10 months ago
The problem of abuse is solved if you can require verifiable registration of participants. No anonymity here. It should be like a townhall meeting where if you stand up to speak all your neighbors know. This is solvable. The point is to sanction abuse and reward positive contributions with reputational capital. Eventually your name will become recognizable to the community you live in - and abuse will be quickly remedied. There is nothig wrong with self-interest, as long as it is transparent.

I agree that the politicians will not really welcome this eGov if it constrains their power, which is why I think those who think the Obama administration embraces these efforts are being naive. If this works the politicians become the public servants they were meant to be. Right now they are trying to accumulate as much power as they can.

Party organizations, even independents, are really irrelevant to this. All politicians will take their marching orders from their constituents or lose the next election. That aggregates up to the national level for issues with national breadth.
michael 10 months ago
The two-party system is an inevitable result of our voting rules. Because of single-member districts with first-past-the-post plurality rules, the game favors whoever gets closest to 51% of the vote. Thus candidates and parties are driven towards the center. This is not perfect, but it's not all bad. It favors compromise and convergence toward the hallowed "center". Third parties cannot survive for long under these rules because failure doesn't attract more resources.

But think of the alternative where everybody gets to vote for their favorite issue-driven party. How do you ever converge on national governance? The result of proportional representation is coalition government, which is usually unstable because a small minority can make or break the coalition. This would hardly be ideal in a country as large and heterogeneous as the US. Freedom and liberty have held up pretty well in the USA and part of the reason is that people are encouraged to come together in the public arena to get things done.
We leave our differences at home and focus on what we have in common.
michael 10 months ago
No need to survey. There are many practical, non-political reasons to oppose this idea. Perhaps the dynamics of social choice mechanisms (voting) is most relevant. How does one get a pluralist, heterogeneous society to set priorities so that a single binding decision can be made and accepted? (I.e., choosing a president.)

Voting is not about everybody being happy with the outcome - it's about arriving at a stable and durable outcome. Our two-party system derives from our voting rules of single-district, first past the post. The point is to drive disparate interests to set priorities and converge at the center.

A two-party system makes outliers and fringe groups irrelevant, which is how it should be. A pluralist society must be driven, mostly against its will, to converge on issues where the majority will can be determined. If every special interest gets a candidate that panders to its favorite interest, this can never happen. Anarchy and chaos are not good models for democratic governance.

All social choice models have their pros and cons, none is perfect, but the two-party system actually works very well for the USA. If you feel disenfranchised, you're forced to move the ball from within by participating, not changing the rules. Open gov and transparency are very positive ways to improve our politics.
michael 10 months ago
Perhaps I misinterpreted this post, if it means that politicians must be held accountable to the OGD. But I still think transparency and elections do this best. We have too many watchdogs in our public institutions when we should be empowering checks and balances through participation.
michael 10 months ago
"Leadership and oversight at the highest levels" sounds like surrendering more public decisions to the political class, which has proven incapable of depoliticizing these issues. Open Government Directive means putting the Washington pols in the position of serving the needs of the public, not vice-versa.

Politicians ignore the voice of open government at their own peril on election day.
michael 10 months ago
Fine. Refer to citizen portal.
michael 10 months ago
To the extent this is like an open wiki and not controlled by gatekeepers, it would be a very productive service. If citizens feel the conversation is controlled (institutionalized?) by hidden gatekeepers, they will ignore it. It should not be just an information reference site, but also an information gathering site, like wikipedia. Wikipedia is so successful because it's perceived as "owned" by its contributors and participants.

The open market of participants has to be able to police itself from abuse, but there should be no sense of Big Brother making judgments on content. If this functions properly, representatives should be getting their marching orders from their portal.
Are you listening, Ahnuld?