There’s an App for Government Too

Even as the nation's capital remains consumed by the continuing controversy of over how best to contain the worst environmental disaster in the nation's history, the Obama administration is attempting to highlight the work they are doing to bring the workings of government into the 21st century. As someone who labored for four years to make the government work better and cost less, I can only salute their efforts and wish them well.

When Vice President Gore and his NPR team were reinventing government in the 90s, we highlighted the potential of the Internet to completely transform government's relationship to its citizens and established the first federal government portal to provide access to its online information. But the data was sparse and the formats discouraged interactivity.  Today, the Obama administration has made enormous strides in making data on the performance of government both available and user friendly. Coupled with the rising popularity of smart phone technology, these efforts hold out the promise that citizens will soon be able to take advantage of a wide variety of applications built on this government data.

As OMB Director Peter Orszag pointed out, data.gov now offers over 270,000 data sets that provide information ranging from work site safety statistics to the safety ratings on different children's car seats.  But the key to unlocking the values of such information is making all of it as open and transparent as possible so that developers, not government, can create citizen friendly applications for its use. Just as the iPhone and mobile phones built off of the Android operating system have educated consumers on the value of having data customized to their needs, the Obama administration is working hard to put its data in machine readable formats with open APIs that accomplish the same purpose.

The potential for application-based government has already been demonstrated at the local level. For instance, NDN member Hylan Dixon relates this wonderful story about how the Massachusetts Department of Transportation created an application to tell Bostonians when the next bus would arrive at a given stop. They announced their decision to provide the GPS data from buses on an open source basis at a web developers' conference before lunch and by the time they got back someone had already put the data into Google maps.  Within two days the information was on a website and within a week it was posted as an Apple widget. Within five weeks it was an application available on both iPhones and Android phones without any further government effort or expenditure. The key to such rapid gains in government's productivity and value is to make more and more data available for the public to use as it sees fit.

While the administration's efforts in this area are admirable, they would be even more effective if Congress would pass  H.R.4858- Public Online Information Act of 2010 which establishes an advisory committee to issue nonbinding government-wide guidelines for  making public information available on the Internet, requires publicly available Government information held by the executive branch to be made available on the Internet, and expresses the sense of Congress that publicly available information held by the legislative and judicial branches should also be made available on the Internet. The bill incorporates all eight principles for making government data open including ensuring it is  complete, timely, accessible, machine readable, and license-free. Unfortunately, the bill has not attracted enough sponsors to make it the priority it should be with Democrats in Congress.

Twenty-first century America will not look like or behave the way the country did in the last century. Technology, particularly broadband mobile computing, will enable us to be connected to billions of people throughout the globe and conduct our lives with increased efficiency and effectiveness as a result. It is imperative for government to keep pace with these changes and not fall so far behind that people conclude it is inherently wasteful and inefficient. As Vice President Gore used to say, there was a time when being "good enough for government work" was a compliment not a dismissive criticism. If those of us who believe in the good that government can do to create economic opportunity and greater social equity want to gain the support of the nation's 21st century electorate for our ideas, then we all need to join the Obama administration's efforts to make citizen's daily experiences with government as good as anything Google or Apple deliver. Government by application promises to make such a future come true sooner rather than later.