Visible Government

Tools for Transparency

SECRECY

Lack of Accountability Corruption Waste Cynicism

TRANSPARENCY

Participation Oversight Feedback Trust

Only partially available online

Formatted as web page or PDF

Hard to search Can’t subscribe Can’t visualize Can’t re-use

Publishing Structured Feeds

• Ability to subscribe to interesting data

• Data streams can be ‘mashed’ in new ways.

Data Visualization

• Makes it easy to find new patterns.

Collaborative Organization

• Tagging, Voting

Crowdsourcing

• Combines skills and input of large numbers of people

Governments publish data

streams

Citizens monitor data

streams

Issues are detected

Issues are resolved

3rd

Party Tools

• Governments publish data streams

• 3rd parties create tools for analysis and oversight

• Citizens collaboratively monitor their government

• Citizens detect issues, give feedback

• Issues are resolved

Government has no incentive ▪ Usually has disincentive

Don’t want a single monolithic solution▪ Want to allow evolution of best-

of-breed tools

Tools created by citizens, for citizens▪ Ensure participation

Why can’t the government do everything?

Focus: US Congress California

Legislature

Gives grants to online transparency tools

$3.5 M Seed

A recent US Congress bill

Groups for bill

Groups against bill

Donations

Votes

Publishing Structured Feeds

• MAPLight is a mashup of data streams from different sources.

Data Visualization

• MAPLight makes relationship between money and votes

visible.

Collaborative Organization

• Advocacy group tagsdonating companies as belonging to interest groups.

Crowdsourcing

• Thousands of journalists, advocates, and citizens can browse data and flag issues.

People submit project ideas

Core team defines tools

Web development groups bid for implementation

Supporters donate to fund development

Engine for Donation-Based 3rd Party Tool

Development

Travel and Hospitality Expense Database

• Make it easy to sort and visualize expenses

• Make it easy to screen new expenses

Access to Information Request Front-End

• Make it easy to file an access to information request

• Collect statistics on requests and response times

• Highlight the areas that receive the most requests

Advisors

• Technical Domain Experts, Academics

• Advocacy Groups

• Journalists

Volunteers

• Planners

• Organizers

• Evangelists

Money

• Donations

• Grants

Jennifer Bellvisiblegovernment.ca