Gov2.0 Summit

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• 9:19 a.m. #

  Aneesh Chopra, the nation's first Chief Technology Officer, is up first. He's a special assistant to the president in charge of making sure the government has the best tech available.

• 9:21 a.m. #

  O'Reilly asks a good question: How do you get out of the DC bubble and get new voices?

  Chopra: "We need to work in the light of day."

• 9:24 a.m. #

  "We are piloting tools that would basically let us serve as proxy in what would before be the domain of people who have a Washington view."

• 9:24 a.m. #

  Chopra is something of a diplomat in public, promoting and finding the most useful technology, pushing openness, and convening within the government.

• 9:26 a.m. #

  "We spend $76 billion on information technology." When the government buys something, it matters.

• 9:27 a.m. #

  Q: Where are we in the Open Government Directive process?

  A: "My Senate confirmation took place on the 120th day."

• 9:28 a.m. #

  Chopra's recommendation was "eat our own dogfood." Basically, the administration should operate under the transparency rules it wants federal agencies to follow. Spent a lot of time figuring out what agencies could and would do.

  O'Reilly: "This is kind of wiki government."

• 9:29 a.m. #

  First pillar of the Open Government Directive: This should be structural, and not tied to any White House.

  "We want a structured schedule where data is released in a machine readable formats."

• 9:30 a.m. #

  "Agencies will be asked how they will engage the public in policy-making."

  New platforms are coming, in addition to www.Data.gov and IT Dashboard.

• 9:31 a.m. #

  The real challenge is "hard-wiring our federal agencies for open government." That's a good way to put it. What people really wanted, Chopra said, is a way to make sure the next administration doesn't reverse these transparency rules.

• 9:32 a.m. #

  "We are explicitly investing in certain areas of the economy." Administration sees opportunities in those areas--health IT, for example--for government to act as a platform.

  "We are setting a foundation by investing in technology."

• 9:35 a.m. #

  O'Reilly: So this is about "governing by outcomes?"

  Chopra: "It works so much better when we do it that way."

• 9:35 a.m. #

  The government can lead by example, Chopra says. It can show how things should work, then spread the word.

• 9:37 a.m. #

  "What would happen if a school had to shut down for two weeks, or three weeks?"

  Arne Duncan, the Education Secretary, issued a directive telling schools to be prepared to teach without a classroom, and the federal government provided examples of how other agencies have met those goals.

  The idea, from the sound of it, is that problems solved once don't need to be solved again.

• 9:39 a.m. #

  Next up, Clay Shirky, who Tim O'Reilly once called "the Oscar Wilde of the internet."

• 9:40 a.m. #

  Shirky points to a couple experiments in user contributions: DC's Apps for Democracy, then the LA Times' Wikitorial.

• 9:42 a.m. #

  On Wikitorial: "Less than 24 hours after the project launched, they pulled the plug. It was a catastrophic failure."

  Why? "It doesn't have anything to do with the technology."

• 9:43 a.m. #

  Next example, the famous daycare centers in Haifa, where fines were instituted for parents showing up late.

  Within a couple weeks of the fine being implemented, the number of parents showing up late tripled, from seven to 20.

  Why?

  "The fine killed the previous social agreement that had been in place."

• 9:45 a.m. #

  "We're not really going to say what bad things happen" if you pick your kids up late.

  By adding the fine, they had "added managerial oversight" and "transformed the social arrangement."

• 9:45 a.m. #

  The LA Times' problem: "Their contract with the readers was too complete."

  They offered up the editorial, then said change it "in the matter of Wikipedia."

  "Since the Times had already told readers what they expected, they had already wrung out all the creative surprises, but not all the destructive surprises."

• 9:47 a.m. #

  "They had gone out so far in public with something whose workings they didn't understand, they didn't have any room to go back and learn."

• 9:47 a.m. #

  Apps for Democracy worked because DC said, "Here's our data. Surprise us."

• 9:48 a.m. #

  The contract with users has to be complete enough to motivate them, but maintain space to participate.

  "Otherwise they feel like they're just minimum wage employees, without even getting minimum wage."

• 9:49 a.m. #

  "It's not hard because of the technology. It's hard because of the organization."

• 9:49 a.m. #

  Users never use an application the way you expect. "Successful applications create surprises."

• 9:49 a.m. #

  Build for surprises.

• 9:50 a.m. #

  Now, Clay part 2, Clay Johnson talking about Sunlight Foundation's Apps for America.

• 9:51 a.m. #

  Local Spending uses HTML 5 and geolocation to tell users exactly how much money is being spent near them, using www.usaspending.gov data.

• 9:53 a.m. #

  Budget breaks down federal spending by noting how many midsized cards you could buy with that money.

• 9:54 a.m. #

  Quakespotter, winner of the visualization prize, tracks earthquakes from USGS and finds Twitter updates nearby. "This basically runs on my desktop all the time because it's so pretty," Johnson says.

• 9:56 a.m. #

  Big message of Apps for America: We're here to help. Let us.

• 9:59 a.m. #

  Looking at a British example now, FixMyStreet lets users point out local problems and then figures out who can actually fix it. Very cool.

• 10:01 a.m. #

  First rule of being in the Government Data Mashers Club: You do not talk about the Government Data Mashers Club, at least not in front of your users.

  They don't care. They just want government that works. Don't waste time telling them how lucky they are.

• 10:04 a.m. #

  Great quote: "Coding is quicker than consensus."

• 10:05 a.m. #

  So, go build "FixMyStreet" in the US. It's challenging, in part because of federalism. But making that seamless, making things work, will build momentum to fix more.

• 10:06 a.m. #

  "We do things that make things better in the lives of citizens, and we'd like to help you do this same."

• 10:07 a.m. #

  Rapid fire time: 20 minutes of lightning talks next. I'll try to keep up.

• 10:08 a.m. #

  Adrian Holovaty's up first, talking about Everyblock.

• 10:08 a.m. #

  Showing off a new feature: Draw your own neighborhood. For example, here's the area around Meridian Hill Park, which is close to my house.

• 10:10 a.m. #

  Everyblock gets data in two ways:

  • Asking nicely
  • Screen scraping
• 10:11 a.m. #

  "We tend to think of government data in an all-in kind of way. At Everyblock, we take what we can get." Sometimes its good enough for an agency to just change its website slightly to make data easier to scrape.

• 10:12 a.m. #

  Diffs, not dumps: Here's everything we have since forever. EB wants just what's new.

• 10:13 a.m. #

  PDFs are not machine readable. "PDFs are like the devil's spawn." Me: Yes!

• 10:13 a.m. #

  Last, describe what data you have. EB has a full-time guy who just figures out what the data means.

• 10:14 a.m. #

  Carol Dumaine, talking about intelligence and the environment. Not something we often think about as being related.

• 10:14 a.m. #

  "During the Cold War, we spent time planning for events that were low-probability, high impact, like a surprise nuclear attack." Now, we need to worry about things like ice sheets melting, which are not immediate but much more likely to threaten.

• 10:15 a.m. #

  Problems we don't see are part of complicated systems we barely even see, let alone understand. Climate change might be the most obvious, but there are thousands of other breakdowns going on beneath the most apparent issues.

• 10:17 a.m. #

  Scott Heiferman, aka Mr. Meetup, is next. Definitely a handy app.

• 10:20 a.m. #

  Government's greatest opportunity: DIO.

  Not Do It Yourself, but Do It Ourselves.

• 10:21 a.m. #

  What if the SBA connected small business people locally to support each other?

• 10:21 a.m. #

  This is happening in some places. It's a "Chamber of Commerce for the 21st Century."

• 10:22 a.m. #

  People are saying "let's" a lot, he says. What does "let us" mean?

• 10:23 a.m. #

  "Participation means lending your hands, not just your voices." It's not just protesting--"shaking the vending machine"--but actively working to fix things and provide new services.

• 10:24 a.m. #

  A group is an app. Make a platform where anyone can be a developer. "Killer apps drive platform adoption."

• 10:25 a.m. #

  "It's nice to have followers on Facebook and Twitter, but is there more they can do?" Get people to self-organize and do something.

• 10:26 a.m. #

  Next: Peter Corbett of iStrategy Labs.

  We like Smarter, Better, Faster, Cheaper.

• 10:27 a.m. #

  Vivek Kundra said, We need a better way to make our data feed more accessible, usable. How?

  Could spend a bunch of money, get a contract, hope it fits. That's the 1.0 way.

  Better, 2.0 way. Ask users and offer open data.

• 10:28 a.m. #

  One thing that came out of this is Are You Safe, which we heard about yesterday.

• 10:29 a.m. #

  The latest winner: Go to the iPhone app store and search "DC 311"

  This app combines Facebook, the iPhone and a way to complain to the city about potholes and other local problems.

• 10:31 a.m. #

  Ideally, an app gets built once and spreads everywhere. Other cities copy what works and an ecology develops.

• 10:32 a.m. #

  Last of the rapid fire talks: Michael Tiemann of Red Hat. "We should be living in an economic paradise."

  "There has been no Moore's Law for software," and so we're living in a Paradise Lost.

• 10:33 a.m. #

  "Today, we're wasting over $1 trillion a year on bad software." Software is getting more expensive and worse at the same time.

• 10:34 a.m. #

  What's wrong with industrial software? It doesn't work.

  Adding more people to a late project makes it later. Costs are externalized. This is unsustainable.

• 10:34 a.m. #

  Sustainable software is that which makes the whole system better.

• 10:36 a.m. #

  Software bits should be free to read, write and share. Pay for services and subscriptions.

• 10:36 a.m. #

  End the insanity: Use freedom of choice to not do the same thing over and over again.

• 11:08 a.m. #

  Rep. John Culberson is up now, talking to O'Reilly.

  "I started using social media on May 26 last year," after a constituent introduced him.

  "It was as though a light switch went off in my head."

  It "puts each one of us Americans in charge of our government."

• 11:10 a.m. #

  "Social media in a very real sense has made each one of us media moguls. We now have access to the deepest corners of the government."

  Culberson says he's always been interested in technology. His father was an early-adopter doing digital page layout.

• 11:11 a.m. #

  "I'm convinced the next American revolution is going to happen over the internet and in the ballot box, as it should be."

  Once the American people find out what the government's doing, "they're not going to put up with it anymore."

  "This government takeover of health care" got a hiss from the audience there.

• 11:14 a.m. #

  Q: How do we get government to be a platform?

  A: As Jefferson said, the goal of the American republic is to put us in charge of everything we can see. Get government out of the way and "leave me alone."

  Ed: interesting hearing the occasional hissing. Culberson's politics definitely don't fit with some people here, even if he's advocating much of the theme of this summit.

• 11:17 a.m. #

  "Imagine the day, and this will come...when we're talking in real time to 10k, 50k. Imagine 10 million Americans all talking at the same time."

• 11:18 a.m. #

  "Imagine how that would scare Congress, and that's really the goal. We want to strike fear into all members of Congress."

  O'Reilly disagrees with this idea. "We saw this morning this amazing use of government data to build services." In other words, this is about more than transparency.

• 11:19 a.m. #

  O'Reilly: "I would love to see bills open and on the internet, but if you put that up, who's going to read that?"

• 11:21 a.m. #

  Interesting that Culberson has two Twitter accounts. His main one is "personal," he says. "We're in a gray zone."

• 11:22 a.m. #

  "I set up an iGoogle page and I don't read the local newspaper (in print) anymore."

  Culberson's office is setting up policy wikis, the congressman says. He's plugging GIS and data viz, dropping references to "cap and tax."

• 11:24 a.m. #

  Oh, "If you're putting up lies about death panels on your page" that's not helping us.

  JC: "The internet is the most powerful truth engine ever created." Lies will be shot down. "We're reaching the point where we're going to have virtual realtime democracy."

  "You can read the bill....My goal is to crowdsource this to my constituents."

  "The wonderful power of the internet is visible in the townhall meetings and tea parties."

  O'Reilly: "But that does require everyone to stand up and be counted." We need better mechanisms for moderation.

• 11:28 a.m. #

  Mitchell Kapor is up now, "Thinking about Government as a Platform."

  "Politics is unavoidable...It still matters if you think everyone should have health care or not."

  That's OK, I think he's saying. That's what I say, anyway.

• 11:30 a.m. #

  "Government shouldn't just be a provider of services. It should be a creator of a world where we can have more of that."

  What does that mean?

  Look at the success of ethernet, wifi, etc: all of that was based on the idea of shared resources. "It has very low overhead and you don't need a government of ethernet to decide who can send their packets around."

• 11:33 a.m. #

  "I am a proponent of health care reform...but that's not the point here."

  "I think there's something off about providing health care that's so disempowering to the individual." People's health should be "in their own hands," Kapor says.

  The discussions about health IT and health 2.0 are, for the moment, separate discussions. We need an open source system and solution.

• 11:36 a.m. #

  "Government isn't going to go away, but it is important that it be based on certain ideas that it benefit all citizens."

  The tech community is uniquely suited to make this happen. "We need more of this."

• 11:37 a.m. #

  John Markoff of the NY Times is next, interviewing Vinton Cerf, Jack Dorsey and Tim Sparapani.

  "This is like the dating game," Markoff says as panelists come out.

• 11:44 a.m. #

  Cerf: "Openness allows anyone with an idea to try things out...the net isn't going to stop you from doing that."

  "Larry and Sergei didn't have to get permission from every IP in the world in order to start Google."

• 11:45 a.m. #

  "We've got all kinds of web applications that I'm pretty sure Tim (Berners-Lee) didn't think about when he was inventing the web."

  And more optimistically, "we can still do that."

• 11:47 a.m. #

  The internet really was conceived for defense purposes, Cerf says. They wanted to be able to send information in a variety of ways. But academics built it and took it their own ways.

  Bonus quote: "Power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."

• 11:48 a.m. #

  "At Google, we published the Google Earth and Google Maps APIs with the expectation that people would make money off them, and we're fine with that."

• 11:49 a.m. #

  Jack Dorsey: We're building something more like a utility than a product. "Our API came out of a purely practical need." In other words, they use the utility themselves.

• 11:50 a.m. #

  "We are building something that is equivalent to a grid, to a network." The company's responsibility now is to make sure it stays up.

  Cerf: "This is a real-time messaging service that needs to be very reliable and very fast. But you don't tell people how to twitter...or whatever you call it."

• 11:52 a.m. #

  Dorsey: "Where we're going is where the users take us. Consider the telephone networks, and how you plug into those networks."

  API services "extract some value but really build value on top of what we have."

• 11:53 a.m. #

  Dorsey: Think about dispatch services--911, taxis, and such. Lots of individual entities sending messages to the network. Twitter is like that, sort of.

  This could be useful with 311 services, Dorsey says.

• 11:56 a.m. #

  Let's talk about privacy here. "What if we shift contexts?" Markoff asks. "What if we're not in an open society?"

  Sparapani: People can share as much as they want. People have "really granular control."

  Markoff: "What about the illicit use?" Isn't this a great tool for law enforcement? Sure sounds handy to know all of someone's friends.

  Sparapani: We take that very seriously. More, "We're in a new age." People are still learning how to live and work in this system. More importantly, the vast majority are making and getting good use out of social networks.

• 11:59 a.m. #

  Dorsey: "As the government participates in things like this, it blurs the line between government and the private sector." When politicians use Facebook and Twitter and other social media, it makes them "more approachable."

  Sparapani: "We have 23 federal agencies on Facebook now."

  Related to that, http://www.facebook.com/government just launched.

• 12:05 p.m. #

  Can we use Twitter or Facebook in emergencies?

  Dorsey (being honest): "These technologies do fail." We can't rely on any one company or service.

• 12:06 p.m. #

  Markoff: "Why do we need a republican form of government?" Can't we disaggregate government like we've done with media?

  Cerf: "How many of us have the time to understand all of what's going on? Our feedback is important...but I'm still comfortable with the idea that representative government is sufficient."

  Sparapani: Government needs to set standards and ground rules, "rounding off the edges when there are excesses." "We need government, particularly this government, the US government, to lead."

• 12:09 p.m. #

  One last question before lunch: What if you could start over?

  Cerf: "I would have put in a much stronger focus on authenticity or authentication into the architecture." The ability to know who you're talking to. "I would have done more on mobility."