Ireland
- Luke Fretwell · June 28, 2011, 10:00 am
Dena and I visited Ireland for two weeks in 2006. Europe experienced a heat wave and the weather was unbelievably beautiful the entire time we were there.
Dena and I visited Ireland for two weeks in 2006. Europe experienced a heat wave and the weather was unbelievably beautiful the entire time we were there.
Whether it was written out of naivete or for the intent of sensationalism, the other Vivek, Vivek Wadhwa, misses the mark in his Washington Post piece The death of open government.
Wadhwa makes the general argument that, because U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra announced his resignation last week, open government will “suffer a slow, inevitable death.” While I agree the federal Open Government Initiative itself has lost momentum without set dates, timelines and leadership from the top, this by no means is an indicator of the overall health of open government.
Open government will never die and here’s just a few reasons why:
Homeland Security CIO and Vice Chair of the Federal CIO Council Richard Spires is emphatic that senior IT executives will carry on Kundra’s legacy. He writes this in a recent CIO.gov blog post:
During the past two years, I have worked closely with Vivek Kundra, the US CIO, in both my capacity as the DHS CIO and in various leadership roles on the Federal CIO Council. Vivek joined the Obama administration with a vision of IT being a catalyst for the Federal government to be much more open, participatory, and collaborative. Vivek has been a strong force for open government. He has changed the dialogue and viewpoint of agencies of the Federal government – and we will not go back. (emphasis mine)
A number of federal CIOs/CTOs I’ve talked with are passionate about leveraging technology to make government more open and efficient. These are bright, innovative public servants with vision. See Todd Park, Peter Levin, Roger Baker and countless others as prime examples.
Open government isn’t just a federal phenomenon. It’s happening in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and even in Wadhwa’s own backyard, San Francisco. Open data start-up Socrata has a growing customer list that includes states like Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma and Illinois.
Beyond data, groups like CityCamp and Code for America are creating an organic and sustainable movement that involves citizens and public servants.
Wadhwa cites the lack of funding around initiatives like Data.gov as a prime example of open government’s demise, but open government is more than just open data.
Open source projects and ideation experiments are flourishing at all levels of government. FCC most recently began the process of re-vamping and re-launching its entire Website after 10 years using the open source platform Drupal. Be on the look-out for other major agencies to announce the same. Open source service companies are playing a key role in fostering the open government community within the Beltway through events such as OpenGovDC and regular Drupal meet-ups at Stetson’s.
Wadhwa writes of his call to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the half dozen replies to help fix federal government IT issues at a fraction of proposed costs. Unfortunately, he writes, “no one has taken these entrepreneurs up on their offer.”
Innovative entrepreneurs don’t wait for the phone to ring and neither should Wadhwa or his incubator-in-waiting. Follow in the footsteps of Govpulse.us and Federal Register 2.0 and create the prototype. If it’s innovative enough and executable, someone in government will be the Gov 2.0 guinea pig.
Democracy is not a spectator sport.
Step away from the keyboard and engage in the grassroots open government movement, especially the one in your own backyard. Other tech leaders are doing more than just writing and theorizing on TechCrunch and The Washington Post (see Craig Newmark, Tim O’Reilly, Pierre Omidyar, Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor to name just a few).
This isn’t a time for pontification. Government, especially open government, needs your help and leadership. It’s time to leverage your influence (and Klout score) and be the change. Inspire Silicon Valley to focus on civic technology instead of building another photo sharing app.
Open government won’t die a slow death because one of its biggest champions leaves public service.
Open government won’t die a slow death because it’s underfunded.
Open government will die a slow death if we, as citizens inside and outside government, don’t engage, collaborate, participate and do something about it.
Will Wadhwa create his own personal Open Government Initiative as many others across the world are doing? I hope so.
I discussed SFOpen 2011 on Gov 2.0 Radio with Adriel Hampton and Allison Hornery.
Civic technology issues explode onto the SF scene: From the first-known mayoral forum exclusively focused on open government and technology issues to CityCamp to the “Summer of Smart,” grassroots civic technology advocacy has taken off in a big way in San Francisco. We talk about the SFOpen forum, the second CityCampSF, and the ongoing “Summer of Smart.”
Listen:
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It’s been a long time since I’ve run and mostly the challenge is getting up and just doing it. I love running in the rain and felt the urge, but needed the motivation.
I’ve never used Twitter or Facebook for health inspiration, but today I did, and surprisingly it worked for me.
Here’s what I tweeted:
It’s cold and rainy and I haven’t run in years, but want to start today. Please help get me pumped to do it. #runlukerun
To which @CalWonk responded:
@lukefretwell DO IT! RUN BOY RUN!
And @ebboyd:
@lukefretwell Get up from the chair, walk towards the door, and the rest will take care of itself.
And @jtag:
@lukefretwell Go for it! It’s a warm rain. I’m planning on a run later this afternoon my self.
One tweet, three replies. That’s all the inspiration I needed. I’ve now set up a #runlukerun reminder in my calendar for every Tuesday and Thursday and will post to Twitter and Facebook to leverage the power of my network to help me get up and go.
Big shout to the above for helping make that happen.
CityCamp founder Kevin Curry writes on opensource.com how we made CityCamp an open source brand:
GovFresh founder, Luke Fretwell, and I worked furiously for weeks via Skype on content and syndication platforms, look-and-feel, messaging, instructions, goals, and simple rules. We created a WordPress theme and published it. We chose a Creative Commons license and put everything about CityCamp under that license.
Matt Taibbi’s April 2010 Rolling Stone article The Great American Bubble Machine set the foundation for his recent book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.
Taibbi’s writing style is direct, at times profane, but never fails to entertain while giving insight into what’s happening within the world of high finance.
On his favorite target Goldman Sachs:
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
With Griftopia, Taibbi calls out former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (“The Biggest Asshole in the Universe”), highlights how U.S. municipalities are leasing off public property to help finance themselves during budget shortfalls (“The Outsourced Highway”) and dresses down the health care reform legislation (“The Trillion Dollar Band-Aid”). It also includes a re-print of his initial Rolling Stone piece, which is one of the best pieces I’ve read that describes what happened during the financial crisis and the role Goldman played.
While his style may not resonate with most, I highly recommend Griftopia if you want to understand the convoluted world of banking and how it impacts the the United States without feeling like you need to need to get a finance degree or bore yourself to death reading a dry account of how money is moving around the world.
I.O.U.S.A. is a must-watch documentary explaining in simple terms the United States government’s financial woes. Seeing the fiscal incompetence of our political leaders will end up depressing or angering you. There’s a great clip of Congressman Ron Paul calling Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to the carpet. The visuals and graphics do an excellent job highlighting the future crisis we face (ex: ‘Thriftville vs. Squanderville’ with Warren Buffet. Every American should see this.
Eli Pariser’s TED Talk, Beware online “filter bubbles”, is an overview of his new book, The Filter Bubble. The comments from his KQED interview highlight much of his and others’ concerns about the way companies like Google and Facebook are personalizing our Web activity.
“We really need the Internet to be that thing that we all dreamed of it being. We need it to connect us all together. We need it to introduce us to new ideas and new people and different perspectives, and it’s not going to do that if it leaves us isolated in a Web of one.”
Great TED Talk from security expert Bruce Schneier.
“We estimate the probability of something by how easy it is to bring instances of it to mind. So you can imagine how that works. You hear a lot of tiger attacks. There must be a lot of tigers around. You don’t hear about lion attacks. There aren’t a lot of lions around. This works until you invent newspapers, because what newspapers do is repeat, again and again, rare risks. I tell people if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it, because by definition news is something that almost never happens. When something is common, it’s no longer news.”
“Smiling is one of the most basic, biological, uniform expressions of all humans.”
Luke Fretwell © 2012