The Transition: Information, Technology, and Information-Technology
There is a lot going on during the current transition to a new Administration with regard to information policy, technology policy, and information-technology (IT) policy. Sometimes these overlap, but not always. I wanted to take this opportunity to bring together some resources relevant to government information and technology policies during this transition period.
John Shuler has begun some comments here on FGI, which I hope will spark comments and discussion.
The Environmental Protection Agency has had an ongoing National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information since April, and they have issued a draft report:
- Draft Information Access Strategy (PDF) (22pp, 682K)
The Government Accountability Office has a website for it to provide "insight into, and recommendations for addressing, the nation’s major issues, risks and challenges" and information technology is mentioned there in relation to everything from the Agriculture, to Census, to Veterans.
As mentioned here earlier, the Obama-Biden Transition Project (a 501c(4) organization) has set up a .gov website, Change.gov, which they call the Office of the President-Elect. It has a blog, position papers, agendas, and includes a page on technology:
Over at the Sunlight foundation, Gabriela Schneider, the Communications Director, interviewed several Sunlight staff members to get their opinions on how the next administration can be more open and transparent.
And John Wonderlich at Sunlight has a posting that, though not specifically about IT policy, is very interesting in terms of the transition. He has tracked down a number of most relevant CRS reports on Members of Congress in transition and the mechanisms of congressional authority, how Members are assigned to committees, to chairmanships, to status as ranking members; how leadership positions are determined, and so forth:
I will certainly be following John Shuler's comments here closely and invite everyone to add their comments here at FGI about the issues and opportunities that will affect access to government information.










I was especially interested
I was especially interested in a comment from Greg Elin in the aforementioned Sunlight Foundation blog post; he writes "...I want to create my own transition Web site and policy agenda—just for me—to follow over the next four years to become a more perfect citizen."
I've been thinking a lot lately about how government information is mediated by a number of different parties - the news, most prominently; political action groups; friends, family, and colleagues; government documents librarians; and others. I'm not sure if this is exactly what Elin had in mind, but I think having an online tool that would allow the average citizen to integrate all this information would allow us to be "more perfect citizens."
check out "Your Own Democracy Concept" Project
There are so many interesting projects developing these days! check out this proposal. "i just cranked out a concept project last week as a submission to the 2008 buckminster fuller challenge (http://challenge.bfi.org). it is an independent project, time stolen from a rigorous career and fulltime parenting. ...for my submission to the BFI Challenge, i designed some concept screens for a new online platform for democracy that seeks to capture and measure in real-time (not unlike the stock market) real-time voter sentiment on issues important in our society."
http://www.gongszeto.com/storage/YOD_GONGSZETO_BIF_110708.pdf
and more about it here:
http://www.gongszeto.com/journal/2008/11/8/your-own-democracy.html
and a discussion here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openhouseproject/browse_thread/thread/987...
Tying it all together
I will post the "transition" tag on my departmental blog so that my patrons and readers can follow our blog posts on this important moment in history. :-) Thanks for tying all the info together in this post.
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