Carl Malamud's at it again. In his rousing opening keynote titled "Currents of Our Time" at the 2010 Gov2.0 Summit in Washington DC, Malamud described both the horrendous current lay of the land in govt IT as well as several uplifting examples from the progressive era of government and activists at the forefront of positive public change. Then he defined his 3 steps for for transforming government as platform:

1. finish the opengov revolution (bulk data, strong FOIA, providing access to knowledge to all!)
2. spend a minimum of $250 million per year for a decade on a national scanning initiative.
3. open systems revolution: "a Computer Commission with the kind of authority the Civil Service Commission had to conduct agency-by-agency reviews and help us reboot .gov, flipping the bit from a reliance on over-designed custom systems to one based on open-source building blocks, judicious use of commercial off-the-shelf-components, and much tighter control of the beltway bandits."

"If we can land a man on the moon, surely we can launch the Library of Congress into cyberspace!"

Viva la open govt revolución!!

PS. Don't miss the other very fine speakers at the Summit as well!

Wow that was fast! The Gov2.0 Expo in Washington DC just wrapped up 2 days of speakers, panels, discussions etc and already the video from the Expo is up online (youtube and blip.tv channels). Here's just 2 of the many interesting talks that I've only begun to absorb. Enjoy!

Gov 2.0 International: Global Innovation Meeting Local Challenges, "The O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Online Conference." Thursday, March 11th. Cost: Free.
9:00am - 11:15am US-PST
12:00pm - 2:15pm US-EST

Gov 2.0 is a worldwide revolution—from the United States to Australia and everywhere in between. Members of government are interacting with citizens via social media and open data efforts are spreading from city to city. At this Gov 2.0 Online Conference, you'll hear about open government efforts in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel. The speakers will share stories and lessons learned, and answer your questions. Learn about some of the Gov 2.0 best practices that have helped effect important change in other countries, and discuss effective ways to use specific tools and processes in other settings.

We posted about Carl Malamud's address to the Gov2.0 Summit in september, but BoingBoing reminded us that there is now video of his address (below). Carl's speech is quite rousing and reminds all of us what we can and should be doing to facilitate access to government information. You can also get his pamphlet online to read along with the address.

And don't forget to read Appendix A: "29 things government could do today." One thing I would add to that list is that every witness statement inserted into the official record in the course of public Congressional hearings should be considered in the public domain regardless of its original copyright status (some witnesses submit published articles, book chapters and the like as part of their written statements which means that the Google Book Project *still* treats post-1923 scanned government publications as if they were in copyright and only shows snippets instead of full-text.)

“Government as platform” means exposing the core information that makes government function, information that is of tremendous economic value to society. Government information—patents, corporate filings, agriculture research, maps, weather, medical research—is the raw material of innovation, creating a wealth of business opportunities that drive our economy forward. Government information is a form of infrastructure, no less important to our modern life than our roads, electrical grid, or water systems. (p.21)

[Thanks for the reminder BoingBoing!]