As promised, here is my report on the first-ever U.S. Congress Camp. The event was an unconference held in Washington, DC on September 12-13, 2009. Participants were from the civic hacking community, advocacy software companies, advocacy groups, gov 2.0 crowd, academia (public policy), and social media start-ups, with a sprinkling from congressional offices, and one or more from big tech and and other walks of life.

The announced focus of Congress Camp was citizen-Congress communications, although topics related to congressional content in general came up. (See more on the communications topic from the recent CRS report on use of Twitter by Congress.)

You can read and hear about Congress Camp on the web. See:

• CongressCamp site and blog
• Congress Camp Provides Dynamic Dialogue... posting on NextGenWeb, September 17
• Congress Camp: Where the Hill Meets Web 2.0 September 16 posting on INfluence, the blog of Forum One Communications
• Government 2.0 Radio September 20 episode, featuring interviews with Congress Camp participants (one hour; starts with general Gov 2.0 news)

Congressional staffers participating in Congress Camp were interested in moving forward but provided much-needed reality checks for the tech crowd: congressional offices have outdated hardware and software; they are already swamped with email that is not from their district or can't be authenticated; they get email that their constituents didn't even know they sent (automatically generated when they clicked on something unrelated but tempting); in some districts most or many constituents do not even have ready access to the Internet; etc. In spite of these obstacles, some congressional offices are already applying a 2.0 approach. For examples, see the case studies section of this Embracing Gov 2.0 post on the Cangress Camp blog.

Some camp participants seemed to be much more familiar with tech than Congress, or with the political side rather than the governing side. No doubt they learned much in two days of dialogue. Gov 2.0er Noel Dickover summed it up in a tweet: "My overall thought on #CongCamp is that we are still at the awareness and sensemaking stage at #opengov".

This post follows my September 18th post, Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase: Govies Represent.

The Gov 2.0 Summit, sponsored by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb and held in Washington, DC on September 9th and 10th, was a Big Event--particularly for those who were there. Lots of blogging, lots of tech press coverage. It was full of big tech invitees and priced too high for the average local government webmaster or civic hacker. And me. So this is a view from the outside.

Fortunately, videos from many of the conference sessions are available on the Summit website. You can review the full schedule of sessions and click on "Read more" to link to videos and any other material available for a session. One of the highlights, based on the chatter, was Carl Malamud's By the People... talk. The Summit website does not have it, but the video of Malamud's talk has been posted to his own site and is linked from FGI as a lunchtime listen.

Here is a sampling of some of the videos available:

Rapid Fire: Setting the Stage, esteemed panel presents 2.0 examples

GeoEnabling Gov 2.0, Jack Dangermond, founder and president of ESRI

Creating an Effective Platform, John Markoff of NY Times interviews the father of the Internet, the co-founder of Twitter, and Facebook's DC rep

Based on the tweets, the Gov 2.0 Summit attendees seemed to be genuinely ecstatic about the show and new to many of the existing projects and the landscape of government information. Whether they see a market here is another question.

For more coverage, check out the Summit website's long list of links to news articles about the conference.

Last week's Gov 2.0 Expo conference, run by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb, featured over 25 five-minute presentations by people who have managed government projects -- at all levels of government -- that involve Web 2.0 methods. For the summaries and presentation links related to each speaker, see the full Gov 2.0 Expo schedule; each session title is linked to the relevant information.

In 2.0 participatory fashion, attendees texted to vote for the best presentation in each program segment. The winners were:

City of Santa Cruz Offers Blueprint for Solving CA Budget Crisis with Social Media - Peter Koht (City of Santa Cruz)
txts 4 africa - Merrick Schaefer (UNICEF)
Transit 2.0 at BART.gov - Melissa Jordan (Bay Area Rapid Transit)
Utah Department of Public Safety Media Portal - Jeff Nigbur (State of Utah, Department of Public Safety)
Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds - Rita King (Dancing Ink Productions)

Of special interest to the FGI audience, Steve Schultze of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard discussed RECAP in his presentation, Crowdsourcing Federal Court Transparency. Also of interest, the presentation on EPA's MyEnvironment, MyEnvironment: Environmental Information for Your Community, generated lots of approving noises from the audience.

Tim O'Reilly was everywhere at the conference, quickly and respectfully responding to tweets and blog posts critiquing his "Government as a Platform" catch phrase/vision/conversation-starter.

His keynote:
Opening Keynote: Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media (video, blip.tv)
And his "Government as a Platform" talk recorded prior to the conference:
The Platform for Change (video, blip.tv)

O'Reilly Media must view the Expo Showcase as a success; another has been announced for 2010.

The Expo preceded the main event, the Gov 2.0 Summit. I'll have more on that in a later post.

Related post: Gov 2.0 Expo and the Apps for America 2 Challenge Winners

If you are going to the ALA Annual 2009 Conference in Chicago next week, please come to the "ALA Unconference" where I will be leading a broad discussion on Friday, July 10th from 11:10-12:00 on the library's role in current & emerging trends of civic engagement, transparency, preservation and access to Government information. The supporting materials and presentation will be linked in the Unconference wiki.

Also, please come to the LITA BIGWIG Social Software Showcase to discuss and learn about Government Information Mashups! I will be presenting on this topic and would love to have you help out and/or join in on the conversation! The presentation will be posted on their website but the face to face portion of the BIGWIG Showcase presentations will take place Monday, July 13th from 10:30am - 12:30pm in the McCormick Convention Center West, Room W-184.

Data.gov is now live and ready for you to explore!

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

You have a say in the future of Data.gov by suggesting datasets to include and suggest improvements/enhancements to the website.

Data.gov has a searchable data catalog that gives access to data through the "raw" data catalog and by using tools. "The Raw Data Catalog provides an instant download of machine readable, platform-independent datasets while the Tools Catalog provides hyperlinks to tools that allow you to mine datasets."

Please note that by accessing datasets or tools offered on Data.gov, you agree to the Data Policy, which you should read before accessing any dataset or tool.

Here is an excerpt from the policy that we need to read closely:

Secondary Use
Data accessed through Data.gov do not, and should not, include controls over its end use. However, as the data owner or authoritative source for the data, the submitting Department or Agency must retain version control of datasets accessed. Once the data have been downloaded from the agency's site, the government cannot vouch for their quality and timeliness. Furthermore, the US Government cannot vouch for any analyses conducted with data retrieved from Data.gov.

Citing Data
The agency's preferred citation for each dataset is included in its metadata. Users should also cite the date that data were accessed or retrieved from Data.gov. Finally, users must clearly state that "Data.gov and the Federal Government cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from Data.gov."

What do you think? Is the policy fair? Any suggestions for improvement we could make to Data.gov?

For more information, visit their FAQ and Tutorial.

Also, check out Sunlight Lab's "Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge"!

Just as the federal government begins to provide data in Web developer-friendly formats, we're organizing Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge to demonstrate that when government makes data available it makes itself more accountable and creates more trust and opportunity in its actions. The contest submissions will also show the creativity of developers in designing compelling applications that provide easy access and understanding for the public while also showing how open data can save the government tens of millions of dollars by engaging the development community in application development at far cheaper rates that traditional government contractors.

Now, let's go play around with this new site and make suggestions, shall we?

GovFresh.com was launched today and it is a live feed of official news from U.S. Government RSS and social media accounts (including Twitter, YouTube, RSS, Facebook, Flickr and more) all in one convenient place.

So far, live feeds are from the White House, Supreme Court, House, Senate, DNC, RNC, and the following Departments and Agencies: Agriculture, Defense, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Labor, State, CDC, CIA, EPA, FBI, FDA, and NASA. You can also suggest a feed.

GovFresh also has their own FriendFeed and Twitter account for you to follow.

NPR.org has a brief article and audiocast entitled "21st Century Crowbars Help Pry Open Government" by Andrea Seabrook. It is the second of a two-part series, of which the first part is entitled "Follow the Money: Web Site Tracks Stimulus Dollars".

Both stories highlight several "watchdog" websites such as OpenCongress.org, OpenSecrets.org, Filibusted.us, and Legistalker.org. Filibusted.us recently won the "Apps for America" contest hosted by the Sunlight Foundation.

Clay Johnson, described by NPR as a 21st century government watchdog, of Sunlight Labs states:

We live in a society now where if it's not on the Internet, it doesn't exist. The more transparent we make government, the more people can participate in it. And when people participate in it, they're no longer apathetic about it. So transparency kills apathy.

The Sunlight Foundation has a new website called OOGL: Open Our Government List, for you to vote and submit ideas for what the Open Government Directive should address.

Shortly after President Obama's inauguration, he issued a memo on transparency directing his top officials to develop plans for an Open Government Directive to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration. The Sunlight Foundation has created this page in order to add a public element to the crafting of this Open Government Directive that is itself transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

So far, the highest vote goes to Ethics Information, APIs & Bulk Data Access, and Procedural Information.

Spread the word and vote!

There is an interesting article over at Wired magazine's website by Evan Ratliff, entitled "The Wired Presidency: Can Obama Really Reboot the White House?".

The various obstacles that Obama will have to deal with are discussed, including license agreements, purchasing rules, a ban on endorsements, and restrictions on revisions, among others. They even mention the Change.gov's CC license (which appeared after FGI and others wrote many many emails about why they had a copyrighted site initially!):

The Obama team was able to sidestep these kinds of troublesome rules on Change.gov, in part because, as a quasi-governmental site, it's not subject to executive-branch restrictions. They were able to post videos on YouTube, link to outside sites, and even publish content under a Creative Commons license, allowing it to be freely shared.

Here are some other good quotes from the article:

...turning his innovative campaign and transition into Government 2.0 won't be easy. The nimble Obama startup is about to be absorbed into a stodgy, technologically backward behemoth: the federal government...Ahead are bureaucratic obstacles the campaign never imagined, along with the political land mines that transparency brings.

"We know that there are a lot of people advocating for more open government," Godwin says. "We're saying, absolutely, put the data out there. But I think we have to be realistic."

The Atlantic published an article entitled "iGov: How Geeks are Opening Up Government on the Web" by Douglas McGray that discusses API Documentation and examines the possibilities when government agencies allow access to their raw data in an open, standard file format. The article uses the BART system as an example:

Turns out, it didn’t. In 2007, Google engineers asked public-transit agencies across the country to submit their arrival and departure data in a simple, standard, open format—a text file, basically, with a bunch of numbers separated by commas—so Google Maps could generate bus and subway directions. A handful of agencies, including BART, decided to go a step further and publish that raw data online. Once they did that, any programmer could grab the data and write a trip planner, for any platform.

“It’s not 1995,” BART’s Web-site manager, Timothy Moore, explained. “A single Web site is not the endgame anymore. People are planning trips on Google, they’re using their iPhones. Because we opened up our schedule, we are in those places.”

“We can’t envision every beneficial use for our data,” Moore told me. “We don’t have the time, we don’t have the resources, and frankly, we don’t have the vision. I’m sure there are people out there who have better ideas than we do. That’s why we’ve opened it up.”

The OMB released reports yesterday on the current state and future of E-Government. They include:

* Expanding E-Government Results Report

* Federal CIO Council Transition Guide

* Report to Congress on the Benefits of the E-Government Initiatives

Departments and agencies claim that they "continue to make great improvements in the area of security and privacy" and the CIO Council Transition Guide focuses on these areas of interest:

- Empowering the Government through Information Sharing
- Protecting the Networks & Systems Required to Operate in the Information Age
- Tapping the Power of a Collaborative Citizenry

A juicy tidbit of info over at the Sunlight Blog and ABC News: Stimulus Bill to go Web 2.0?

They’re planning a Google-like search function to show every program funded by the stimulus package, whether it comes in under or over-budget, whether it is meeting its intended purpose, and how many jobs it is creating.

Sounds interesting! Let's hope they follow through.

Ok, Mr. President...fulfill your technological promises! I am very excited about some of his proposals, especially in regards to government information transparency and access.

Mashable.com posted "A Final Look at Presidential Technology Policy" earlier this week and they had this to say about Obama vs. McCain's plans:

Rather than focusing on anti-trust and and subsidies, as Barack Obama intends to do, what would be better would be focusing on creating an environment where corporate taxes were lowered, and other tax incentives were emphasized for start-ups who focus on better information infrastructure. Senator McCain’s tax plan is moderately favorable towards this theory, though it is likely simply a coincidence convenient to this argument rather than a well thought out technology policy.

When it comes to the basics, both presidential candidates are generally on the right track, and are generally in agreement as well. I’ve outlined above where they differ, though, and I think history has shown that Barack Obama’s desired policy directions would be more detrimental to innovation and growth for the tech sector.

Interesting that they believe Obama's desired policies may be detrimental to technology. I'm not well versed enough on the issues of Broadband/Anti-trust & subsidies to know whether or not I agree. What do you think?

Mashable also has a great blog post on "Government 2.0: The Presidential Transition". I agree with the author's sentiment that the new President must look to the needs of the entire nation, and we need to giver our input too.

...citizens should be engaged in the transition process,...In an increasingly fragmented media and information society, that level of engagement requires more than a press release and newspaper coverage. It means full multimedia engagement using blogging, speeches, informal gatherings, mobile technologies, podcasts, online video, and widgets. The outreach should also use social tools that allow bidirectional conversation, increasing citizen participation and interest in government.

Your opinions are needed! Head on over to USA.gov's Gov Gab Blog and read their latest post on Government and Social Media. They want you to take this survey and let them know what you like in regards to social media (web 2.0) and the government. USA.gov is working on a "strategy to use social media tools to better engage in conversation with the public and to deliver information and services the way you want to get it". So give them feedback and spread the word!

I've caught the widget bug, thanks to Daniel Cornwall, who mentioned on Twitter that he found some nifty EPA Widgets.

So, out of curiosity, I did a search for other Government Agency widgets and widgets that use government information (such as those found on Govtrack.us or the Sunlight Foundation website). I found quite a few but I know there must be more out there.

I've compiled a "government widget guide" at my Gov Docs 2.0 wiki page. Please feel free to suggest others by commenting here or on the wiki page.

I thought it would be nice to have a guide so you can quickly browse widgets that you may want to add to your blog or library webpages. For example, see my Environmental Law guide (a work in progress, mind you) for ideas!