Gov 2.0 Summit: Report from the Outside
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. Continue reading
Employer Health Benefits 2009 Annual Survey
A recent non-government health care survey is a good complement to the recent Current Population Report P60 series report (see: Health Insurance Coverage: 2008):
- Employer Health Benefits: 2009 Annual Survey, Kaiser Family Foundation (Kaiser) and the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET).
Among those that offer benefits, large percentages of firms report that in the next year they are very or somewhat likely to increase the amount workers contribute to premiums (42%), increase deductible amounts (36%), increase office visit cost sharing (39%), or increase the amount that employees have to pay for prescription drugs (37%).See also: You Have No Idea What Health Costs By Ezra Klein, Washington Post (September 20, 2009). "The most important health-care document released this week was not Sen. Max Baucus's Healthy Future Act. It was the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2009 Employer Benefits Survey." Continue reading
USPTO latest agency looking to outsource their data
[UPDATE: Michael Keller, University Librarian at Stanford University (and my boss), wrote a letter to USPTO as well. Thanks Carl for posting it to scribd.] Carl Malamud made me aware (see his letter to USPTO CIO John Owens below) of a posting on FedBizOpps of a Request for Information (RFI) from the US Patent and Trademark Office:
"This RFI seeks to obtain information from interested parties, including the vendor community, about potential opportunities to acquire patent and trademark data in bulk (my emphasis) and to provide such data to the public without cost. The USPTO is seeking comments on the identified problem and solutions that will make the data available to the public without charge."While there is mention in the RFI of IP data being easily accessible to the public, there's no mention of data.gov. This seems to be purely a "no-cost" way for USPTO to upgrade their IT infrastructure by giving away public domain information. This is worrisome on so many levels as it is just one more example of a government agency looking to outsource and privatize public domain information *and* its IT infrastructure -- see for example the Thomson West contract with the GAO to digitize their legislative histories. Additionally, in a vague nod to transparency, USPTO will be holding 1 (yes only 1) vendor information meeting on Sept 24. I'm not sure how USPTO thinks that a 2 week notice for a meeting held in DC will help the cause of transparency. Shouldn't they have several meetings in different geographic locations to talk about such a huge and important public resource (nearly 2 petabytes of data!!)? Luckily, this is only at the RFI stage, not RFP stage. USPTO is currently only looking for information on how to do this. This is the time for the government information/transparency communities to submit ideas for how the USPTO could make their patent information available *without* giving it away to vendors. Please contact the USPTO at the addresses below and give them ideas for making their data open, standardized and freely available in bulk. Public Meeting:
Thursday, 24 September 2009
9:00 a.m. -11:00 a.m.
USPTO Campus in the Madison Auditorium
600 Dulany Street
Alexandria, VA, 22314 Contracting Office Address:
P. O. Box 1450 - Mail Stop 6
600 Dulany Street, MDE, 7th Floor
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 Primary Point of Contact.:
publicdatadissemination@uspto.gov
Secondary Point of Contact:
V. Anne Tugbang,
Contracting Officer
vanne.tugbang@uspto.gov
Phone: 5712726550
Fax: 5712736550
Updated Guides to Government Info Access Laws
Catching up with some updates released in August: CRS has updated its Access to Government Information in the United States report. The latest edition is dated August 31, 2009 (via OpenCRS.com). The Justice Department released its 2009 edition of Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act on August 10. The announcement says the "2009 edition contains a newly updated and revised discussion of all aspects of the Freedom of Information Act, as amended by the OPEN Government Act, including the Act's procedural requirements, its exemptions and exclusions, as well as considerations applicable to FOIA litigation." Continue reading
Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase: Govies Represent
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 Continue reading