4 ms·

Everything We Know About Data.gov

15 points by cjoh 17y ago

TomOfTTB 17y ago
Pardon the long winded comment. But this line bugged me... Right now the site is short on data. Federal CIOs: There are hundreds of us waiting to do interesting things with your data. Invest in putting it up on Data.gov now. You will be rewarded.s Here's the thing: They won't be rewarded. In fact, it will make their life harder. Now a whole nation will be able to scrutinize every little expenditure. It's the ultimate "boss looking over your shoulder" situation. It's almost certainly going to be a real pain for them. Don't misunderstand my point here. I love the idea of Government CIOs putting their data online. I think we should all encourage them to do it. I'm just saying people should be realistic and put themselves in the place of those they are trying to convince. Because when you do that you realize the sacrifice these CIOs are making to let their data out. Given that I think the better argument is to tell CIOs how much better the world will be once they do this and how much we as citizen's will appreciate their sacrifice.
- yan 17y ago
  Not to mention that this will also invite countless 'color of the bikeshed'[1] arguments. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bike_shed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bike_shed
- cjoh 17y ago
  I'm not sure that's a sell you can make to a federal CIO to be honest. Often times "Openness" and "Transparency" somehow get synonymous to "Budget and Expenditure Oversight by citizens." But that's simply not true. Open data from government, and government transparency has created massive markets. Check the weather this morning? How about using a google map? That's, in part, Government data. Telling a federal CIO: "Make this data available because people will be able to do amazing things with it, and you have the capacity to create whole industries out of your data, elevating the importance of you and your agency" seems a lot more viable of a sell than: "sacrifice yourself for the common good"
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    I don't know, you might be right but I've found it much more effective to appeal to someone's idealistic instincts rather than their obvious character flaws. In other words, many bureaucrats are exactly as you describe: Power hungry people who will take every opportunity to expand their little fiefdom. But generally they don't want to think of themselves that way or have other's think of them that way. They certainly don't want to hear it out loud. Again, you could be absolutely right. But in my experience very few people openly speak about being power hungry and those that do are far too aggressive to work as a Government bureaucrat.
    - shard 17y ago
      Even better is to appeal to people's selfish interests as opposed to their idealistic instincts. The question is what are those interest in terms of a federal CIO?
  - jerf 17y ago
    Today, I am a federal CIO. --------------------------- "Make this data available because people will be able to do amazing things with it," - Not only do I not really care, I see a sudden new constituency that will be making new demands on me in the future to improve my new service. "and you have the capacity to create whole industries out of your data," - so, I'm begging for new interest groups to be looking over my shoulder? Oh boy. "elevating the importance of you and your agency" - Bullshit! Elevating the importance of the monied interests based on the "industry" you just promised me! 'course, I might be able to extract rent, but it would take some time to entice regulatory capture... Oh, and despite you not mentioning it, I still hear "Budget and Expenditure Oversight by citizens" loud and clear. --------------------------- I still don't think you're quite putting yourself in the shoes of a generic government executive here. The thing is, if there really was something in it for them, they'd have already voluntarily opened up their data, instead of being forced.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      Not to mention non-budgetary criticisms mined from the data. If a department or agency isn't already leaping forward to offer data (like the USGS, which is all about offering data), it's reasonable to assume that the relevant people in that agency have no interest whatsoever in providing data. There's only so much low-hanging fruit before things start to better resemble pulling teeth.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Because when you do that you realize the sacrifice these CIOs are making to let their data out. It's not "their data". It's OUR money. Various interest groups already have access. The only thing that changes with "open data" is that the folks providing the money will be able to see where it's going. CIOs who have been captured by interest groups are going to be in trouble. Since that's basically all of them....
- kgrin 17y ago
  Well, since the current administration has at least made some moves towards transparency (e.g. setting up data.gov in the first place), it's reasonable to expect that the agencies who manage to do the coolest or most high-profile data releases will be rewarded in purely institutional terms. Or, to put it another way, if I were the CIO of [generic agency] looking to move up in the federal government, getting more data out there is a good way to position myself for a higher-up CIO-type role. It's a somewhat crass way to look at it, and that's certainly not how I'd make a public case to the agencies, but if we're talking about how CIOs are disincentivized from releasing data because it might make them look bad, we ought to also consider that they're incentivized to release some data because doing so makes them look good.

15 points by cjoh 17y ago

Pardon the long winded comment. But this line bugged me... Right now the site is short on data. Federal CIOs: There are hundreds of us waiting to do interesting things with your data. Invest in putting it up on Data.gov now. You will be rewarded.s Here's the thing: They won't be rewarded. In fact, it will make their life harder. Now a whole nation will be able to scrutinize every little expenditure. It's the ultimate "boss looking over your shoulder" situation. It's almost certainly going to be a real pain for them. Don't misunderstand my point here. I love the idea of Government CIOs putting their data online. I think we should all encourage them to do it. I'm just saying people should be realistic and put themselves in the place of those they are trying to convince. Because when you do that you realize the sacrifice these CIOs are making to let their data out. Given that I think the better argument is to tell CIOs how much better the world will be once they do this and how much we as citizen's will appreciate their sacrifice.

yan 17y ago
Not to mention that this will also invite countless 'color of the bikeshed'[1] arguments. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bike_shed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bike_shed
cjoh 17y ago
I'm not sure that's a sell you can make to a federal CIO to be honest. Often times "Openness" and "Transparency" somehow get synonymous to "Budget and Expenditure Oversight by citizens." But that's simply not true. Open data from government, and government transparency has created massive markets. Check the weather this morning? How about using a google map? That's, in part, Government data. Telling a federal CIO: "Make this data available because people will be able to do amazing things with it, and you have the capacity to create whole industries out of your data, elevating the importance of you and your agency" seems a lot more viable of a sell than: "sacrifice yourself for the common good"
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  I don't know, you might be right but I've found it much more effective to appeal to someone's idealistic instincts rather than their obvious character flaws. In other words, many bureaucrats are exactly as you describe: Power hungry people who will take every opportunity to expand their little fiefdom. But generally they don't want to think of themselves that way or have other's think of them that way. They certainly don't want to hear it out loud. Again, you could be absolutely right. But in my experience very few people openly speak about being power hungry and those that do are far too aggressive to work as a Government bureaucrat.
  - shard 17y ago
    Even better is to appeal to people's selfish interests as opposed to their idealistic instincts. The question is what are those interest in terms of a federal CIO?
- jerf 17y ago
  Today, I am a federal CIO. --------------------------- "Make this data available because people will be able to do amazing things with it," - Not only do I not really care, I see a sudden new constituency that will be making new demands on me in the future to improve my new service. "and you have the capacity to create whole industries out of your data," - so, I'm begging for new interest groups to be looking over my shoulder? Oh boy. "elevating the importance of you and your agency" - Bullshit! Elevating the importance of the monied interests based on the "industry" you just promised me! 'course, I might be able to extract rent, but it would take some time to entice regulatory capture... Oh, and despite you not mentioning it, I still hear "Budget and Expenditure Oversight by citizens" loud and clear. --------------------------- I still don't think you're quite putting yourself in the shoes of a generic government executive here. The thing is, if there really was something in it for them, they'd have already voluntarily opened up their data, instead of being forced.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    Not to mention non-budgetary criticisms mined from the data. If a department or agency isn't already leaping forward to offer data (like the USGS, which is all about offering data), it's reasonable to assume that the relevant people in that agency have no interest whatsoever in providing data. There's only so much low-hanging fruit before things start to better resemble pulling teeth.
anamax 17y ago
> Because when you do that you realize the sacrifice these CIOs are making to let their data out. It's not "their data". It's OUR money. Various interest groups already have access. The only thing that changes with "open data" is that the folks providing the money will be able to see where it's going. CIOs who have been captured by interest groups are going to be in trouble. Since that's basically all of them....
kgrin 17y ago
Well, since the current administration has at least made some moves towards transparency (e.g. setting up data.gov in the first place), it's reasonable to expect that the agencies who manage to do the coolest or most high-profile data releases will be rewarded in purely institutional terms. Or, to put it another way, if I were the CIO of [generic agency] looking to move up in the federal government, getting more data out there is a good way to position myself for a higher-up CIO-type role. It's a somewhat crass way to look at it, and that's certainly not how I'd make a public case to the agencies, but if we're talking about how CIOs are disincentivized from releasing data because it might make them look bad, we ought to also consider that they're incentivized to release some data because doing so makes them look good.