CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 4, Group 2
Open Government
Most bills are passed by legislatures without ever being read by most legislators. Letters, articles, reports, all often never escape the physical mediums (paper) of their existence. Although technology has developed to the point where all non-private information in the United States government can, in theory, be made openly available, the support structures and culture of information sharing has not caught up to make full use of them. Efforts are being made to use digitization and sharing technology; one of the most notable digitization efforts is THOMAS, a joint effort by the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office (GPO).
Examine the ethical implications of making policy with inadequate access to information, and the efforts being made to address those concerns. Is there a need for a change in existing support structures and culture of information sharing in government? Should support structures and culture change to encourage greater information sharing, if it required the government to slow down decision-making processes?
History
Open government is the doctrine that all levels of political administration should be open to public viewing and scrutiny. The origins of which date back to the Enlightenment in Europe in the eighteenth century. More recently, the passing of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the United States in 1966 is seen as the beginning of a modern movement toward open government. After its passing, several countries have followed suit in the subsequent decades.
The FOIA allows for complete or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents from the US Government based on a series of conditions. It applies to all government agencies. There are nine exemptions to the FOIA:
- Classified national defense and foreign relations information
- Internal agency rules and practices
- Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
- Trade secrets and other confidential business information
- Inter-agency or intra-agency communications protected by legal privileges
- Information involving matters of personal privacy
- Records compiled for law enforcement purposes
- Information relating to the supervision of financial institutions
- Geological information on wells
THOMAS is a database kept by the Library of Congress detailing legislative information since 1995. The database is named after Thomas Jefferson. It includes information including:
- Bills and resolutions
- Congressional activity
- Congressional record
- Committee information
- Treaties
- Historical documents
A new political philosophy is open source governance, which details a post-national state where any interested citizen can add to the creation of a policy, by way of a wiki or another mechanism. The core of such a government structure is a "central codebase" that are maintained by public registry. The policies are distributed to local areas that can alter the policy for their own uses and can send improvements back to the core.