A Working Definition of "Open Government"

I've been spending a non-trivial amount of time lately watching and pondering the explosive uptake of the term "open government." This probably isn't too surprising given Global Integrity's involvement in the nascent Open Government Partnership (OGP). As excited as I've been to witness the growth of OGP, the continued progress of the open data movement, and the emerging norms around citizen participation in government internationally, I've also been worrying that the longer we allow "open government" to mean any and everything to anyone, the risk increases that the term melts into a hollow nothingness of rhetoric. My most immediate concern, which I've been chronicling of late over on this Tumblr, has been the conflation of "open data" with "open government," an issue well-explored by Harlan Yu and David Robinson in this paper. I've also been publicly concerned about the apparent emphasis put on open data -- seemingly at the expense of other open government-related priorities -- by the current UK government, which is slated to take over the co-chairmanship of OGP shortly. (An excellent unpacking of those concerns can be found in this letter from leading UK NGOs to the government.)

But for all my griping, I've yet to put my money where my mouth is and offer up my own definition of what "open government" means. It's time to fix that.

What follows is, at best, a rough working definition of open government that I hope spurs debate and conversation. This is certainly not 100% correct, all-encompassing, or definitive. Nor is it rocket science: this tracks fairly closely with others' thinking, and I suspect it's not too far outside of anyone's mainstream definition (including the Open Government Declaration of September 2011).

At its core, "open government" to me means three things:

1. Information Transparency: that the public understands the workings of their government;
2. Public engagement: that the public can influence the workings of their government by engaging in governmental policy processes and service delivery programs; and
3. Accountability: that the public can hold the government to account for its policy and service delivery performance.

Into those three buckets we can then deposit many of the "open government" initiatives, programs, and interventions that are often invoked on their own as "open government." What's most important here, to me, is that none of these initiatives or interventions in and of themselves constitute "open government" alone. Rather, only when combined with the others do we truly see the potential for "open government" in its most powerful and holistic form.

Bucket 1 (Information Transparency): freedom of information initiatives; open data and Big [Public] Data efforts, including open data portals; procurement, budget, and policy transparency (e.g. voting records, meeting minutes, political finance transparency).

Bucket 2 (Public Engagement): e-government services; open311 and service delivery feedback loops; stakeholder fora and participatory processes (e.g. participatory budgeting, town hall meetings, both online and offline); electoral processes.

Bucket 3 (Accountability): anti-corruption mechanisms (e.g. auditing, ombudsmen); conflicts of interest and influence peddling safeguards.

It goes without saying that the world does not fit neatly into this clean paradigm. Electoral processes are as much a form of accountability as a form of engagement, and the distinction between information transparency and engagement blurs quickly when we talk about something like open311. But hopefully the general construct holds some water.

As for technology? I view technology agnostically in the context of "open government." Some of the above interventions don't work without technology -- think open data, open311, or e-government services. Others work quite well without websites or apps. Technology can certainly be a powerful force multiplier in the context of open government, and it can take interventions to scale rapidly. But technology is neither open government itself nor required for open government to necessarily take hold, in my view.

Rather than dive any deeper into this, I'll stop here to allow for others to correct, add to, or tear this apart. How would you define open government?

Computer Science Should be Required Curriculum

As a kid who majored in a foreign language in college, you'd think I'd have a bias towards the idea that foreign languages should be required teaching for students. I do, but I think the language most essential for the generations coming up (e.g. my kids) is computer science. I'd love to see the basic building blocks of computer science taught systematically from grade school through high school. If taking a foreign language in high school for at least a few years is a requirement to graduate, there's no reason computer science shouldn't also be required. Here are some reasons why:

• Computer-based logic and processing is increasingly the language of how things gets done in the world. Want kids to understand how the banking system, consumer goods retailing, and logistics all work? Understanding basic databases is a great place to start.
• English is increasingly the language of world business. With the exceptions of Spanish and French, do you know lots of friends whose German comes in handy regularly? The Chinese government requires English training for their tens of millions of students. That's a clue: English + French/Spanish + computer science is the way forward to be as multilingual as most people need to be in the world ahead.
• Understanding how computers think helps to beat the system. Annoyed with email spam, hyper-targeted consumer marketing and the like? Computers don't make mistakes, but their algorithms are often simple to master once you understand the underlying logic and data model. Know your enemy.

Am I wrong headed about this?

Test map

In which I embed Map Box into my blog for friends at IMCO :) [iframe src="http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/globalintegrity.map-fn423lp7.html#6/23.221/-96.548" width="100%" height="350"]

The Fiscal Sponsorship Red Herring

I've been watching some friends and colleagues wrestle recently with whether to spin off an existing public interest project into either an independent non-governmental, charitable entity, or move the project to another larger non-profit to have it "fiscally sponsored." The basic idea behind fiscal sponsorship is that you convince another entity that has better back office support to accept funds on your behalf and manage your human resources and administrative support. A good example of this in my universe is the International Budget Partnership (IBP), an incredibly influential and effective international non-government organization (NGO) that to this day remains a project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC. IBP has a massive reputation but actually doesn't exist legally. Yup, strange.

Proponents of fiscal sponsorship argue that it's easier for a start-up NGO to be sponsored as compared with striking out on its own. Cost and unfamiliarity with the necessary processes to incorporate and manage back office services are cited as evidence, particularly for small social start-ups.

But I think that fear is a bit of a red herring and is inhibiting some groups from going independent when it otherwise makes complete sense. I thought I'd tick off what it took to start Global Integrity in both time and cost to prove that you don't need to be a serial social entrepreneur to start your own independent NGO.

1. The lawyers. It's true that you'll ned some legal help in incorporating your NGO and qualifying for charitable status, regardless of the country. This seems scary and expensive at first blush. But in my experience (creating Global Integrity and the Global Integrity Trust in South Africa, a separate legal entity) it's fairly easy to find good, affordable lawyers who know what they are doing. In both cases we spent no more than US$4,000 on legal bills and it took us no more than a few days to locate NGO-specialist attorneys in both Washington and Cape Town simply by asking around. Once you find the right lawyers, they take care of the rest, having incorporated thousands of NGOs over the years. You just fill out a ton of forms. Budget about three months for the whole process.
2. The accountants. Another fear is that keeping the books is scary, hard, and risk-laden. I agree that accounting is a fairly dim practice, but it's not that hard and there are loads of bookkeepers and controllers specializing in NGO accounting. Nor is it expensive. Most start-up NGOs probably don't need a bookkeeper coming to the office more than once a month, and even if you are paying US$75/hour at the high end that's not going to break the bank. There are even entire firms specializing in placing non-profit accountants with NGOs on a part-time and ad hoc basis.
3. The HR/Admin stuff. A third category of concern for those weighing incorporation versus fiscal sponsorship is the mess that is back office operations: insurance, human resource issues, rent, and technology. But it is increasingly easy to outsource the majority of these functions. At Global Integrity, our myriad of insurance policies are handled and adjusted by an independent insurance broker with yearly check-ins. You can always find template employee manuals to crib from, and payroll can now be managed online and on the cheap through a variety of automated payroll providers (I once famously processed biweekly payroll from my hotel room in Nuku'alofa, Tonga). The advent of cloud-based computing has often rendered the need for an "IT guy" obsolete.

Is setting up an international NGO easy? No. Is it impossible? Certainly not. Is it worth paying an umbrella fiscal sponsor like the Tides Center 15% of your total revenue each year just to manage your payroll and insurance? Heck no. Social entrepreneurs would do well to think twice before embracing the fiscal sponsorship model.

Why I Don't Read Anything

I often remark publicly that I never have time to read anything of substance, even in my own field of practice, and certainly don't have the time to read dense, peer-reviewed academic work. I probably read about one academic paper a year, and most of that "reading" is skimming. This is half my fault (not making time for important reading) and half the authors' fault (I don't want to read 15 introductory pages of lit review and rehashing what others have already written). But at some point the daily schedule itself truly gets in the way of any serious reading -- or even thinking -- about the issues we work on. That's a problem and it worries me. Without wanting to come off as a martyr, here was my day today (1/12/2012):

6:00 am - Wake up after 5.5 hours of sleep 7:20 am - On bus into city, working for 45 minutes on laptop to clear out overnight email 8:30 am - At office; forget to dial into Foglamp staff call 8:40 am - Remember to dial into Foglamp staff call; rush call to make 9:00 am call 9:00 am - Call with Israeli and Croatian governments on Open Government Partnership 9:40 am - Get off OGP call, stare at more email, say hi to two colleagues returning from weeks overseas 10:00 am - Leave office to begin touring potential office space for envisioned "Transparency Hub-DC" with two other NGOs and real estate brokers. Inbox = 5 messages. 12:30 pm - After seeing six offices in two hours, do quick rehash and post-mortem on sidewalk at Farragut Square 12:45 pm - Grab cab to go see Affinity Lab up on U Street (for "Hub" inspiration purposes). Look at iPhone: 114 new messages in various inboxes. What. The. Hell. 2:00 pm - Leave Affinity Lab to go back to office. 2:15 pm - Order bibimbap for lunch at hole-in-the-wall across the street from office; begin killing off the 100+ emails on iPhone 2:30 pm - Say hi to colleagues, kill more email, wolf down bibimbap & Diet Coke 3:00 pm - Meet with USAID colleagues 4:00 pm - Email now down to manageable queue; respond to a few of the important ones 4:30 pm - Jump on call with Public Radio International and Center for Public Integrity to strategize about upcoming release of the State Integrity Investigation. 5:15 pm - Leave office to catch bus home; dial back into call on iPhone 5:45 pm - Call ends on bus; laptop opened to fight more email 6:15 pm - Take car to repair shop to fix flat tire; back on email in waiting area (thank you Mobile Citizen and 4G service from CLEAR) 7:30 pm - start writing this blog post 8:00 pm - (hopefully) leave tire shop, go home, give toddler bath and bed time routine 9:00 pm - (hopefully) TBD dinner. Debrief with wonderful wife on her day. 10:30 pm - (hopefully) sleep

Again, the point here is not that I'm any more important or special than other folks; it's when are any of us supposed to read anything of consequence? I'd welcome ideas and strategies for solving this!