Government 2.0: A novel approach at sharing data

Last Updated on Saturday, 24 May 2008 06:18 Written by admin Saturday, 24 May 2008 06:15

David Robinson and his colleagues at Princeton have written a paper (“Government Data and the Invisible Hand”) that proposes a novel way for government data to be shared on the Web – as an open platform (i.e., an API) that private developers can build applications for.

“Government should provide in the form that best enables robust and diverse third party use. Data should be available, for free, over the Internet in open, structured, machine-readable formats to anyone who wants to use it. Using structured formats such as XML makes it easy for any third party service to gather and parse this data at minimal cost. Internet delivery using standard protocols such as HTTP provides immediate real-time access to this data to developers. Each piece of government data, such as a document in XML format, should be uniquely addressable on the Internet in a known, permanent location.”

The paper goes on to give some examples of the types of innovations that could be applied to this data to make it more accessible and searchable for the general public, including advanced search, RSS, visualization, automated content analysis, and collaborative filtering.

Technology moves at Internet speed. The government moves at, well, government speed. There is a clear and obvious incompatibility there. For example, the Web Content Manaers Advisory Council has created a “Requirements Checklist for Government Web Managers”. It lists 24 different agencies that government Web sites must pass muster with. It’s no wonder that the Intelligence Industrial Complex has sprung up almost overnight.

Hat tip to Josh Catone at RWW who credits TechPresident for the find.