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Princeton Researchers Say Feds Need Data Standard
dcblogs writes "The federal government's data-sharing efforts are a mess, and if Barack Obama really wants a useful 'Google for government,' he would have to set the government's vast amount of data free by exposing it and ensuring it complies to standards. Once that happens, commercial sites, aggregators, bloggers and everyone else will be able to access it, use it and transform it, argue a group of Princeton researchers (follow Download link for full PDF)."
Barack Obama really wants a useful 'Google for government,'
Well, so far the government has bought parts of Bear Stearns and AIG. Maybe it's time they diversify into some technology companies like Google? Hell, let's buy them too!
I'm a big tall mofo.
I hear that Microsoft is already working on the problem with their proposed "Government Open XML" standard. This should not be confused with GOXMLb ("Google Open XML beta") because Microsoft would never try to confuse people on such an issue.
It is going up for ISO vote next week. Be there*.
(*) it will be very profitable for you to "be there".... nudge, nudge... wink, wink...
What you need is not one [set of] standard(s) but one vendor controlling and maintaining those standards... they know what is best for all of us because they are paid professionals, not hack hobbyists.
(Yes! I am kidding!!)
One thought has occurred to me as part of this "sharing". Privacy and the other is Security.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
No, but it takes at least a team of researchers to get the government to listen.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century,free flow of information is the only safeguard against...
The government could hire librarians to organize the data. This is are a group of people highly trained in how to take large quantities of non standard data and organize it in a way that people can find what they want.
Remember the good old days, when transparency in government could be safely considered a good thing?
Generally, I'm still for it. Absolutely we need transparency in our government, and anything that brings us closer to point-and-click convenience over what we have now (FOIA requests left behind the radiator for 9–18 months to age and mellow) is for the best.
Furthermore, an open, accessible standard (i.e. no copyrighted DTDs, and I'm looking at you, Microsoft) will allow government resources to be brought together in interesting and inspiring ways. You know all those Facebook apps and Google Maps mashups? Imagine those applied to governance. The idea behind them is to put information together in new and interesting ways. If not only those in government, but the citizenry, can create government hacks like that, there would be great benefit.
Now let's talk hazards.
When was the last time you published your name and address online? See any good uses of microformats on any major sites lately? That's because there are some people on the Internet who are <sarcasm class="churchlady">not so nice</sarcasm>, and might willingly abuse whatever information they can find. The "government hack" alluded to above is an invitation to abuse. And we really can't afford to put government in that kind of position.
Another consideration, and I've stated this before, is that a wide line must be maintained between security and transparency. Security means that everything that must be kept secret is really kept secret. Transparency means that everything that doesn't have to be secure is made available somehow. If things aren't secured, the government becomes ineffectual and even detrimental. If things aren't kept transparent, the government itself can become abusive. A freely searchable infrastructure would make the transparency all that much more powerful, and make any breaches in security that much more severe.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
only if you take the long route. the quickest way to get the government to listen is with an unattended briefcase full of cash.
that is, if you don't already have former board members in the White House.
I use lots of government supplied data in my work, and one constant has always been that the more work the agency does to make the data easily available, the harder the data are to use. Spreadsheets get posted with labels and data mixed, because that looks better in print. Spreadsheets get posted as PDFs, because that looks better in print. Footnotes and other textual material is mixed into numeric fields, because that is the way the material will be published in hardcopy. etc etc etc.
Databases get posted to the web with "interfaces" that allow single rows to be downloaded, but require months of screen scraping to get the entire database. Databases get released with (windows-only, of course) software with the same effect. etc etc etc
The reason is mostly that agencies want to discourage outside analysis of the data - they would prefer to avoid inconsistent messages getting to OMB or congress.
The United States Army uses 'PureEdge' which i guess was replaced by IBM with 'Lotus Forms' as there is no canonical link to the software anymore. Its an XML based form system. Its not really used in any standard way, other than electronically saving forms, and filling stuff in before printing the forms. It could though, because the Army, at least, does little to no documentation that isn't on some kind of standardized form. Now that the forms are machine parsable, I can definitely see the fed adoption some kind of organization and retrieval system.
The problem with that is, that the government doesn't want to organize its documentation that well. Obfuscation is still a large part of information security in certain circles, and the possibility of leak is much greater when information flows so fluidly. Unclassified does not mean its not of a sensitive nature, it just means that it doesn't fall under any of the standard security classifications. Thus the reason why we shred EVERYTHING.
Its archaic, but not necessarily ineffective.