Open Gov Tracker Reveals Best US Open Government Ideas

jonverve writes "In May of 2009, the White House launched an Ideascale site to gather ideas from citizens to identify ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.' The digital letdown was when many of the top ideas generated by the process were to legalize marijuana, solve tax issues and to reinvestigate Obama's birth origins. Fast forward to February 6 and the same process has been repeated with individual federal agencies as the subject. This time the idea generation has been much more productive, with ideas such as establishing clear benchmarks on humanitarian progress in Sudan to the State Department, funding for open source text books and materials to the Department of Education, making it easier to access previously FOIAed documents to the Department of Justice, and creating a Wiki for NASA to share its data and to engage the public. Hackers from NASA's Nebula cloud computing platform have created a site that aggregates 23 of these idea sites to give a quick peek into the best rated contributions in each category. Programmed in Python and using the MongoDB and Tornado web server, the Open Gov Tracker was highlighted by the open government blog Govfresh this past week as well. Jessy Cowan-Sharp, one of the creators, explained their motivation: 'We thought that a single access point would give a sense of the participation on all the different sites, a window into the discussions happening, build some excitement, and inspire people to participate.' The process closes on March 19th, so go and visit the site to contribute your ideas and vote!"

Comments

drugs are bad, mmkay?

[Paktu]

The digital letdown was when many of the top ideas generated by the process were to legalize marijuana

Or maybe that's because it's a worthwhile and viable policy objective.

Re:drugs are bad, mmkay?

[clang_jangle]

Exactly, the position is "we're open to hearing anything -- except of course repealing prohibition, or actually representing the people in general". That's the whole problem with democracy in the US today, it doesn't truly exist on any meaningful scale. This whole "open government" thing is just feel-good theater to help the people maintain their denial about the fact that they live in a corporate oligarchy which is rapidly becoming feudalism. The difference between political parties comes down to which "special interests" own them, while the people have no representation. We are so screwed...

Wrong Summary On Marijuana

[careysub]

No, one of the top ideas was NOT to "legalize marijuana"! The third most popular item was to remove marijuana from Schedule 1, where its placement violates federal law, the DEA's own internal regulations, and peer-reviewed science!

Click on the "marijuana link" in the summary and read the item for yourself.

This is a simple matter of paying attention to science and obeying the law as written.

The rules for Schedule I are:
A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

The best available scientific and medical evidence and opinion clearly shows that criteria B and C do not apply. The only way one can claim A applies is via a circular argument: all cannabis use DEFINED as abuse, therefore it has a high potential for abuse.

The logic of scheduling Cannabis at no higher than IV, and most accurately at Schedule V, is further shown by the DEA itself - by scheduling pure 100% THC at Schedule III!

Clearly a preparation that is only about 10% as potent should have a lower ranking. One should note that Schedule V consists ENTIRELY of drugs with higher rankings (from I down to III) in reduced potency preparations. This the reason that this low scheduling category exists.

If the rules of classification are objectively and scientifically applied the it would rank no higher than Schedule V, the lowest and least restrictive.