PA 494 Special Topics in Public Administration: Open Government (syllabus revised 2/11/12) University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, Spring 2012 Instructor: Greg Wass (gregorywass@gmail.com, 312-919-2919) Location: Lincoln Hall 312 Course Description: The open government movement promotes greater transparency of government operations, data and decisionmaking via open data websites and competitions to develop web and mobile applications using public data. The first wave of these data sites and applications has focused on transportation and location-based data, but increasingly governments are posting performance data, economic indicators, public health information, and other data relevant to residents and businesses. How do governments decide to go "open," and what impact will this have on service delivery, public policy, and public trust in government? The course will include a brief history of open government, case studies of open government in practice, and discussions with open government advocates and practitioners. Using publicly-available datasets, each student will develop a research project or a web or mobile application concept and produce a poster describing the project and findings or the app concept. Grading: 25% participation, 35% project, 20% midterm, 20% final. Text: Lathrop & Ruma (eds.), Open Government (O'Reilly Media, 2010); additional readings.

1/9/12

What is open government?

Introductions: backgrounds, interests, specializations

Discussion of research areas, data-driven analysis, public datasets

View and discuss selected federal, state and local open data sites

Discuss remix culture, Creative Commons, Wikileaks, OWS, e-democracy

Review course assignments

1/16/12

No class - MLK Day

Impact of social media on government (online discussion)

Read Foreign Affairs, Atlantic articles (posted online)

Read Ch. 4: The Single Point of Failure (Noveck)

Read Ch. 27: Bringing the Web 2.0 Revolution to Government (Bass, Moulton)

1/23/12

Citizen engagement

Read Ch. 3: By the People (Malamud)

Read Ch. 5: Engineering Good Government (Dierking)

Read Ch. 6: Enabling Innovation for Civic Engagement (Robinson, Yu, Felten)

Define projects, contacts

1/30/12

Journalism

Read Ch. 30: Freedom of Information Acts: Promises and Realities

Read Ch. 31: Gov->Media->People (Gillmor)

Guest: Public information officer

2/6/12

Competitions

Read Ch. 1: A Peace Corps for Programmers (Burton)

See appsformetrochicago.org, data.cityofchicago.com, data.illinois.gov,

data.cookcountyil.gov, cmap.illinois.gov, codeforamerica.org

Guest: Code for America fellows

2/13/12

Visualizations

Read Ch. 23: Case Study: Many Eyes (Viegas, Wattenberg)

See lookatcook.com, hint.fm, pitchinteractive.com

UIC Urban Data Visualization Laboratory

Guest: Developers

2/20/12

Project progress reports

2/27/12

Midterm (online)

3/5/12

Campaign finance

Read Ch. 17: Disrupting Washington's Golden Rule (Miller)

Read Ch. 19: Case Study: FollowTheMoney.org (Bender)

Read Ch. 20: Case Study: MAPLight.org (Newman)

See chicagolobbyists.org

3/12/12

Privacy

Read Ch. 28: Toads on the Road to Open Government Data (Schrier)

Read Ch. 29: Open Government: The Privacy Imperative (Jonas, Harper) health.gov, Health Insurance Exchange, Health Information Exchange Guest: Privacy expert

3/19/12

No class - Spring Break

3/26/12

Project progress reports

4/2/12

Comparison of country approaches to open data

Read Ch. 11: Citizens' View of Open Government (Reich)

Read Ch. 12: After the Collapse: Open Government and the Future of Civil Service (Eaves)

See data.vancouver.ca, data.london.gov.uk

4/9/12

Standards and Quality

Read Ch. 2: Government as a Platform (O'Reilly)

Read Ch. 24: My Data Can't Tell You That (Allison)

Read Ch. 33: Why Open Digital Standards Matter in Government (Fioretti)

4/16/12

Posters: UIC

4/23/12

Posters: Government center

4/30/12

Final (online)