The New Era of E-Government: Ramifications

for Your Business

David LeDucSIIA Senior Director, Public Policy

The Evolution of “Fed.gov”

1. Federal Gov. “webifies itself:” Federal agencies began by placing information and content online… Business practices go unchanged… the online organization mirrors the physical organization

2. Focus shifted to the automation of back-end processes and improvement of citizen access to services

3. The new phase… Government 2.0… Fundamental shift ... Context Driven Government … information sharing is an opportunity, not merely a requirement.

Early Actions by Obama Admin.• January 21 Presidential Memo to agency heads on

open government, issues Open Gov. Directive:– Transparent– Participatory– Collaborative

… DIRECTIVE PENDING … Coming Soon!!• January 21 Presidential Memo to agency heads on

FOIA Reform… Guidelines issued March 19th.• Appoints First Ever CIO and CTO March – April.• Open Government Initiative Launched in May,

along with Data.gov and Regulations.gov: http://www.whitehouse.gov/open

New Faces, Key PlayersVivek Kundra, CIO: E-Government Director, overseeing day-to-day information technology spending and operations, primarily responsible for openness and access to Gov. data

Aneesh Chopra, CTO: Focus on overall technology policy and innovation strategies across departments; develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society

Beth Noveck, OSTP: Deputy CTO for Open Government. Lead advisor on transparency, openness and citizen engagement.

FOIA Reform:

Jan. 21st Presidential Memo:

“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.”

Summary of FOIA Reform, March 19th, 2009

• Emphasis on timely and web-based information dissemination.

• Info. automatically provided w/out FOIA request.• Increased responsibility of FOIA officers to

respond to inadequate resources. • In response to poor performance reviews on FOIA

compliance, agencies “must address the key roles played by a broad spectrum of agency personnel” in order to reduce “competing agency priorities and insufficient technological support.”

• “Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles have no place in the 'new era of open government.’”

Context-Driven Government

Vivek Kundra, April 28, 2009:

“We must use context-driven government to citizens so that information and services are available where and when citizens need it.”

…Encouraging for Industry

Vivek Kundra, April 28, 2009:

• “Where private sector (or another government agency…) has a solution in place, we should seek to partner and leverage rather than ‘re-invent the wheel’ by unnecessarily spending more taxpayer dollars.”

The Birth of Context-Driven/Democratized Data

• Real time data feeds: raw, machine-readable data in a variety of open, standards-based formats. Empower citizens to be “co-creators,” alongside the government…new applications, new ideas, new ways of doing business

• DC Gov’t. – Data Catalogue, Apps for Democracy: http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/

• The first edition of Apps for Democracy yielded 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in 30 days - a $2,300,000 value to the city at a cost of $50,000.

Beyond Fed.gov, States Move to Open

• Currently, three states (two and the District of Columbia) have developed sites with access to machine-readable data:– CA: http://www.ca.gov/data/default.html– UT: http://www.utah.gov/data/– DC: http://data.octo.dc.gov/

• NASCIO launches collaborative effort with Federal CIO, OMB and GSA officials to promote the development of public data catalogs in the states, adopt a standard naming convention, meta data standards and to share best practices on making state data sets available to the public... modeled after Data.gov.

• A lot of challenges likely to continue at the state level (political, economic and institutional challenges remain).

Beyond Data

Vivek Kundra, July 21, 2009:

“This notion of thinking about data in a structured, relational database is dead… Some of the most valuable information is going to live in video, blogs and audio, and its going to be unstructured inherently.”

Summary

• Administration’s action in first 6 mos. = A for effort.

• Don’t underestimate these guys… not your father’s federal bureaucrats.

• A new Gov. info. paradigm exists...Lots of opportunity to create, partner, add value!

• Likely competition from technology startups and amateurs in pajamas.

• Likely competition from the Feds: Agencies will be empowered to beef up their own offerings.

• Serious review/scrutiny of IT contracts.

Summary (cont.)• Collaborative, open source and FREE.• Support for using existing industry products and

services is encouraging.• However, potential fundamental challenges w/

various markets (education technology, scholarly publishing).

• Leg. Branch/Congress progresses more slowly.• States progress at diff. paces, often face higher

hurdles (political, economic and cultural).• If current products are based on Gov. info., consider

how these changes could affect you.