Something has to be really exception for me to go to the hassle of embedding it in my blog rather than pointing it via a link. This presentation by Carl Malamud is a concise and impassioned argument in favor of making governments more accessible and open to the public to the public.
Malamud puts the transformation underway in government today into historical context. The internet is driving the 3rd of these waves of change.
The first wave—the Founder’s wave—established the principle that government must communicate with the people. Next, the Lincoln wave established the principles of documentation and consultation. We are now witnessing a third wave, both in the US and the UK of change — an Internet wave—where the underpinnings and machinery of government are used not only by bureaucrats and civil servants, but by the people. This change as both Malamud and I believe has the potential to be equally fundamental.
Malamud goes on to describe “Government as platform” defining it as exposing the core information that makes government function. This information often that is of tremendous economic value to society (e.g. GPS). Government information—patents, corporate filings, agriculture research, maps, weather, medical research—is the raw material of innovation, creating a wealth of business opportunities that drive our economy forward. Government information is a form of infrastructure, no less important to our modern life than our roads, electrical grid, or water systems.
Despite the current US administration heading in the right direction not all is sunlight. For too long, access to public information in the US has been a matter of access to inside information, a matter of access to money and power. There is no better illustration of this than access to US primary legal materials of the United States: the court cases, statutes, hearings, regulations, codes, administrative decisions, and other materials that define the operating system of our society, the law of the land.
When access to primary legal materials are contracted out to private concerns, as when a state court gives an exclusive contract to a corporation to publish its opinions or when a safety code becomes a revenue opportunity for a non-profit paying million-dollar salaries, the public domain becomes private property, fenced off to extract value for a few, instead of open as a common good for us all (e.g. PACER).
Malmud finishes his speech with three propositions that should be true in a democratic society. First, if a document is to have the force of law, it must be available for all to read. Artificial restrictions on access are not appropriate for the law of the land.
Second, if a meeting that is part of the law-making process is to be truly public, in this day and age, that means it must be on the Internet. Today, public means on- line. When Congress holds hearings, hearings that lead to laws that citizens must all obey, those hearings must take place in a forum that all may attend and observe.
Third, the rule of law in our federalist system is a matter that applies to all three branches of the federal government, and also to all 50 states and the local jurisdictions. The principle that primary legal materials should be available to all is a principle that needs to be driven by the leadership of the executive branch and applied to all levels of government.
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