ACT - Protecting Small Business Innovation

LA City Council Reads ACT's "Paying for Free" Paper

OK, maybe nobody on the city council actually read Paying for Free, the paper where we describe the security, privacy and sustainability costs of "free" software. Still, on Monday the Los Angeles city council delayed its vote on a contract to replace the city's email system. with Google Apps. The reason: concerns over costs.

Cloud-based software is often touted as an easy way to save money instead of using software installed locally on desktops and servers. Often, cloud-based software and services are even "free" to use (in the sense that they have $0 license fees) but will be supported by advertisements. Users often provide personal information or consent to targeted ads based on their interests to help online companies pay for these free services.

In Los Angeles, the city is rightly considering the costs as well as the benefits of the software that it chooses.  There are also cloud computing security concerns over storing sensitive city/law enforcement information on remote servers. These too are a potential cost that should be weighed into the mix of total costs of ownership. Free of licensing fees does not mean free to use.

WSJ: US Misses Target for Small-Business Contracts

We've done a lot of writing recently about the importance of giving small firms a level playing field to compete for government contracts, but according to the Wall Street Journal today, the US government has missed its target for giving contracts to small firms again, and by a larger margin than last year. 

Federal agencies awarded 21.5% of their contracts worth just over $93 billion to small businesses in fiscal 2008, which ran from Oct. 1, 2007 through Sept. 30, 2008, falling short of its 23% goal set by law.

As the WSJ notes, this is particularly problematic given the economy:

Hit by the recession, small-business owners are eager to win Uncle Sam as a new customer, and right now there are billions of dollars of extra dollars up from grabs as contracts start to flow from the $787 billion economic-stimulus package passed five months ago...

Hopefully, Commerce's new efforts can help reverse this trend:

On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and SBA Administrator Karen Mills announced a government-wide plan that includes federal agency procurement officials holding or participating in more than 200 events over the next 90 days to share information on government contracting opportunities, including those available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Third Verse, Same as the First? Open Gov Initiative, Phase 3

Phase three of the White House's Open Government Initiative ends this Sunday, and with it a tripartite experiment on receiving public comment about how to make government more open.

This is of course an important and monumental milestone. Never before have we seen the intersection of technology and public input to guide a governmental process on the front-end. Sure, we've been able to sound-off via email to our legislators when we support or oppose a bill, or file comments on a rulemaking--but there's never been a coordinated, proactive solicitation for general public input. That's why the Open Government Initiative is important.

It's certainly One of Good Intent. That the process was itself an open process is a mild achievement, given that the theme was how to make government more open. But transparency is hard to achieve even with the best intentions. It may be that by opening the floodgates to public comment, we've increased the quantity of input, but not the quality.

A New York Times article from earlier this week raises the notion that soliciting comments isn't easy, or maybe even productive. From the article:

[The White House] got an earful — on legalizing marijuana, revealing U.F.O. secrets and verifying Mr. Obama’s birth certificate to prove he was really born in the United States and thus eligible to be president.

Now, it's easy to pick out a few extreme examples, but see it for yourself--the vast majority of the comments are off-topic, and some are even offensive or just flat out bizarre. Very few seem to be substantive contributions to the important topic of making government more transparent, participatory and ultimately more accountable.

As Beth Noveck writes in the OSTP Blog, we're now in phase three of the open government initiative, which will be a "collaborative drafting process."  Hopefully this phase produces something of value, compared to the previous phases. We don't want the third verse to be the same as the first.  

After all, it's worth remembering that the whole point of this exercise is that when it comes to access to government information and better understanding of our legislative process, we don't want the same old song and dance.  

When You're Getting Software or Other Stuff on the 'Net for Free, what are the Costs?

Come one, come all. ACT will be hosting a lunch event next Tuesday (June 23) at noon on privacy, free software, and government procurement.  

We’ll discuss “free” software (ie. no license fees, free as in beer). It’s a nuanced take on some of what Chris Anderson will surely be talking about in his upcoming book on Free—where does the $ come from in software that we all use for free on the web, or that we download to our computer?

To answer this question, we’ll attempt to update traditional Total Cost of Ownership analysis for ad-based software and services. There’s a lot of discussion about privacy, security and sustainability considerations of cloud based solutions. In addition, the event will deal with skeptics who think that “free” means no business model at all. We’ll describe how free software and services are usually just one aspect of a larger enterprise geared toward expanding market penetration and increasing revenues. Mike Masnick described this in a recent Techdirt post.  

I'm going to moderate, and our speakers will be Rob Atkinson at ITIF, Tom Schatz at CAGW, and Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs.  

We’ll be releasing a paper on all this, so come join us  for lunch and a lively discussion--and best of all, it’s FREE!!   

Further details are here.

Survey Says... Government Websites are Terrible

FoxNews.com had a front-page article this week about a study showing that, despite the president’s dedication to openness and transparency in government and his campaign’s landmark use of the Internet, there is a drop in satisfaction among those who use federal government websites in search of information, and that the private sector far exceeds the government in terms of user satisfaction. The article mentions that “navigating a government Web site can be exasperating,” particularly for people who are used to customer-friendly sites like iTunes, Amazon, or even Craigslist, and names Grants.gov as the lowest-ranked federal website. The article goes so far as to describe navigating a government website as “exasperating.” (And they’re right. Ever tried searching grants.gov? It’s like a black hole.)

 

Anyway, this reminded me of our recent event on open government (“Moving from e-Government to We-Government: Creating Processes for Transparency and Openness”) where my colleague Braden Cox talked about how technology can help facilitate a more open and transparent government. Providing open access to government data will allow for third parties to mix/mash/use it in new and interesting ways.  At our event, Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center showed attendees two websites with which he’s involved that use government data in new ways. One uses openly available government data about stimulus projects to let citizens view projects near them, understand what the project is about, vote on whether or not they think it’s a priority, and post comments and updates. Another site uses information from the Federal Register, and organizes it in a way that makes it more usable to citizens.  Similar to these examples, having data available will open the door to immediate public-private partnerships that combine government data with other sources and make it actually useful. (For a quick example of what I’m talking about, go over to the Federal Register and search for regulations on, say, hazelnuts.  Now try the same at OpenRegs.com.)

 

Obviously this is something that won’t happen overnight, as the amount of government data available is beyond massive. To the administration’s credit, they recently solicited ideas from the public about the best way to make Recovery.gov more accessible and easier for the public to use/understand. But given the results of this survey, and the administration’s promises to make government more open and transparent, let’s hope open government data is now a higher priority.

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra a Huge Draw (even on a Sat. Morning)

Vivek Kundra spoke to a 150+ crowd at a Northern Virginia Technology Counsel event on Saturday morning in Tysons Corner. He has his speech crafted pretty well at this point, but did have an interesting response to a question on open standards from someone who said he was affiliated with the W3C--and a more predictable response to a question about cloud computing.

One questioner asked about Kundra's commitment to open standards as a way to increase government accountability and transparency. Kundra responded by differentiating between open data and open standards. He said that he's deeply committed to opening up data to make it machine readable and easier for people to use/mix/mash. But, open standards is different -- technology changes so fast that by the time one standard comes along, there's another, and another, which is why government can't lock-in on one standard.

Responding to another question about government use of cloud computing, Kundra was enthusiastic. He said that government should absolutely use lightweight consumer-based technology "for free" whenever it can. He did not define "free" which left me wondering, what does he mean by this (does free mean ad-supported?)? Of course there are security issues, he said, but these can be addressed.

He also differentiated his role as CIO with Chopra's role as CTO. Chopra will be responsible for crafting policy toward helath IT, education, and energy. Kundra manages the 10,000 federal IT systems and will focus on consolidation, cost-reduction and procurement.

Two phrases that Kundra uses over and over are "democratizing data" and using IT to create a "context-driven government." Sounds good -- and will be even better if the entrenched bureaucracy allows the conceptual sound bites to become reality.

ACT Event: Moving from e-Government to We-Government

Washington, DC – On Wednesday, ACT hosted an event entitled “Moving from e-Government to We-Government: Creating Processes for Transparency and Openness” in Washington, DC.  The event focused on the practical issues that must be addressed in order to improve the transparency of government, and featured Andrew Plemmons Pratt of the Center for America Progress (CAP), Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Braden Cox of ACT.

“An open and transparent government can only be achieved through a process, not a simple product,” said Braden Cox during his opening statements.  Braden suggested the technology can help facilitate a more open and transparent government, but it cannot bring it about on its own.  

Braden suggested that ideally open government efforts would lead toward:

• Access—and we mean meaningful access –the ability for citizens and developers to easily view, download, and utilize information that is searchable and easily categorized. 
• Participation—regular opportunities for citizens to communicate with their government.
• Accountability—mechanisms for citizens to critique policymakers on their votes, decisions, and policy directions. For example, members of Congress who know their earmarks will be easily viewable and comparable may show greater restraint.

Jerry and Andrew both largely agreed with this premise and the panel spent most of their time discussing both benefits of enabling open access to government data and documents and the steps necessary to make it a fundamental reality.

“Access to the information itself is useful and important, but it is the interpretations that are the most valuable,” said Andrew.   All three panelists agreed that government data needs to be provided in ways that enable communities and stakeholders to recombine and analyze it in new and novel ways.  

“Before that can happen, there are some operational changes inside government that have to be addressed before making that information available in a timely and accessible manner becomes the default way of doing business,” said Andrew.

Everyone agreed that it would take a long time before all the massive amounts of government data are made completely accessible.  Andrew and Braden highlighted that some of the information is buried in legacy systems like mainframes and IBM Domino databases that are not setup to provide full, timely access to the public.

Jerry Brito went further by demonstrating some of the ways he and his colleagues are already using some of government information.  He discussed two websites of his, Stimuluswatch.org and another site he’ll launch next week, Openregs.com, and demonstrated how data can become useable when it’s accessible.  His websites both use openly available government data and turn it into something that is useable and understandable to citizens, and even helping them to become more involved (by giving more information about stimulus projects and voting on their importance at StimulusWatch).