The US Leads Canada in Open Government Initiatives

[Michael Hardner]

Nice article at Governing.com (covered on my Blog of course) that hints at the coming revolution.

Portland region CTO Bryan Sivak :

Sivak calls Apps for Democracy a "great idea" for getting citizen software developers involved with government, but he also hints that the applications spun up by these contests tend to be more "cool" than useful to the average city resident.

He goes on to intimate that internal workings of government should be part of these initiatives. And therein awaits a giant thumderclap...

[Michael Hardner]

More on the Open Government in US vs. Rest-of-world ...

The UK government has launched a spending challenge.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off a consultation exercise on ways to reduce government spending. Together with Nick Clegg he has written to public service workers asking them to share their ideas on where to make spending cuts.

They even mention partnering (!) with Wikileaks - the infamous whistle blowers that have been the bane of governments worldwide.

Is the revolution starting ?

[Michael Hardner]

The Guardian Newspaper in the UK is publishing more in-depth information as a result of 'open data'...

According to this article, there are problems - but that the open data is the current zeitgeist!~ (Yes, Morris they used that word !)

We're at the first few days of a new era, or so we can hope. There will be missteps and errors, but there will be better information for - and this is the most important part - those of us who take the time to look at it and discuss. Members of 'the public', not the masses.

Do your civic duty, and start paying attention to good information.

[Michael Hardner]

After reading up on this, and researching more and more - I must issue a correction - although the US leads Canada in Open Gov, it's the UK that we need to watch.

New thread coming.