"Startup.gov: Reworking Government Through Technical Innovation" at SxSWi 2011

Session main page: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7534

Presented by Jennifer Caldwell

The open government movement was well-represented, with local government officials from around the country and around the world. I was very heartened to see a lot of passionate bureaucrats (an oxymoron, right?) who wanted to make the government more accessible to the people it governs.

What did they mean by open government? Ideas were far-ranging, but many centered on the notion of using technology to bring the people back into government. Making more data generally available is one part of this: having government information be easily searchable seemed to be what people wanted most. Ways to do this include:

• building better government websites – right now government is exceptionally poor at disseminating information online
• making it so government databases can talk to one another better, including unifying local/regional/state/federal in a more cohesive way
• allowing government databases to interact more with private databases (lots of concerns about privacy here, and justifiably so)
• increasing the technological culture of government

More about this last point: many government agencies do not have a culture of being techie, being savvy, being comfortable with technology. Tim O’Reilly is pushing Code for America (http://codeforamerica.org/), modeled on Teach for America, wherein tech professionals take time to work with government agencies to a) help government reach its goals of connecting with the people, b) seeding a tech culture within these agencies, and c) help complete concrete projects with both short-term and long-term goals.

Another concern many government officials had was that they don’t have any model for working openly and enthusiastically with the public. There was a lot of wishing they knew how to connect with people, to listen to people, and to respond to people. Something that seemed obvious to me was that they do have a model: the library: the library exists just to provide information and service. I think the library is an ideal model for (other) government agencies to use to improve their customer service. Interestingly, when I brought this up, while everyone enthusiastically supported the library, it was clear they thought of the library as a place to drop off flyers and maybe hold town halls, and NOT as a model for public service. What this tells me is that while the library has a lot to teach, it also has a lot to learn about marketing itself, even to potential (and natural) allies and partners.