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An opportunity for the US Government
Enabling open government through technology
The United States has just completed one of the most consequential transitions in years, amid great uncertainty and unease. The Obama administration has turned from campaigning to governing. Matters of economic and foreign policy, as well as organizing a new government, are its most urgent priorities. But in this time of change, we want to draw attention to this administration‘s historic opportunity to revitalize the operations of government as never before.
That opportunity resides with the public servants of our governing institutions and the citizens they serve, and it can be unlocked by technologies evolving before our eyes. The mission of information technology has matured globally from providing information services to enabling individual empowerment and dynamic community. The Obama campaign demonstrated how technology can amplify the power of individuals within a community to drive a message. Now is the time to extend the power of individuals to stimulate the mission of government.
Individuals empowered by technology will enable Open Government
The Obama Administration has given a name to this opportunity: Open Government. In the Transparency and Open Government Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, Obama defines the mission of Open Government as one of transparency, collaboration, and participation. The mission of Open Government extends beyond technology; but the goals provide a useful framework for articulating how technology can empower individuals as they interact with the institutions of government. Through Open Government, the president intends to “strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”
Traditionally, IT has been an enabler of efficiency and effectiveness in government through systems that automate processes and store information for increasing institutional demands. IT, however, has typically been limited to the purpose of information management. With mass adoption of low-cost, easy-to-use computing devices and pervasively available computing infrastructure—such as broadband devices and Internet services—individual users have become an increasingly important factor in technology strategy. For Open Government to be realized, technology that is more user-centric than system-centric is necessary. User-centric technology supports the people who need or deliver public services rather than the rules and processes that guide them. The Obama administration can strengthen democracy through a technology strategy designed to empower individuals and the government institutions that have traditionally represented them. It can do this by creating transparency through technologies already broadly in use by individuals, by inducing participation through intuitive interactions, and by enabling collaboration through independent, dynamic technology use.
The ability to leverage ubiquitous technologies will drive government transparency
In his memorandum on Open Government, President Obama directed agencies to become accountable and transparent by “harness[ing] new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public.” This represents a significant cultural and technological reorientation, one that will give people inside and outside of government visibility into processes and decision making. Open access to information about policies, decisions, programs, and funding is intended to share even the mistakes, so that government can learn and evolve. Such openness does not, however, relieve the government of its obligation to protect sensitive, personal, and classified information appropriately. This dynamic presents a significant challenge for government, which has typically used technology to protect information inside systems and selectively share it when required. Transparency into operations and decisions cannot be achieved simply by publishing and reporting information on a website; it requires government to put better tools in the hands of individual users throughout the operational and decision-making processes. There is a cultural shift required here, but technology is an enabler. Systems can report only when asked or scheduled; individuals can report presumptively or spontaneously, when given the appropriate tools. In turn, this enables greater transparency through increased information-sharing frequency. It is equally important to consider transparency-enabling technology with regard to the public and the public servant. IT systems cannot enable full transparency, but the employees who run them can.
Government agencies should consider the following with regard to making information about operations and decision-making available to the public:
- Can the public use it? For individuals to be able to use information, it will need to travel beyond the systems and institutions that generated it. The more useful information is, the more transparent and accountable government becomes.
- Can the public find it? Information needs to be discoverable to be useful. The volume of information that constitutes truly transparent government is unlimited, which means the distribution, discovery, and presentation of this information needs to be carefully considered to enable effective access.
- Can the public trust it? Information needs to be authentic, and sensitive information needs to be protected. Without such guarantees, lack of trust will obscure the goal of transparency. n
To answer these questions requires a reorientation of business processes such that making information available is part of the process, not an afterthought. To effect such a change requires organizational commitment and change management, not just technology. For an example of how reorienting a business process could enable greater transparency, consider the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Agencies are not required to account for FOIA requests during the process of generating information. That has never been efficient or realistic. FOIA requests are typically addressed by a completely separate office within an agency that is disconnected from the actual business processes that created the information. As such, information is not generally created, managed, or stored with consideration to its eventual release to the public. Imagine the efficiencies that would result if information was created as discoverable to begin with. Whether defining budget numbers, program requirements, or policy creation, the key is to think about the public transparency of the operation initially and perpetually.
User-centric technology can help government achieve this goal. There are a few basic principles that agencies should consider for developing a strategy for transparency.
- Leverage ubiquitous technologies to enable public transparency. Harnessing technologies the public already uses, inside and outside government reduces the burden on agencies and increases the value of transparency. Since the advent of the web, an entire infrastructure has evolved to enable public access to information. Such technologies include HTML, Adobe PDF, and Adobe® Flash® technology. When the government depends upon technologies that are not broadly available or adopted, it makes an implicit decision to restrict access to public services to those with the appropriate access or skill.
- Capture and publish information regularly and without imposing additional technical or process burdens on the user. Again, it is important to consider the public servant as the true arbiter of transparency, not the system of record. Knowledge-worker and publishing tools have evolved to such a level of sophistication and security that public servants can become the agents of transparency.
- Solicit feedback in context to make that feedback relevant. When members of the public come in contact with government operations, they should be able to provide input that is captured accurately. This helps to ensure relevant and timely communication. The status quo in government is for the public to channel feedback through elections and traditional media. YouTube, blogging, and Twitter have provided a new outlet. These communication channels represent the art of the possible; in theory every channel of communication could be used to generate true institutional learning and feedback.
- Provide information-level control rather than system-level control. The prevailing security model in government is to keep sensitive data safe inside the firewall, whether on a disk, a network, or a physical computer. But this restricts the ability to be transparent, which requires persistent and dynamic security beyond the firewall. A better security model is to use encryption or other tools that allow government agencies to keep data private even when it travels beyond government control.
Transparency in action: examples and illustrations
There is no single example that can demonstrate transparency with the scale and scope the U.S. federal government intends to achieve. These examples illustrate the possibilities. Government managers can use these examples to substantiate the key considerations previously described with regard to information on government operations.
Can the public use it?
Provisioning information for broad access must go beyond putting up static websites. Citizens are accustomed to the interactive content they experience as consumers. They also look for information from multiple access points, including personal computers, mobile phones, and public resources such as library computers. To best reach the public, government agencies must present information that is engaging and accessible through multiple devices. But in making media-rich content available, the government cannot expect people to pay for or install new technology. Fortunately, free and broadly distributed infrastructure is already in use by the public that can extend and enable the goals of transparency. Leveraging this infrastructure greatly simplifies and enriches the opportunity for the new administration to achieve its goals.
Figure 1. Obama’s speech to Congress displayed by free Adobe Flash Player.
The richest medium for transparency is video—and computing power has reached a point where video is broadly accessible across broadband and cellular channels and devices. Free players are available to the public, but only Adobe Flash Player is in use by 99% of Internet-enabled desktops as well as a wide range of devices. Such adoption provides immediate infrastructure for the government to leverage without concern for broad-based access (see figure 1). Other free video players are available but require downloading and installation, which minimizes adoption and ultimately the public’s ability to use video.
Adobe PDF is another broadly distributed and adopted medium for transparent distribution of information. PDF is already broadly adopted by the U.S. government to distribute government forms to the public, enabling it to reach citizens without requiring them to install new technology. But its use is still generally limited to replacing paper documents (see figure 2).
Figure 2. PDF document of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles Change of Address Formå
But PDF allows for much broader use. The public can access information on the operations of government through its ability to capture and distribute rich media, such as video, audio, and geospatial data as well as documents from various formats. The examples shown in figure 3 from the Obama campaign and ESRI geographic information system (GIS) solutions use PDF portfolios. These capabilities also put powerful information-sharing tools in the hands of public servants to capture and publish information frequently. The richer the information source and the more broadly it is deployed, the more transparent government becomes. PDF is an exceptionally powerful format for the government to leverage, and it is that is proven in public use and is immediately available.
Figure 3. Examples from the Obama campaign and ESRI GIS of PDF with rich media
A final consideration in terms of public use is helping to ensure that the public can access government information with the broadest range of devices in use. The propagation of low-cost computing devices has provided an opportunity to amplify the benefits of transparency. But it is essential that formats be leveraged that have broad support for mobile devices and different platforms. Again, PDF and Flash have gained broad adoption because they support an independent array of computing platforms, as shown in figure 4. The administration can immediately leverage this infrastructure to support its transparency goals.
Figure 4. PDF supports a variety of computer platforms.
Can the public find it?
Government agencies often make the mistake of providing information to the public based on agency orientation, not audience orientation. Many government agency websites provide only flat, functional information rather than content that is much more engaging and relevant to their constituencies. For the public to find information, it needs to be presented in a meaningful way.
Consider the NASA website—it presents a heat map that illustrates the hottest topics for its users based on daily analysis and audience interests. The agency is capturing real-time feedback and responding accordingly. The website’s audience of scientists, enthusiasts, and students can immediately locate and identify relevant information about NASA’s operations. As a result, NASA has the capacity for greater transparency.
Figure 5. NASA’s website enables users to quickly locate and identify information about NASA operations.
Can the public trust it?
As information about government operations travels beyond traditional government control, the risk of inauthentic information increases. If information isn’t trustworthy, the goals of transparency cannot be achieved. Security infrastructure that uses encryption or other tools—and leverages PDF and Flash Player—can protect data that travels beyond the traditional government firewall. By “deperimeterizing” traditional security boundaries, the government can improve its transparency and effectiveness.
An excellent example of the possibilities, or limitations, of information security and access was on display during the consideration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. During the Congressional debate over the $787 billion stimulus bill, Congress was roundly criticized for failing to distribute the final version of the bill. Some reports suggest only five hard copies (see figure 6), and no electronic copies, of the bill were available for review prior to its passage. The process around the stimulus bill was no different than the process has been for decades, but the public’s expectation has changed.
Figure 6. Only five hard copies of the stimulus bill were available for review. Compare this with the distribution of the Fiscal Year 2010 budget—a digitally certified PDF document was available to anyone using free Adobe Reader®.
The creation of the Fiscal Year 2010 federal budget, however, demonstrates a completely new approach. The Government Printing Office (GPO) first distributed the official copy of the budget in a digitally certified PDF document available to everyone (see figure 6). The document is fully searchable and accessible to anyone by downloading free Adobe Reader® software. The document contains an embedded GPO document seal, which, when clicked, reveals signature-validation properties, including authenticity, integrity, and timestamp indicators. The budget document is trustworthy to all who review it and provides an exceptional example of the possibilities of transparency through information-level control.
To further illustrate the value of this approach for creating trust, consider that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency shares, distributes, and protects sensitive maps and other geospatial data through protected PDF documents. These maps can be used to plan security for dignitaries attending the Olympic Games or for flying relief missions in Darfur. They are shared with allies and other countries, but the United States can limit or deny access to those maps and audit usage according to the needs of the relationship. By leveraging this extended infrastructure, a U.S. intelligence agency has confidence and trust in its information-level security.
Individual experience enables government to be participatory
The second pillar of Open Government is participation. To induce participation, government agencies should consider how they make information about their operations available. People will participate when that experience is intuitive and engaging.
Participation requires intuitive design
There is no more solemn or well understood right of government participation than voting. And there is no greater example of the consequences of counter-intuitive participation than the 2000 U.S. presidential election results in Palm Beach County, Florida that lead to the U.S. Supreme Court determining the election’s outcome in Gore v. Bush. According to a bipartisan commission investigating the causes of the election fiasco, the primary cause of confusion was poor design. The infamous Palm Beach Florida butterfly ballot was so counter-intuitive that close to 9,000 voters were unable to adequately distinguish the choice between Pat Buchanan and Al Gore on the ballot design, enough to change the outcome of the election, as illustrated in figure 7.
Figure 7. Poor design of the Palm Beach County ballot caused confusion.
For Open Government to be participatory, access to information about government operations must be intuitive. The ballot fiasco illustrates the consequences when it is not. The other extreme, however, is true Open Government through exceptional public service and individual participation. Often, the public servant is the primary point of contact for the public. Technology can enable public servants to increase the public’s participation in Open Government.
An excellent example is the London Borough of Southwark, where the city council serves a population of 250,000 with a significant need for housing subsistence. The technology tools available to the employees of Southwark were not intuitive, with the result that those in need received housing benefits after waiting an average of 38 days. For complex claims, only employees who had trained for more than two years could support citizens in need. Citizens were unable to participate in a basic form of government—receiving entitlements—because the tools available to the public servants were not intuitive. Southwark modified its systems through open source development technologies and PDF (see figure 8). The result was substantial: processing time dropped from 36 days to several hours. And training time for complex cases was reduced from two years to two days. Participation in the program became intuitive, and Southwark delivered on a promise of Open Government.
Figure 8. Southwark modified its systems by using open source development technologies and PDF.
Beyond the public servant, participation equally depends upon the public’s ability to interact with government intuitively. Long lines, hold times, and other bureaucratic delays are the stereotype of interactions with government. But intuitive technology that supports user needs can change this perception. For example, entrepreneurs looking to start new business ventures in Australian New South Wales had to interact with 27 different government agencies to register the business and to receive health, real estate, and environmental permits, as well as other licenses. Such hurdles ultimately squelched innovation rather than fostered it. So the government implemented a user-centric and intuitive solution to help businesses users participate according to their business need, not the government’s hierarchy. They consolidated legacy portal systems for business-to-government services into a common software services offering that enabled one-stop intuitive access by business across state, local, and federal government (see figure 9). While saving $243 million in the process, the government offered an efficient means for businesses to participate effectively and focus on growth and job creation rather than bureaucracy.
` Figure 9. The business.gov.au website offers simple and convenient access to all government information for planning, starting, and running a business.
Another important consideration for government agencies to induce participation is to provide an engaging experience that involves the user. When the public is engaged, its participation value will increase and improve. Perhaps one of the most classic examples of government engagement designed to induce participation is the traditional army recruiter’s office. In the past, a young prospect might be engaged by a recruiting poster (figure 10).
` Figure 10. Army recruiting poster
Today, the GoArmy.com website displays a virtual army post and all the facilities, equipment, and technology a U.S. Army soldier experiences on a physical post. Visitors to the site gain a better understanding of why the army believes today’s soldier is the best trained, best led, and best equipped member of the most elite team in the world (see figure 10).
The GoArmy.com website (figure 11) uses Flash technology to reach potential recruits through a compelling, innovative online experience. By tailoring its website to a target audience that has grown up online, the army demonstrates its technological savvy and sophistication. It makes its case to potential recruits not only through its content but also through a design that invites participation.
Figure 11. The GoArmy.com website appeals to its target audience and invites participation.
A richer engagement experience induces greater participation. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated when testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 27, 2009, that enhanced educational benefits “have contributed to a greater willingness” of potential recruits to sign on.
Dynamic and independent access will foster collaborative government
The final pillar of Open Government is collaboration. According to President Obama’s Open Government memorandum, “Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.” When public servants and the public have dynamic and autonomous access to rich technology tools, collaboration and innovation are fostered. It is critical, though, to leverage the infrastructure already available to the public rather than reinvent it. One reason for this is that the infrastructure has evolved independently of the government. Low-cost, easy-to-use devices have created a growing and heterogeneous set of new technology users. Low-cost, pervasively available infrastructure is enabling new service-delivery models and removing barriers for public service and employee productivity. Such collaboration occurs already today. To further promote collaboration through the use of technology, the administration should encourage collaborative innovation, allow technology to follow the technology user, and strive for multiway dialogue regardless of time and place.
Collaborative results are achieved through encouraging innovation by public servants
Bottom-up innovation contrasts vividly with the stereotype of government bureaucracy and unwieldy technology megaprojects. Risk aversion has often guided the government’s technology procurement cycle. But the progress of technology offers opportunities for government to empower its community to innovate and deliver collaborative capabilities more quickly than before. In collaborative environments, successes can be copied and failures abandoned at much lower cost than in giant, megaprojects designed, or, too often, poorly designed, for entire agencies. Government managers will decide the goals of development, but they need not dictate how the advances are achieved. A change in incentives can mold a cultural climate that empowers government workers to take responsibility through technology.
Consider the Operation Against Smugglers Initiative on Safety and Security (OASISS ). Two young employees of the U.S. Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, were affected by the lack of technology tools available for cross-border collaboration to deter human trafficking. They quickly taught themselves an open source development language and built an application that enables remote field agents to enter case information on their laptops (see figure 12). When Internet access is available, the data is automatically saved to the agency’s protected, centralized systems. The information can then be shared with Mexican counterparts across the border. The result: When human traffickers are detained, cross-border collaboration helps to ensure justice is served and lives are saved.
Figure 12. OASISS developed an application that enables remote field agents to enter case information on their laptops.
Innovation does not have to be limited to inside government. Collaborative nonprofit groups often serve as a laboratory for new and innovative techniques that can be broadly distributed once successful solutions are developed. Consider the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which serves as the national resource center and information clearinghouse for missing and exploited children. NCMEC works with federal, state, and local agencies to design new and innovative technologies to support its mission. When success is achieved for data analysis or digital investigations, that success is propagated throughout the community.
When technology follows the user, collaboration is close behind
By using widely available technologies, government can empower public servants previously hampered by the physical limitations of geography, device, and bandwidth. An example of the transitive power of technology can be found at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). DISA leverages the pervasive Flash infrastructure for a global collaboration system supporting 95,000 people in 40 countries (see figure 13). DISA overcomes traditional barriers to collaboration—arising from personnel working in different computing environments and interacting via a wide range of T1, satellite, and limited-bandwidth channels—enabling deployed troops, support personnel, and military leaders to collaborate effortlessly across locations worldwide. Users engage with the system for briefings, mission rehearsals, one-to-one and group on-the-spot collaboration, training, eLearning, and dozens of other functions. The technology follows the user through pervasive independent infrastructure, and collaboration follows.
Figure 13. DISA’s global collaboration system supports 95,000 people in 40 countries.
Technology that follows the user can have a collaborative impact on a global scale, like DISA, or on a local scale, like Kane County, Illinois. The Kane County Circuit Court processes restraining order requests to protect victims of domestic violence. In the past, victims of domestic violence had to fill out a paper form of up to 17 pages at one of four physical locations—the sheriff’s office, clerk’s office, a domestic violence shelter, or the courthouse. Once the form was submitted, it was routed to the other three locations, with the result that it was often weeks before the victim received protection. Kane County decided to leverage the PDF infrastructure and created an online wizard enabling shelter staff or victims to enter information electronically in as few as 30 minutes (see figure 14). Once submitted, the information is routed automatically through approval workflows to a judge. Within 60 seconds of the judge signing the document, the order arrives at the sheriff’s office. The electronic process has improved cross-department collaboration and decreased the time required to handle restraining orders by as much as five-fold.
` Figure 14. The Kane County Order of Protection Wizard significantly decreases the time to handle restraining orders.
Collaboration requires a multiway dialogue regardless of time and place
The ability for one or more people to interact toward a shared goal is a common definition of collaboration. But collaborative technologies can enable a multiway dialogue that allows people to work together, regardless of time and place.
For example, the Grants.gov website, a single-access platform on which to find and apply for the discretionary grant opportunities that are available from 26 U.S. federal agencies. By leveraging PDF infrastructure, grant applicants can find and apply for grants from any platform without purchasing or downloading new software. They can work collaboratively on applications from different locations and at different times. With virtual collaboration, applicants can work toward a common purpose without the quality of their work suffering simply because they are not physically in the same room.
Figure 16. FoodSHIELD is a web-based platform that creates community between the various laboratories and regulatory agencies that make up our nation’s food and agricultural sectors.
Another example of collaboration is FoodSHIELD, a web-based platform that creates community, increases collaboration, and facilitates communication among thousands of public and private entities involved in protecting and defending the U.S. food supply (see figure 16). From laboratories and regulatory agencies at local, county, state, and federal offices, to academia and industry, FoodSHIELD is a central portal where people in all 50 states work collectively to safeguard the national food supply through protected, integrated resources. In the case of a contamination outbreak, there may be one laboratory that has figured out the cause and knows exactly what to do. Previously, that knowledge would exist in a vacuum, and other labs would waste time developing their own protocols. But by leveraging ubiquitous technologies, FoodSHIELD maintains a multiway dialogue regardless of time and place.
A call to action for Open Government
The opportunity of Open Government is exciting, and Adobe Systems is eager to support the U.S. government in achieving its goals. These opportunities are vast and the urgency is great. As agencies consider their next actions, we suggest they start by looking beyond the traditional enterprise architecture and leverage technologies like PDF and Flash that are widely available and adopted. Further, agencies should look for Open Government success by supporting their technology users—public servants and the public—more so than the systems that currently run government operations. And, finally, agencies should be emboldened to try new techniques and approaches that capture the spirit of innovation that makes the United States a great country.
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