Recently I have had conversations with a number of people about starting an ‘Open Government best practices network’, so this blog is to crystalize a view of what this is and how it will work, share it for discussion and then fast-track it to launch.
Open Government best practices
Open Government is a tremendously powerful ideology for modernizing how government works in this new technological era. Not only can it address the integrity of political workings but it can transform the very nature of civic engagement and of government business processes, making them faster and cheaper.
One dimension to this is open source software. Governments can make dramatic cost reductions by embracing more free software, but a lack of widespread knowledge and support makes it difficult to adopt. Therefore in a nutshell the core objective of this network will be to identify best practices in specific government areas within an overall context of Open Government, and help share these through encoding them into open source software and business models.
I was thinking we could start with a community site based on a tool like OpenAtrium as it provides some nice tools for forming dynamic groups and for these teams to collaboratively produce documentation. I.e. best practice groups. This can then be enhanced on an going basis with increasingly sophisticated features to support the working practices of the group.
Agenda
To set an initial topic agenda, here’s a few points that could set an overall framework:
- Case Study Models: Direct examples of agencies who have pioneered a new, Open way of working, and the schematics for repeating it through FOSS.
- Consulting best practices: Assessing the openness of government agencies through tools like maturity models.
- Technologies and standards: How Open Identity for Open Government might be internationalized.
Linking best practice initiatives to a FOSS production lifecycle will provide the ideal context for accelerating the adoption of Cloud Computing. What better PR for a government agency, not only are they improving their own operations but they’re providing the tools for any one else to do the same, freely.
It can also ensure FOSS is tailored to meet the unique needs of government. The forthcoming release of ‘OpenPublic‘ correctly identifies that the software must be compliant with key policies like the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Records Act, and by doing so can help meet strategic program goals, like the Government Paperwork Elimination Act and of course the Open Government Directive.
Tailoring it to meet these needs is the best practices that can be replicated via these ‘distributions’. As well as open source web site software there is also the same for Cloud platforms, and initiatives like .OVF make this entire system replicable through Cloud environments.
In essence this will create a “best practices grid”, the distributed Feature Servers concept described by OpenAtrium expert Young Hahn.
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