Tech Policy Girl

Yesterday the White House announced a new concept for soliciting expertise from the public on policy matters. Codenamed 'ExpertNet', the project would be a web-based software solution which would allow policy makers to provide information and solicit public response. (And yes, it does sound like free consulting to me, but I prefer to look at it in a more positive light!)

ExpertNet wouldn't replace the current means of getting input from the public, i.e. Federal Advisory Commissions and public comment opportunities, but would supplement them. They don't state in what order these three modes of communication would be implemented. (Perhaps they'd be employed all at once, though that doesn't seem the most efficient way to go about it.)

It's also not clear as to whether this tool would be available only to the executive branch or whether it would also be available to the legislative branch. What would be really great is if the final product could be shared and implemented on a smaller scale -- municipalities could employ this same technology to reach out to smaller constituent bases.

The White House is requesting... your input on the concept. Visit the ExpertNet wiki site to read the hypothetical case study and look at the proposed design. There are plenty of interesting discussions to join (and you can even suggest a better name than 'ExpertNet').

Definition:

In a governing or political context, the term transparency refers to openness with particular regard to making data public, and easily accessible (via digitization) to everyone. Imagine being able to go online and not only access your city's budget, but be able to download the data so that you can load it into a spreadsheet and crank the numbers yourself. Or imagine having access to political donation records of a company whom you distrust -- say, Evil Widget Maker, Inc. Anything from campaign finance records to the spending of appropriations bills can and should be made accessible to anyone interested in keeping a watchful eye on such things.

The Issue:

Transparency is important because being open, and giving people access to data builds trust, and makes corruption more difficult. The public has come to distrust leaders and policy makers, and the only way to increase trust in the system is by being open about what is taking place. In order to have true accountability there must be transparency.

Just before the June 2006 election, CNN conducted a poll and found that over half of Americans believe Congress is corrupt. With back room deals and campaigns being funded by businesses who stand to benefit from having a policy maker owe them a favor or two, it's understandable that the public is distrusting of their leaders.

Positions:

The positions are very straight forward, and I haven't heard too many arguments against transparency.

• Advocates believe that transparency is a logical counter to corruption. An open government builds trust of the people, and is a powerful tool for democratization. It also increases the level of performance in the public sector.
• Opponents: One (ethical) argument is concern of increased cost to provide data, and another is that in some cases there is a loss of privacy when implementing transparency.

Current Status:

Transparency advocates have been demanding transparency for many years, but in 2008, on his first day in office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government mandating a policy of openness for Federal departments and agencies. This policy of openness set the stage for states and numerous municipalities to follow suit.

The Sunlight Foundation, unquestionably the greatest advocate of transparency at the federal level continues its work by providing support to the transparency community. They are a non-profit, non-partisan think tank which holds an annual conference, provides funding for developers of software tools for transparency, and has various projects that bring federal data to the people, such as their Reporting Group web site.

More Information:

So many municipalities are implementing transparencies policies that my recommendation is to do an online search for your county or city and transparency. I'm pleased to say there are so many I can't list them all here.

• As mentioned above, the Sunlight Foundation is a great place to start for Federal transparency information. They always have interesting projects in the works.
• The Obama Administration's home page for federal transparency efforts also has good information.
• And for any Californians reading this, the California transparency home page has information on salaries, pensions, contracts, etc.

This is a post about government transparency or rather, lack thereof. While transparency is not strictly tech policy, (in fact I like to refer to it as 'policy tech',) I have to get this story out there because it needs to be heard.

On July 24th I was browsing my twitter feed when I came across two tweets from the local PBS station's California Capitol correspondent John Myers (@KQED_CapNotes) stating that a state oil bill to allow additional drilling off the Santa Barbara coast had been defeated by the state Assembly. I took note and moved on.

I didn't think much more about it until I sat down to breakfast with the Saturday Wall Street Journal in which I found an opinion piece by John Fund about California's woeful budget issues. The article mentioned that the Tranquillon Ridge bill had been defeated by the Assembly and:

"Then things got really weird. A motion to expunge the vote from the public record was made by Democratic floor leader Alberto Torrico and was approved by voice vote. It disappeared from the public record as if it had been erased, in an effort to hide their decision from voters."

Aside from feeling angry that it's legal for the assembly to do this, I find it pathetic that they thought they'd get away with it. With reporters tweeting real-time, and a live TV broadcast of the vote, what were they thinking? These are the folks who are setting tech-related policy -- do they have a clue that these technologies exist?

As if that wasn't enough to have me ranting, Sunday's SF Chronicle published an editorial on the incident (and a side box with all the individual votes). If you scroll to the bottom of the page you'll see a list of additional tricks that legislators are able to play in order to skew how they are perceived by their constituents. These tricks include planning an absence during a vote, adding a vote after a bill has been defeated or passed, and changing their vote (they get several hours after the bill's defeat or passage to do this). Dirty tricks, those. So much for transparency and accountability.

I find this totally unacceptable, and I'm looking forward to attending TransparencyCamp this weekend to see what ideas other attendees have for dealing with such problems.

How would you tackle this issue?

I gave up on the Office of Science and Technology Policy web site years ago. I remember prowling around the site looking for information in vain. The web site itself was clunky and listed only press releases and news. There was no sense of... action, or movement. It was clear that tech policy was not on the Bush Administration's radar.

But now... we have change we can believe in:

Launched on April 22, the updated site has a blog that is a virtual party in comparison. Through the blog, the agency has been actively soliciting participation from the public in their three-phase open government initiative.

What thrills me about this change of direction is that not only is the department setting policy on technology and science (as they've always done), but now they're using technology to make policy in a collaborative and informative manner. Through continuous requests for comment they are tapping into the experience and wisdom of anyone who chooses to participate. It's surprisingly innovative for a government agency.

So if you're reading this, please visit the site, register, and join in to help create policy.

We're in the money... Actually we're going further into debt. Read more about technology and the stimulus package in my commentary at TechPolicyCentral.

The Register reports a significant change in the rules regarding border searches of laptops and other devices. Under the new rules, customs and border agents are authorized to search, analyze and store data without probable cause. For the past 20 years agents had to have probable cause in order to inspect data on the devices of travelers entering into the US. As of July that rule has been (quietly) relaxed, and powers given to agents expanded.

In February the EFF and Asian Law Caucus sued the Department of Homeland Security over these invasive searches, and then in May a federal district court ruled in favor of the searches. This led to some groups requesting that foreign travelers leave their devices at home when traveling abroad to the US.

The question that comes to my mind is how knowledgeable the agents are regarding the devices they're supposed to search. This fella missed his flight because the TSA wasn't able to identify his MacBook Air as a laptop.

I remember reading, a year or so ago, about a young woman whose medical care for her anorexia was denied by her health insurance provider. Her parents banned together with other parents posed with similar issues to sue their insurance company for costs incurred in their daughters' treatment. The insurance company's stance is that anorexia is a psychological rather than biological affliction and thus they aren't obligated to cover associated costs. (Which causes one to wonder whether they grant coverage for the ills associated with being overweight -- or smoking and its drawn-out and oft fatal afflictions?)

Then last week, The Economist mentioned an insidious development in the case (Beye v. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield Of New Jersey, Inc.). The health insurance company, Horizon, demanded access to all digital communications of the young women -- Facebook, IM threads, blogs, email, text messages, the entire lot. When the lawyer for the girls objected on the grounds of invasion of privacy, he lost.

There are several issues with this. First, the technology is new. Only recently have the Y Generation started taking seriously their elders' warnings about the internet being a permanent system of record for their online activities. Second, the young women are minors so, in my opinion, deserve the protection of privacy appropriate for children. The legal system affords special treatment and leniency for minors in many regards -- this should extend to digital privacy.

And adults should heed the story of this lawsuit as well -- don't blog about your great ski trip to Aspen when you're on workers' comp.

Here's a QA nightmare: for the past ten years the voting machines made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold) have had a bug in their software that causes votes to be dropped. According to an article in the Washington Post the problem occurs when votes are transferred from a memory card to a central tallying server and, as Premier officials note, inconsistencies are caught only when (if?) cross-checking is done by elections officials as part of the results certification process. The most notable state affected by this bug is of course a hotly contested one -- Ohio.

Due to the fact that elections systems changes must be certified by the Fed, it could take two years or more to get the issue resolved. In the meantime it will be considered a 'known issue', and presumably elections officials will be notified and advised of the problem.

The kick of the story though is that Premier first declared the issue human error. Then recanted and blamed it on Antivirus software. And then, as Dan Goodin of The Register puts it... finally 'confessed' to a logic error.

Apparently some folks in Ohio have been hosting electronic voting machines at their slumber parties. Poll workers, in that hotly contested state, frequently bring the machines home with them for days leading up to elections. I'm not sure I understand why this would be necessary -- and frankly, any arguments I've read about (it allows pollworkers to avoid charges incurred by moving companies,) make no sense to me. Clearly I'm not the only one who doesn't buy these arguments because Ohio's Secretary of State has issued a directive stating that this practice will no longer be allowed.

Via Why Tuesday.

(By the way, the AP news posting states that extra costs incurred by this change would be covered by federal funding, but I don't see anything that indicates so in the directive).