an open architecture for an open government
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Charlie
Mar 27, 2009, 10:43:24 AM3/27/09
to Open House Project
Hello All:
Last week Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, said that he is directing
Federal agencies to build transparency, participation and
collaboration into the architecture of Federal agencies. I think you'd
get the idea by watching Kundra's talk here
http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/03/doors.html
Given Sunlight's role to use the revolutionary power of the Internet
to make information about the Federal government more meaningfully
accessible to citizens, the questions I'll pose to the list are as
follows:
a) Whether this architecture should be determined behind the closed
doors of the government, such as its Architecture and Infrastructure
Committee, or whether this architecture should be developed in the
open where citizens can witness its development?
b) Whether this architecture should be a government purposed or an
Internet-based architecture?
Surely, behind the closed doors of the government Federal agencies
spend many millions of dollars each year on Enterprise Architecture
activities, yet there's no evidence of an outcome. Where information
on them is available, the architectures themselves appear rudimentary
at best and the problems on which they focus show no evidence of value
to citizens. While at the same time the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) defines a set of open standards through which innovators across
the globe continue to outpace the government despite significant
electronic government spending. Consider the effectiveness of OpenID
v. the government's E-Authentication initiative.
c) Shouldn't there be a partnership for Sunlight and W3C in defining
an open architecture for an open government? The government seems to
get stuck on issues that W3C has been very effective at solving, like
information sharing.
I suspect that the bureaucracy that continually fails at keeping pace
with society's ability to innovate needs your help in creating an open
architecture for an open government.
Charlie
Last week Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, said that he is directing
Federal agencies to build transparency, participation and
collaboration into the architecture of Federal agencies. I think you'd
get the idea by watching Kundra's talk here
http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/03/doors.html
Given Sunlight's role to use the revolutionary power of the Internet
to make information about the Federal government more meaningfully
accessible to citizens, the questions I'll pose to the list are as
follows:
a) Whether this architecture should be determined behind the closed
doors of the government, such as its Architecture and Infrastructure
Committee, or whether this architecture should be developed in the
open where citizens can witness its development?
b) Whether this architecture should be a government purposed or an
Internet-based architecture?
Surely, behind the closed doors of the government Federal agencies
spend many millions of dollars each year on Enterprise Architecture
activities, yet there's no evidence of an outcome. Where information
on them is available, the architectures themselves appear rudimentary
at best and the problems on which they focus show no evidence of value
to citizens. While at the same time the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) defines a set of open standards through which innovators across
the globe continue to outpace the government despite significant
electronic government spending. Consider the effectiveness of OpenID
v. the government's E-Authentication initiative.
c) Shouldn't there be a partnership for Sunlight and W3C in defining
an open architecture for an open government? The government seems to
get stuck on issues that W3C has been very effective at solving, like
information sharing.
I suspect that the bureaucracy that continually fails at keeping pace
with society's ability to innovate needs your help in creating an open
architecture for an open government.
Charlie
Greg Elin
Mar 30, 2009, 4:38:12 PM3/30/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for these questions. I've replied inline as best I can. But the gist of what I say is this: the openness is happening and we need to push it. Can you help put forward ideas on doing this correctly? (Respond on list or off.)
The conversation about data.gov and architecture should absolutely follow the principles Obama Open Government Memo. Also, we all need to be vigilant to insure that result. There is every indication that conversations about specific details on this list and elsewhere on the web are being seen and taken into consideration. And meetings are talking place, such as the meeting from the video to which you linked.
The Administration--any Administration--faces a problem with regard to actively responding to conversations: informal conversation in public forums is frequently interpreted as policy. This problem...transitioning from formal hearings and rule commenting and behind closed door lobbying to the openness and informal continuous interactions of the web...is what the Open Government Directive speaks. Hopefully.
Everyone is learning right now. There are no Government 2.0 experts. Everyone needs to participate and yet it is hard to get certain work done in large groups. So expect all sorts of conversations. And the best we can do is to charge ahead with the conversations and not wait to be asked.
It's hard for me, personally, to see the any new openness coming from these players not being based on the Internet. Vivek is 34 yrs old and turned toward the web for data feeds at DC Octo. Beth Noveck, at the Whitehouse OSTP working on the Open Govt Directive, has written about Wiki-Government. I could go on. (But again, we have to keep the pressure on.)
I've been learning a bit about the Enterprise Architecture activies and the more I learn the more it seems to have the same strengths and weakness of large scale IT normalization projects. The baby is the fact government has been working on e-gov for a while and organizations are talking. The bathwater is difficulty in experimenting inside government and that Enterprise Architecture is still, IMHO, a developing field. (Heh, so the govt is experimenting in a sense...)
John Wonderlich and I are interacting with W3C's e-gov working group. The definition of an open architecture is hard work and I hope you will participate. It will take time.
You are too kind! Sunlight's success is because we practice crowd sourcing and tap the thinking of people like yourself. The openness meme has caught and is BIT. WE NEED YOUR HELP!
--
Greg Elin
Chief Evangelist for Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com)
Sunlight Labs (http://sunlightlabs.com)
ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
gr...@fotonotes.net
http://twitter.com/gregelin
skype: fotonotes
aim: wiredbike
cell: 917-304-3488
Thanks for these questions. I've replied inline as best I can. But the gist of what I say is this: the openness is happening and we need to push it. Can you help put forward ideas on doing this correctly? (Respond on list or off.)
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Charlie <syne...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello All:
Last week Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, said that he is directing
Federal agencies to build transparency, participation and
collaboration into the architecture of Federal agencies. I think you'd
get the idea by watching Kundra's talk here
http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/03/doors.html
Given Sunlight's role to use the revolutionary power of the Internet
to make information about the Federal government more meaningfully
accessible to citizens, the questions I'll pose to the list are as
follows:
a) Whether this architecture should be determined behind the closed
doors of the government, such as its Architecture and Infrastructure
Committee, or whether this architecture should be developed in the
open where citizens can witness its development?
The conversation about data.gov and architecture should absolutely follow the principles Obama Open Government Memo. Also, we all need to be vigilant to insure that result. There is every indication that conversations about specific details on this list and elsewhere on the web are being seen and taken into consideration. And meetings are talking place, such as the meeting from the video to which you linked.
The Administration--any Administration--faces a problem with regard to actively responding to conversations: informal conversation in public forums is frequently interpreted as policy. This problem...transitioning from formal hearings and rule commenting and behind closed door lobbying to the openness and informal continuous interactions of the web...is what the Open Government Directive speaks. Hopefully.
Everyone is learning right now. There are no Government 2.0 experts. Everyone needs to participate and yet it is hard to get certain work done in large groups. So expect all sorts of conversations. And the best we can do is to charge ahead with the conversations and not wait to be asked.
b) Whether this architecture should be a government purposed or an
Internet-based architecture?
It's hard for me, personally, to see the any new openness coming from these players not being based on the Internet. Vivek is 34 yrs old and turned toward the web for data feeds at DC Octo. Beth Noveck, at the Whitehouse OSTP working on the Open Govt Directive, has written about Wiki-Government. I could go on. (But again, we have to keep the pressure on.)
Surely, behind the closed doors of the government Federal agencies
spend many millions of dollars each year on Enterprise Architecture
activities, yet there's no evidence of an outcome. Where information
on them is available, the architectures themselves appear rudimentary
at best and the problems on which they focus show no evidence of value
to citizens. While at the same time the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) defines a set of open standards through which innovators across
the globe continue to outpace the government despite significant
electronic government spending. Consider the effectiveness of OpenID
v. the government's E-Authentication initiative.
I've been learning a bit about the Enterprise Architecture activies and the more I learn the more it seems to have the same strengths and weakness of large scale IT normalization projects. The baby is the fact government has been working on e-gov for a while and organizations are talking. The bathwater is difficulty in experimenting inside government and that Enterprise Architecture is still, IMHO, a developing field. (Heh, so the govt is experimenting in a sense...)
c) Shouldn't there be a partnership for Sunlight and W3C in defining
an open architecture for an open government? The government seems to
get stuck on issues that W3C has been very effective at solving, like
information sharing.
John Wonderlich and I are interacting with W3C's e-gov working group. The definition of an open architecture is hard work and I hope you will participate. It will take time.
I suspect that the bureaucracy that continually fails at keeping pace
with society's ability to innovate needs your help in creating an open
architecture for an open government.
You are too kind! Sunlight's success is because we practice crowd sourcing and tap the thinking of people like yourself. The openness meme has caught and is BIT. WE NEED YOUR HELP!
--
Greg Elin
Chief Evangelist for Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com)
Sunlight Labs (http://sunlightlabs.com)
ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
gr...@fotonotes.net
http://twitter.com/gregelin
skype: fotonotes
aim: wiredbike
cell: 917-304-3488
Charlie
Eric Kansa
Apr 1, 2009, 2:21:05 PM4/1/09
to Open House Project
Hi Charlie and Greg,
Good discussion, and I'm glad that Charlie pointed out the need for an
"open architecture". This is also something based on very recent
experience with Recovery.gov related disclosures.
We’ve started to work with the real data published as part of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA; aka the “stimulus
package”). Data formats are obviousless important - there’s simply too
much information to effectively monitor and use unless it comes in
formats that lend themselves to aggregation and analysis. The
architecture of data dissemination is also a vitally important aspect
of any transparency or publication measure, but is more poorly
understood and has received less recognition than formats. If you
can’t get data from clear, easy to find, and easy to use services,
disclosure is pretty meaningless.
That’s why we were so excited to learn that OMB was requiring agencies
to publish feeds.Feeds (or rather Atom feeds to be specific) are a
wonderful and convenient method. They lend themselves to distributed
(and hopefully robust) publishing scenarios, and have the advantage of
being very widely supported, flexible, extensible, and easy to use.
However, we’ve managed to find only 25 or so feeds published by
agencies participating in the stimulus. Feed discovery is a major
issue that needs to be ironed out. It’s also likely that not that many
agencies are yet in compliance with OMB’s Feb 18th guidelines for
stimulus disclosures. To hazard a guess, it seems that the federal
government’s existing IT infrastructure is not very well equipped to
“do transparency”.
Different agencies are probably mainly sending their stimulus reports
as emails with Excel spreadsheets attached for publication at
Recovery.gov. While this ad hoc solution probably works OK, it is
pretty depressing that (as Charlie mentions) many millions of dollars
of IT infrastructure investment in agency systems can not be applied
for something like this. So, for the interim, the most comprehensive
source of stimulus disclosure data is at the Recovery.gov site.
Ironically, Recovery.gov site does not publish its own feeds of the
data obtained (emailed?) from different agencies. Because Recovery.gov
doesn’t have any convenient feeds pointing to their more comprehensive
collection of disclosure reports, I’ve just spent several hours
writing a script to “scrape” the Recovery.gov site in order to mine it
for all available Excel weekly report spreadsheets.This is not an
optimal solution, since scrapping tends to break if Recovery.gov makes
even minor changes to its styling / layouts. Feeds would be much more
reliable to identify disclosure related resources.
If you want to see a comparison of data obtained from agency feeds and
data obtained from scrapping Recovery.gov take a look at Erik Wilde’s
blog post:
http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/2009/03/recovery-reporting-report.html
and this page that visualizes these different data sources on a
timeline:
http://isd.ischool.berkeley.edu/stimulus/feeds/site-vs-feeds.html
All of this goes to show that we there needs to be much more progress
on following through with the stimulus transparency measures. But this
exercise also shows how useful feeds (especially Atom feeds) can be
for disclosure. They offer a simple solution to reliably get published
resources of disclosure data, and unlike scrappers, they require no
custom coding and are not vulnerable to style changes on web pages. If
more agencies published easy to discover Atom feeds, civil society
groups and even Recovery.gov would have a simple and reliable way to
get comprehensive accounting for $800 billion in spending.
Best!
-Eric
On Mar 30, 1:38 pm, Greg Elin <ge...@sunlightfoundation.com> wrote:
> Hi Charlie,
>
> Thanks for these questions. I've replied inline as best I can. But the gist
> of what I say is this: the openness is happening and we need to push it. Can
> you help put forward ideas on doing this correctly? (Respond on list or
> off.)
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Charlie <synech...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello All:
>
> > Last week Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, said that he is directing
> > Federal agencies to build transparency, participation and
> > collaboration into the architecture of Federal agencies. I think you'd
> > get the idea by watching Kundra's talk here
>
> > http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/03/doors.html
>
> > Given Sunlight's role to use the revolutionary power of the Internet
> > to make information about the Federal government more meaningfully
> > accessible to citizens, the questions I'll pose to the list are as
> > follows:
>
> > a) Whether this architecture should be determined behind the closed
> > doors of the government, such as its Architecture and Infrastructure
> > Committee, or whether this architecture should be developed in the
> > open where citizens can witness its development?
>
> The conversation about data.gov and architecture should absolutely follow
> the principles Obama Open Government
> Memo<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernm...>.
Good discussion, and I'm glad that Charlie pointed out the need for an
"open architecture". This is also something based on very recent
experience with Recovery.gov related disclosures.
We’ve started to work with the real data published as part of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA; aka the “stimulus
package”). Data formats are obviousless important - there’s simply too
much information to effectively monitor and use unless it comes in
formats that lend themselves to aggregation and analysis. The
architecture of data dissemination is also a vitally important aspect
of any transparency or publication measure, but is more poorly
understood and has received less recognition than formats. If you
can’t get data from clear, easy to find, and easy to use services,
disclosure is pretty meaningless.
That’s why we were so excited to learn that OMB was requiring agencies
to publish feeds.Feeds (or rather Atom feeds to be specific) are a
wonderful and convenient method. They lend themselves to distributed
(and hopefully robust) publishing scenarios, and have the advantage of
being very widely supported, flexible, extensible, and easy to use.
However, we’ve managed to find only 25 or so feeds published by
agencies participating in the stimulus. Feed discovery is a major
issue that needs to be ironed out. It’s also likely that not that many
agencies are yet in compliance with OMB’s Feb 18th guidelines for
stimulus disclosures. To hazard a guess, it seems that the federal
government’s existing IT infrastructure is not very well equipped to
“do transparency”.
Different agencies are probably mainly sending their stimulus reports
as emails with Excel spreadsheets attached for publication at
Recovery.gov. While this ad hoc solution probably works OK, it is
pretty depressing that (as Charlie mentions) many millions of dollars
of IT infrastructure investment in agency systems can not be applied
for something like this. So, for the interim, the most comprehensive
source of stimulus disclosure data is at the Recovery.gov site.
Ironically, Recovery.gov site does not publish its own feeds of the
data obtained (emailed?) from different agencies. Because Recovery.gov
doesn’t have any convenient feeds pointing to their more comprehensive
collection of disclosure reports, I’ve just spent several hours
writing a script to “scrape” the Recovery.gov site in order to mine it
for all available Excel weekly report spreadsheets.This is not an
optimal solution, since scrapping tends to break if Recovery.gov makes
even minor changes to its styling / layouts. Feeds would be much more
reliable to identify disclosure related resources.
If you want to see a comparison of data obtained from agency feeds and
data obtained from scrapping Recovery.gov take a look at Erik Wilde’s
blog post:
http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/2009/03/recovery-reporting-report.html
and this page that visualizes these different data sources on a
timeline:
http://isd.ischool.berkeley.edu/stimulus/feeds/site-vs-feeds.html
All of this goes to show that we there needs to be much more progress
on following through with the stimulus transparency measures. But this
exercise also shows how useful feeds (especially Atom feeds) can be
for disclosure. They offer a simple solution to reliably get published
resources of disclosure data, and unlike scrappers, they require no
custom coding and are not vulnerable to style changes on web pages. If
more agencies published easy to discover Atom feeds, civil society
groups and even Recovery.gov would have a simple and reliable way to
get comprehensive accounting for $800 billion in spending.
Best!
-Eric
On Mar 30, 1:38 pm, Greg Elin <ge...@sunlightfoundation.com> wrote:
> Hi Charlie,
>
> Thanks for these questions. I've replied inline as best I can. But the gist
> of what I say is this: the openness is happening and we need to push it. Can
> you help put forward ideas on doing this correctly? (Respond on list or
> off.)
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Charlie <synech...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello All:
>
> > Last week Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, said that he is directing
> > Federal agencies to build transparency, participation and
> > collaboration into the architecture of Federal agencies. I think you'd
> > get the idea by watching Kundra's talk here
>
> > http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/03/doors.html
>
> > Given Sunlight's role to use the revolutionary power of the Internet
> > to make information about the Federal government more meaningfully
> > accessible to citizens, the questions I'll pose to the list are as
> > follows:
>
> > a) Whether this architecture should be determined behind the closed
> > doors of the government, such as its Architecture and Infrastructure
> > Committee, or whether this architecture should be developed in the
> > open where citizens can witness its development?
>
> The conversation about data.gov and architecture should absolutely follow
> the principles Obama Open Government
> Also, we all need to be vigilant to insure that result. There is every
> indication that conversations about specific *details *on this list and
> elsewhere on the web are being seen and taken into consideration. And
> meetings are talking place, such as the meeting from the video to which you
> linked.
>
> The Administration--any Administration--faces a problem with regard to
> actively responding to conversations: informal conversation in public forums
> is frequently interpreted as policy. This problem...transitioning from
> formal hearings and rule commenting and behind closed door lobbying to the
> openness and informal continuous interactions of the web...is what the Open
> Government Directive speaks. Hopefully.
>
> Everyone is learning right now. There are no Government 2.0 experts.
> Everyone needs to participate and yet it is hard to get certain work done in
> large groups. So expect all sorts of conversations. And the best we can do
> is to charge ahead with the conversations and not wait to be asked.
>
>
>
> > b) Whether this architecture should be a government purposed or an
> > Internet-based architecture?
>
> It's hard for me, personally, to see the any new openness coming from these
> players not being based on the Internet. Vivek is 34 yrs old and turned
> toward the web for data feeds at DC Octo. Beth
> Noveck<http://www.nyls.edu/faculty/faculty_profiles/beth_simone_noveck>,
> meetings are talking place, such as the meeting from the video to which you
> linked.
>
> The Administration--any Administration--faces a problem with regard to
> actively responding to conversations: informal conversation in public forums
> is frequently interpreted as policy. This problem...transitioning from
> formal hearings and rule commenting and behind closed door lobbying to the
> openness and informal continuous interactions of the web...is what the Open
> Government Directive speaks. Hopefully.
>
> Everyone is learning right now. There are no Government 2.0 experts.
> Everyone needs to participate and yet it is hard to get certain work done in
> large groups. So expect all sorts of conversations. And the best we can do
> is to charge ahead with the conversations and not wait to be asked.
>
>
>
> > b) Whether this architecture should be a government purposed or an
> > Internet-based architecture?
>
> It's hard for me, personally, to see the any new openness coming from these
> players not being based on the Internet. Vivek is 34 yrs old and turned
> toward the web for data feeds at DC Octo. Beth
> at the Whitehouse OSTP working on the Open Govt Directive, has written about
> Wiki-Government<http://www.amazon.com/Wiki-Government-Technology-Democracy-Stronger/d...>.
> I could go on. (But again, we have to keep the pressure on.)
>
> > Surely, behind the closed doors of the government Federal agencies
> > spend many millions of dollars each year on Enterprise Architecture
> > activities, yet there's no evidence of an outcome. Where information
> > on them is available, the architectures themselves appear rudimentary
> > at best and the problems on which they focus show no evidence of value
> > to citizens. While at the same time the World Wide Web Consortium
> > (W3C) defines a set of open standards through which innovators across
> > the globe continue to outpace the government despite significant
> > electronic government spending. Consider the effectiveness of OpenID
> > v. the government's E-Authentication initiative.
>
> I've been learning a bit about the Enterprise Architecture activies and the
> more I learn the more it seems to have the same strengths and weakness of
> large scale IT normalization projects. The baby is the fact government has
> been working on e-gov for a while and organizations are talking. The
> bathwater is difficulty in experimenting inside government and that
> Enterprise Architecture is still, IMHO, a developing field. (Heh, so the
> govt is experimenting in a sense...)
>
> > c) Shouldn't there be a partnership for Sunlight and W3C in defining
> > an open architecture for an open government? The government seems to
> > get stuck on issues that W3C has been very effective at solving, like
> > information sharing.
>
> John Wonderlich and I are interacting with W3C's e-gov working
> group<http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/>.
>
> > Surely, behind the closed doors of the government Federal agencies
> > spend many millions of dollars each year on Enterprise Architecture
> > activities, yet there's no evidence of an outcome. Where information
> > on them is available, the architectures themselves appear rudimentary
> > at best and the problems on which they focus show no evidence of value
> > to citizens. While at the same time the World Wide Web Consortium
> > (W3C) defines a set of open standards through which innovators across
> > the globe continue to outpace the government despite significant
> > electronic government spending. Consider the effectiveness of OpenID
> > v. the government's E-Authentication initiative.
>
> I've been learning a bit about the Enterprise Architecture activies and the
> more I learn the more it seems to have the same strengths and weakness of
> large scale IT normalization projects. The baby is the fact government has
> been working on e-gov for a while and organizations are talking. The
> bathwater is difficulty in experimenting inside government and that
> Enterprise Architecture is still, IMHO, a developing field. (Heh, so the
> govt is experimenting in a sense...)
>
> > c) Shouldn't there be a partnership for Sunlight and W3C in defining
> > an open architecture for an open government? The government seems to
> > get stuck on issues that W3C has been very effective at solving, like
> > information sharing.
>
> John Wonderlich and I are interacting with W3C's e-gov working
> The definition of an open architecture is hard work and I hope you will
> participate. It will take time.
>
> > I suspect that the bureaucracy that continually fails at keeping pace
> > with society's ability to innovate needs your help in creating an open
> > architecture for an open government.
>
> You are too kind! Sunlight's success is because we practice crowd sourcing
> and tap the thinking of people like yourself. The openness meme has caught
> and is BIT. WE NEED YOUR HELP!
>
> --
>
> Greg Elin
> Chief Evangelist for Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com)
> Sunlight Labs (http://sunlightlabs.com)
> ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
> g...@fotonotes.nethttp://twitter.com/gregelin
> participate. It will take time.
>
> > I suspect that the bureaucracy that continually fails at keeping pace
> > with society's ability to innovate needs your help in creating an open
> > architecture for an open government.
>
> You are too kind! Sunlight's success is because we practice crowd sourcing
> and tap the thinking of people like yourself. The openness meme has caught
> and is BIT. WE NEED YOUR HELP!
>
> --
>
> Greg Elin
> Chief Evangelist for Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com)
> Sunlight Labs (http://sunlightlabs.com)
> ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
Robin Chase
Apr 1, 2009, 4:43:59 PM4/1/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
I was in a discussion this last weekend that I wish you had attended Greg. Chris Messina, Doc Searls, me and others. The topic was the word "open" and was it being co-opted, was it too vague, was it meaningful to the non-technical who might be the decision-makers or implementers?
My take-home from this discussion was to convert the word "open" into what the attributes/benefits of such are:
i.e. open data really means easy data portability, etc.
I just blogged on this for a transportation blog I participate in for the National Journal here. It was my attempt to help the non-technical understand what the point is:
http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/are-we-intermodal-enough-yet.php#1317444
Robin [Chase]
My take-home from this discussion was to convert the word "open" into what the attributes/benefits of such are:
i.e. open data really means easy data portability, etc.
I just blogged on this for a transportation blog I participate in for the National Journal here. It was my attempt to help the non-technical understand what the point is:
http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/are-we-intermodal-enough-yet.php#1317444
Robin [Chase]
Charles Peirce
Apr 1, 2009, 8:34:02 PM4/1/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for your response, Greg. See below.
Yes, I'm happy to put forward a few ideas.
1. Kundra should establish an advisory committee from outside the government. The committee would advise the government on how to establish an open architecture that implements the president's open government priorities: transparency, participation and collaboration in all federal IT systems. I think he says "baked in" in the video. Folks from the Berkman Center, Sunlight, Tim Berners-Lee, Doc Searles, Tim O'Reilly, etc. and just some average joe developers could be part of the advisory committee.
Wikipedia also says advisory committes are part of the Sunshine Act and the records are public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Advisory_Committee_Act
2. Googling Enterprise Architecture for the U.S. Government, you can find this document
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
on Architecture Principles for the U.S. Government from way back in August of 2007. Kundra should immediately update these principles to reflect the President's open government priorities.
3. Kundra can begin by defining a transparency life-cycle for all Federal IT systems. This life-cycle could be implemented incrementally to get some artifacts into the open quickly while the advisory commitee is established.
This is truly good news, Greg. And thanks to all the folks at Sunlight for your dedication on this important intitiave. But, here's a fair question. Are there any artifacts we can see from the data.gov architecture? Is there an architecture? Surely, the Federal government has a well established SDLC, but where are the artifacts they're creating for data.gov?
This too is good news and while recognizing the contribution of Kundra and Noveck, it important to understand the connection between Web Architecture Design principles and an open architecture for an open government.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Overview.html
Great!
Maybe a thought here is: Open Code; Open Architecture!
Will do Greg and thanks again to you and all the folks at Sunlight.
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Greg Elin <ge...@sunlightfoundation.com> wrote:
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for these questions. I've replied inline as best I can. But the gist of what I say is this: the openness is happening and we need to push it. Can you help put forward ideas on doing this correctly? (Respond on list or off.)
Yes, I'm happy to put forward a few ideas.
1. Kundra should establish an advisory committee from outside the government. The committee would advise the government on how to establish an open architecture that implements the president's open government priorities: transparency, participation and collaboration in all federal IT systems. I think he says "baked in" in the video. Folks from the Berkman Center, Sunlight, Tim Berners-Lee, Doc Searles, Tim O'Reilly, etc. and just some average joe developers could be part of the advisory committee.
Wikipedia also says advisory committes are part of the Sunshine Act and the records are public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Advisory_Committee_Act
2. Googling Enterprise Architecture for the U.S. Government, you can find this document
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
on Architecture Principles for the U.S. Government from way back in August of 2007. Kundra should immediately update these principles to reflect the President's open government priorities.
3. Kundra can begin by defining a transparency life-cycle for all Federal IT systems. This life-cycle could be implemented incrementally to get some artifacts into the open quickly while the advisory commitee is established.
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Charlie <syne...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello All:
Last week Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, said that he is directing
Federal agencies to build transparency, participation and
collaboration into the architecture of Federal agencies. I think you'd
get the idea by watching Kundra's talk here
http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/03/doors.html
Given Sunlight's role to use the revolutionary power of the Internet
to make information about the Federal government more meaningfully
accessible to citizens, the questions I'll pose to the list are as
follows:
a) Whether this architecture should be determined behind the closed
doors of the government, such as its Architecture and Infrastructure
Committee, or whether this architecture should be developed in the
open where citizens can witness its development?
The conversation about data.gov and architecture should absolutely follow the principles Obama Open Government Memo. Also, we all need to be vigilant to insure that result. There is every indication that conversations about specific details on this list and elsewhere on the web are being seen and taken into consideration. And meetings are talking place, such as the meeting from the video to which you linked.
This is truly good news, Greg. And thanks to all the folks at Sunlight for your dedication on this important intitiave. But, here's a fair question. Are there any artifacts we can see from the data.gov architecture? Is there an architecture? Surely, the Federal government has a well established SDLC, but where are the artifacts they're creating for data.gov?
The Administration--any Administration--faces a problem with regard to actively responding to conversations: informal conversation in public forums is frequently interpreted as policy. This problem...transitioning from formal hearings and rule commenting and behind closed door lobbying to the openness and informal continuous interactions of the web...is what the Open Government Directive speaks. Hopefully.
Everyone is learning right now. There are no Government 2.0 experts. Everyone needs to participate and yet it is hard to get certain work done in large groups. So expect all sorts of conversations. And the best we can do is to charge ahead with the conversations and not wait to be asked.
b) Whether this architecture should be a government purposed or an
Internet-based architecture?
It's hard for me, personally, to see the any new openness coming from these players not being based on the Internet. Vivek is 34 yrs old and turned toward the web for data feeds at DC Octo. Beth Noveck, at the Whitehouse OSTP working on the Open Govt Directive, has written about Wiki-Government. I could go on. (But again, we have to keep the pressure on.)
This too is good news and while recognizing the contribution of Kundra and Noveck, it important to understand the connection between Web Architecture Design principles and an open architecture for an open government.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Overview.html
Surely, behind the closed doors of the government Federal agencies
spend many millions of dollars each year on Enterprise Architecture
activities, yet there's no evidence of an outcome. Where information
on them is available, the architectures themselves appear rudimentary
at best and the problems on which they focus show no evidence of value
to citizens. While at the same time the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) defines a set of open standards through which innovators across
the globe continue to outpace the government despite significant
electronic government spending. Consider the effectiveness of OpenID
v. the government's E-Authentication initiative.
I've been learning a bit about the Enterprise Architecture activies and the more I learn the more it seems to have the same strengths and weakness of large scale IT normalization projects. The baby is the fact government has been working on e-gov for a while and organizations are talking. The bathwater is difficulty in experimenting inside government and that Enterprise Architecture is still, IMHO, a developing field. (Heh, so the govt is experimenting in a sense...)
c) Shouldn't there be a partnership for Sunlight and W3C in defining
an open architecture for an open government? The government seems to
get stuck on issues that W3C has been very effective at solving, like
information sharing.
John Wonderlich and I are interacting with W3C's e-gov working group. The definition of an open architecture is hard work and I hope you will participate. It will take time.
Great!
I suspect that the bureaucracy that continually fails at keeping pace
with society's ability to innovate needs your help in creating an open
architecture for an open government.
You are too kind! Sunlight's success is because we practice crowd sourcing and tap the thinking of people like yourself.
Maybe a thought here is: Open Code; Open Architecture!
The openness meme has caught and is BIT. WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Will do Greg and thanks again to you and all the folks at Sunlight.
Charlie
Apr 1, 2009, 9:42:42 PM4/1/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
Robin. I understand your interest in clarifying the use of the term open. Just a few comments below.
I'm sure you'll agree there are various accessible definitions in use of the term open according to the context. For example the open source initiative provides the following definition for open source
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
I believe the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order and the Obama Innovation and Technology Plan provide a working definition for the term open in the context of open government. I guess that means the burden's on me to say what I mean by "an open architecture for an open government."
What I can think of now is four things:
1. The Federal government's architecture needs an update to incorporate this working definition of openness. These principles are a good place to start;
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
2. The architecture work products paid for by the public and created by the government must be publicly available; and
3. Kundra should set up an advisory committee from outside the government to help "bake in" transparency, participation and collaboration into every Federal system.
4. To achieve transparency, participation and collaboration government architecture should be internet-based not government purposed.
While I agree that defining a conception implies both a subject and predicate, I'm concerned that statements as above can be misinterpreted out of context. What assume understand you meant to say is something like whitebox reuse offers advantages over blackbox reuse. One would need to carefully qualify the literal claim above.
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Robin Chase <rch...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
I was in a discussion this last weekend that I wish you had attended Greg. Chris Messina, Doc Searls, me and others. The topic was the word "open" and was it being co-opted, was it too vague, was it meaningful to the non-technical who might be the decision-makers or implementers?
I'm sure you'll agree there are various accessible definitions in use of the term open according to the context. For example the open source initiative provides the following definition for open source
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
I believe the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order and the Obama Innovation and Technology Plan provide a working definition for the term open in the context of open government. I guess that means the burden's on me to say what I mean by "an open architecture for an open government."
What I can think of now is four things:
1. The Federal government's architecture needs an update to incorporate this working definition of openness. These principles are a good place to start;
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
2. The architecture work products paid for by the public and created by the government must be publicly available; and
3. Kundra should set up an advisory committee from outside the government to help "bake in" transparency, participation and collaboration into every Federal system.
4. To achieve transparency, participation and collaboration government architecture should be internet-based not government purposed.
My take-home from this discussion was to convert the word "open" into what the attributes/benefits of such are:
i.e. open data really means easy data portability, etc.
While I agree that defining a conception implies both a subject and predicate, I'm concerned that statements as above can be misinterpreted out of context. What assume understand you meant to say is something like whitebox reuse offers advantages over blackbox reuse. One would need to carefully qualify the literal claim above.
John Wonderlich
Apr 1, 2009, 9:58:29 PM4/1/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
I agree with almost all of what you wrote. I don't understand these two points though:
2. The architecture work products paid for by the public and created by the government must be publicly available; and
What is an "architecture work product"? Is there a difference between saying your #2 and saying "all government data should be public" ?
4. To achieve transparency, participation and collaboration government architecture should be internet-based not government purposed.
I don't understand the difference between "internet-based" and "government purposed." Government architecture should not be government purposed?
2. The architecture work products paid for by the public and created by the government must be publicly available; and
4. To achieve transparency, participation and collaboration government architecture should be internet-based not government purposed.
Charlie
Apr 1, 2009, 10:36:05 PM4/1/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for picking up on these points John. I will attempt to clarify below.
Architecture work products are also referred to as artifacts. Googling again for the Federal government's architecture, this document
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/asset.aspx?AssetId=475
appears to identify a number of required artifacts or work products such as a Target EA, an Enterprise Transition Plan, an Exhibit 53 and an EA Segment Report.
Just like code and data, can we see those? We're paying for them.
The document above is a PDF. If we agree that PDFs aredata there's no difference, but I think we'd both prefer turning the PDFs into a useful data serialization.
I haven't been clear here. When I say internet-based I mean an architecture whose design principles are aligned with the design principles of the web referenced here:
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html
Interestingly, these design principles align nicely with the defiition of open in the context of the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order. Specifically the principles of Tolerance, Decentralization, Test of Independent Invention, Evolvability, Free Extension, Language Mixing and the Principle of Least Power.
Agree?
When I say government purposed I mean a different set of principles whose direct alignment with the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order is less clear. For the sake of argument let's illustrate with these principles
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:58 PM, John Wonderlich <johnwon...@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with almost all of what you wrote. I don't understand these two points though:What is an "architecture work product"?
2. The architecture work products paid for by the public and created by the government must be publicly available; and
Architecture work products are also referred to as artifacts. Googling again for the Federal government's architecture, this document
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/asset.aspx?AssetId=475
appears to identify a number of required artifacts or work products such as a Target EA, an Enterprise Transition Plan, an Exhibit 53 and an EA Segment Report.
Just like code and data, can we see those? We're paying for them.
Is there a difference between saying your #2 and saying "all government data should be public" ?
The document above is a PDF. If we agree that PDFs aredata there's no difference, but I think we'd both prefer turning the PDFs into a useful data serialization.
I don't understand the difference between "internet-based" and "government purposed." Government architecture should not be government purposed?
4. To achieve transparency, participation and collaboration government architecture should be internet-based not government purposed.
I haven't been clear here. When I say internet-based I mean an architecture whose design principles are aligned with the design principles of the web referenced here:
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html
Interestingly, these design principles align nicely with the defiition of open in the context of the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order. Specifically the principles of Tolerance, Decentralization, Test of Independent Invention, Evolvability, Free Extension, Language Mixing and the Principle of Least Power.
Agree?
When I say government purposed I mean a different set of principles whose direct alignment with the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order is less clear. For the sake of argument let's illustrate with these principles
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
John Wonderlich
Apr 1, 2009, 11:04:12 PM4/1/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:36 PM, Charlie <syne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for picking up on these points John. I will attempt to clarify below.
This helps enormously.
> Thanks for picking up on these points John. I will attempt to clarify below.
> Architecture work products are also referred to as artifacts. Googling again
> for the Federal government's architecture, this document
>
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/asset.aspx?AssetId=475
>
> appears to identify a number of required artifacts or work products such as
> a Target EA, an Enterprise Transition Plan, an Exhibit 53 and an EA Segment
> Report.
>
> Just like code and data, can we see those? We're paying for them.
-- the folks creating these documents, in my experience, have been
very open to interaction. (One of the Enterprise Architecture
principles, after all, is "Federal Agencies Collaborate with other
Governments and People"
>
>>
>> Is there a difference between saying your #2 and saying "all government
>> data should be public" ?
>
> The document above is a PDF. If we agree that PDFs aredata there's no
> difference, but I think we'd both prefer turning the PDFs into a useful data
> serialization.
usage of "artifact."
>
>>
>> 4. To achieve transparency, participation and collaboration government
>> architecture should be internet-based not government purposed.
>>
>> I don't understand the difference between "internet-based" and "government
>> purposed." Government architecture should not be government purposed?
>
> I haven't been clear here. When I say internet-based I mean an architecture
> whose design principles are aligned with the design principles of the web
> referenced here:
>
> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html
>
> Interestingly, these design principles align nicely with the defiition of
> open in the context of the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order.
> Specifically the principles of Tolerance, Decentralization, Test of
> Independent Invention, Evolvability, Free Extension, Language Mixing and the
> Principle of Least Power.
>
> Agree?
laudable. They also strike me as different in kind from the Federal
Enterprise Architecture principles.
>
> When I say government purposed I mean a different set of principles whose
> direct alignment with the Transparency and Open Government Executive Order
> is less clear. For the sake of argument let's illustrate with these
> principles
>
> http://www.cio.gov/documents/Architecture_Principles_US_Govt_8-2007.pdf
Government directive. The ways that they are not good enough yet,
however, seem to me to have more to do with public data availability
than they do with Internet design principles. I think this is
reflected in the Kundra model, that stresses public data availability
as fundamental. In terms of the Enterprise Architecture Assessment
Framework, I think what we're seeing is:
A coalition of people inside and outside government (here, the
Business reference model), is pushing for the fundamental change (the
Data reference model -- think of DC OCTO's page of feeds, or the much
discusses data.gov), which will require some degree of a new
(technical reference model, or hardware to make it happen), to enable
better performance (the Performance Reference Model).
It's a reframing of what's most fundamental, or an assertion that all
agency is contingent on information.
That shift may be fueled by some lessons from the design of the
Internet, I guess, but that seems secondary to me. Although I could
certainly be convinced otherwise.
ndic...@gmail.com
Apr 2, 2009, 11:36:38 PM4/2/09
to Open House Project
Having lived with the Federal Enterprise Architecture and various
other DoD, HHS and USAID ones, my jaded view of architectures is they
usually end up to be one of the biggest boons to large govt
contractors ever conceived. No amount of money is too much to spend on
a good, comprehensive architecture, and there never is a good time to
end, as you just never can get quite enough detail.
Do these belong to the public? Sure, but personally, I'd take a
Snickers bar over an agency's FEA response any day - Snickers bars are
FAR more satisfying, and probably worth more on the open market. But
that's just me. Then again if I was a large govt contractor instead of
an independent consultant, I'd be salivating at the RFP in the
pipeline for a govt architecture on transparency - megabucks for 5
years here we come!
On a more serious note, most architecture efforts suffer from either
asking someone to organize their stuff for someone else's purposes
(what the FEA became - it benefited OMB, but not DoD, for instance -
for DoD it was just another reporting exercise), or from a tendency to
want to describe the current AS-IS world forever. Usually very little
time is spent on the Performance Reference Model stuff (probably the
most important part of the FEA from an outcome and strategy
perspective) and far far far too much time is spent on the lower level
ones like the data reference model. And again, coming up with an
architecture that benefits everyone - meaning it actually helps guide
and coordinate myriads of development efforts across different areas
in a way that benefits all stakeholders is not an easy thing.
If Kundra does go with the architecture thing, I hope and pray he
redefines the term and dramatically simplifies it. The ideas look
terrific on paper, its the implementation where the problem has
occurred. Guiding principles makes sense, as do "Must do" aspects of
projects (this is what I hear when Kundra talks about transparency
fundamentally changing who IT projects are architected). In listening
to the video referenced above, I heard more about "architecting" than
architecture. IT projects that are architected with transparency
baked in makes far more sense to me than an open government
architecture that everyone builds to.
other DoD, HHS and USAID ones, my jaded view of architectures is they
usually end up to be one of the biggest boons to large govt
contractors ever conceived. No amount of money is too much to spend on
a good, comprehensive architecture, and there never is a good time to
end, as you just never can get quite enough detail.
Do these belong to the public? Sure, but personally, I'd take a
Snickers bar over an agency's FEA response any day - Snickers bars are
FAR more satisfying, and probably worth more on the open market. But
that's just me. Then again if I was a large govt contractor instead of
an independent consultant, I'd be salivating at the RFP in the
pipeline for a govt architecture on transparency - megabucks for 5
years here we come!
On a more serious note, most architecture efforts suffer from either
asking someone to organize their stuff for someone else's purposes
(what the FEA became - it benefited OMB, but not DoD, for instance -
for DoD it was just another reporting exercise), or from a tendency to
want to describe the current AS-IS world forever. Usually very little
time is spent on the Performance Reference Model stuff (probably the
most important part of the FEA from an outcome and strategy
perspective) and far far far too much time is spent on the lower level
ones like the data reference model. And again, coming up with an
architecture that benefits everyone - meaning it actually helps guide
and coordinate myriads of development efforts across different areas
in a way that benefits all stakeholders is not an easy thing.
If Kundra does go with the architecture thing, I hope and pray he
redefines the term and dramatically simplifies it. The ideas look
terrific on paper, its the implementation where the problem has
occurred. Guiding principles makes sense, as do "Must do" aspects of
projects (this is what I hear when Kundra talks about transparency
fundamentally changing who IT projects are architected). In listening
to the video referenced above, I heard more about "architecting" than
architecture. IT projects that are architected with transparency
baked in makes far more sense to me than an open government
architecture that everyone builds to.
Charlie
Apr 4, 2009, 11:15:26 AM4/4/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for the background. See below for a few follow-up questions.
I had suspected as much. The geographic distribution of Enterprise Architecture expenditures seems a good candidate for a Google map. Would you expect that most of the Enterprise Architecture money is spent in the Washington, DC. area? Would you have a sense of the labor rates? Are architects in DC better paid than for instance architects in Iowa? If these expenditures are mostly localized, one important outcome of an open architecture for an open government would be to dis-intermediate localized control over expenditures like Enterprise Architecture.
Another question: I've been poking around a bit and I've seen a number of claims that the Federal Enterprise Architecture is authorized under the Clinger/Cohen Act. Yet, the Clinger/Cohen Act makes no mention of Enterprise Architecture. Clinger/Cohen in fact specifies Information Technology Architecture as a responsibility of every CIO.
http://www.cio.gov/Documents/it_management_reform_act_Feb_1996.html
How many CIOs have actually produced an Information Technology Architecture? If not why and isn't someone supposed to be checking when an agency doesn't comply with the law?
I think your annecdote reinforces my concern that we need an open architecture for an open government. I beleive that architecture projects, just like code and data projects, should be dis-intermediated from localized control. I suspect large government contractors have very high overhead and the public is paying more than necessary. I also suspect an open architecture would also provide for more competition and a level-er playing field.
Is there information on how much these reporting exercises cost and whether there's any evidence of how much better things are for the money that's been spent? The Enterprise Architecture literature indicates that's its purpose, yet its hard to find any evidence by Googling around. As a rough estimate, is the government spending closer to $10m per year or $100m per year?
This seems a perfect example of an institutional coordination cost that is either much higher, or doesn't exist on the Internet. If we contrast what appears to be an ineffective institutional mechanism with what an open architecture can do with a tool like Flickr, I suspect that's a strong argument for an open architecure. Again my belief is that the government's architecture should be closely aligned with the Internet design principles. Government-purposed seems very costly and ineffective.
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:36 PM, ndic...@gmail.com <ndic...@gmail.com> wrote:
Having lived with the Federal Enterprise Architecture and various
other DoD, HHS and USAID ones, my jaded view of architectures is they
usually end up to be one of the biggest boons to large govt
contractors ever conceived.
No amount of money is too much to spend on
a good, comprehensive architecture, and there never is a good time to
end, as you just never can get quite enough detail.
I had suspected as much. The geographic distribution of Enterprise Architecture expenditures seems a good candidate for a Google map. Would you expect that most of the Enterprise Architecture money is spent in the Washington, DC. area? Would you have a sense of the labor rates? Are architects in DC better paid than for instance architects in Iowa? If these expenditures are mostly localized, one important outcome of an open architecture for an open government would be to dis-intermediate localized control over expenditures like Enterprise Architecture.
Another question: I've been poking around a bit and I've seen a number of claims that the Federal Enterprise Architecture is authorized under the Clinger/Cohen Act. Yet, the Clinger/Cohen Act makes no mention of Enterprise Architecture. Clinger/Cohen in fact specifies Information Technology Architecture as a responsibility of every CIO.
http://www.cio.gov/Documents/it_management_reform_act_Feb_1996.html
How many CIOs have actually produced an Information Technology Architecture? If not why and isn't someone supposed to be checking when an agency doesn't comply with the law?
Do these belong to the public? Sure, but personally, I'd take a
Snickers bar over an agency's FEA response any day - Snickers bars are
FAR more satisfying, and probably worth more on the open market. But
that's just me. Then again if I was a large govt contractor instead of
an independent consultant, I'd be salivating at the RFP in the
pipeline for a govt architecture on transparency - megabucks for 5
years here we come!
I think your annecdote reinforces my concern that we need an open architecture for an open government. I beleive that architecture projects, just like code and data projects, should be dis-intermediated from localized control. I suspect large government contractors have very high overhead and the public is paying more than necessary. I also suspect an open architecture would also provide for more competition and a level-er playing field.
On a more serious note, most architecture efforts suffer from either
asking someone to organize their stuff for someone else's purposes
(what the FEA became - it benefited OMB, but not DoD, for instance -
for DoD it was just another reporting exercise),
Is there information on how much these reporting exercises cost and whether there's any evidence of how much better things are for the money that's been spent? The Enterprise Architecture literature indicates that's its purpose, yet its hard to find any evidence by Googling around. As a rough estimate, is the government spending closer to $10m per year or $100m per year?
This seems a perfect example of an institutional coordination cost that is either much higher, or doesn't exist on the Internet. If we contrast what appears to be an ineffective institutional mechanism with what an open architecture can do with a tool like Flickr, I suspect that's a strong argument for an open architecure. Again my belief is that the government's architecture should be closely aligned with the Internet design principles. Government-purposed seems very costly and ineffective.
Eric C. Kansa
Apr 4, 2009, 12:18:13 PM4/4/09
to openhous...@googlegroups.com
I think this is a complicated issue, and I suspect that one of the
things that keep costs so high is that there is a tendency to emphasize
highly specified and highly centralized approaches. You see the
development of very elaborate standards that very complex and difficult
to implement and adhere too. For the federal government, which is so
sprawling and built of so many different offices, agencies, and
institutions with very varied histories, roles, and obligations, it is
very difficult and (perhaps impossible) to effectively deploy enterprise
style systems. In the commercial sector, you often see entire
organizations reorganized to fit an enterprise architecture (and even
then these often fail, take a look at this paper:
Retting, Cynthia. 2007. “The Trouble With Enterprise Software.” MIT
Sloan Management Review 49:21-27.
). Reorganizing federal bureaucracies along the lines of corporate
"business process re-engineering" is often just not feasible.
This contrast the general architecture of the public World Wide Web,
which is far more complex, dynamic, and friendly to innovation than any
enterprise architecture, and is based on very simple and easily
implemented underlying standards, concepts, and approaches. This is why
we got so excited about OMB's decision to use "feeds" for recovery
transparency measures. Feeds are a very distributed, robust, Web-style
approach and stand in pretty stark contrast to much of what's typical of
today's enterprise architectures.
Anyway, one of the areas that concerns me is that transparency advocates
typically under appreciate the importance of architectures. For example,
many people seem to want "one stop shopping" for recovery disclosure
data, and imagine or explicitly ask for a centralized source for all
recovery data. I'm VERY wary of the centralization aspect, since in
centralizing the data you add another layer of processing (and potential
massaging) of the reported data. You also have a single vulnerable point
of failure.
I'd much prefer to see agencies that directly oversee the recovery
spending report in such a way that is directly visible to the public. If
they do so with mechanisms like feeds (coupled by some simple XML
formats for the reported data), Recovery.gov and public watch dog groups
can aggregate the data with no trouble using widely available web
applications (standard feed aggregation services like Feedburner). In
other words, "one stop shopping" need not require a centralized player,
but can be accomplished in a more robust, and ultimately more
transparent, decentralized manner.
Best!
-Eric
Charlie wrote:
> Thanks for the background. See below for a few follow-up questions.
>
> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:36 PM, ndic...@gmail.com
> <mailto:ndic...@gmail.com> <ndic...@gmail.com
--
---------------------------------
Eric C. Kansa, PhD.
Executive Director
Information and Service Design Program
Adjunct Professor
UC Berkeley, School of Information
http://isd.ischool.berkeley.edu/
Office: (510) 643-4757
Mobile: (415) 425-7380
Fax: (510) 642-5814
---------------------------------
things that keep costs so high is that there is a tendency to emphasize
highly specified and highly centralized approaches. You see the
development of very elaborate standards that very complex and difficult
to implement and adhere too. For the federal government, which is so
sprawling and built of so many different offices, agencies, and
institutions with very varied histories, roles, and obligations, it is
very difficult and (perhaps impossible) to effectively deploy enterprise
style systems. In the commercial sector, you often see entire
organizations reorganized to fit an enterprise architecture (and even
then these often fail, take a look at this paper:
Retting, Cynthia. 2007. “The Trouble With Enterprise Software.” MIT
Sloan Management Review 49:21-27.
). Reorganizing federal bureaucracies along the lines of corporate
"business process re-engineering" is often just not feasible.
This contrast the general architecture of the public World Wide Web,
which is far more complex, dynamic, and friendly to innovation than any
enterprise architecture, and is based on very simple and easily
implemented underlying standards, concepts, and approaches. This is why
we got so excited about OMB's decision to use "feeds" for recovery
transparency measures. Feeds are a very distributed, robust, Web-style
approach and stand in pretty stark contrast to much of what's typical of
today's enterprise architectures.
Anyway, one of the areas that concerns me is that transparency advocates
typically under appreciate the importance of architectures. For example,
many people seem to want "one stop shopping" for recovery disclosure
data, and imagine or explicitly ask for a centralized source for all
recovery data. I'm VERY wary of the centralization aspect, since in
centralizing the data you add another layer of processing (and potential
massaging) of the reported data. You also have a single vulnerable point
of failure.
I'd much prefer to see agencies that directly oversee the recovery
spending report in such a way that is directly visible to the public. If
they do so with mechanisms like feeds (coupled by some simple XML
formats for the reported data), Recovery.gov and public watch dog groups
can aggregate the data with no trouble using widely available web
applications (standard feed aggregation services like Feedburner). In
other words, "one stop shopping" need not require a centralized player,
but can be accomplished in a more robust, and ultimately more
transparent, decentralized manner.
Best!
-Eric
Charlie wrote:
> Thanks for the background. See below for a few follow-up questions.
>
> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:36 PM, ndic...@gmail.com
---------------------------------
Eric C. Kansa, PhD.
Executive Director
Information and Service Design Program
Adjunct Professor
UC Berkeley, School of Information
http://isd.ischool.berkeley.edu/
Office: (510) 643-4757
Mobile: (415) 425-7380
Fax: (510) 642-5814
---------------------------------
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