Terms of (Mis)Agreement

[Stephen Buckley]

Dear All,

Three years ago, I recommended (i.e., warned) that, before charging
forward with the White House's Open Government initiative, we needed
to make sure that we agreed on what all these terms meant, less we
"mis-agree" (i.e., mistakenly agree) with each other on how to move
towards those goals.

http://ustransparency.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-four-ideas-at-white-housegovopen.html#terminology

Now, with three years worth of hindsight, it's becoming more and more
apparent that our love of fuzzy buzzwords, combined with our sincere
intentions and exuberance, have produced results that are generally
difficult to discern. In other words, we went on a diet and forgot to
figure out the measures for weighing our progress.

In that regard, this cover article in Government Executive magazine is
a thoughtful piece about pitfalls of mis-agreement in Open
Government. As it is, you can comment on their blog, of course, but I
would invite your comments here where they are much more likely to be
appreciated over the long-term.

http://www.govexec.com/magazine/features/2012/06/truth-behind-transparency/55989/

After all, we can't agree on the metrics for measuring OpenGov, if we
can agree on the terminology for those things (i.e., qualities) that
we are trying to improve and measure.

I have to rush off, so feel free to comment on any statement (and
please quote it) from the GovExec article. I'll make sure that the
speaker gets a copy of your thoughts, with the idea that they will
join the this discussion-thread.

best,

Stephen Buckley
moderator, OpenGovMetrics google-group
sbuc...@opengovmetrics.com
http://twitter.com/opengovmetrics