f Why this blog is moribund, and why I believe what I'm doing instead is vital to the future at Stephenson blogs on data dynamite et al.

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Why this blog is moribund, and why I believe what I’m doing instead is vital to the future

By WDavidStephenson | February 21, 2009

Permit me to re-introduce myself. I used to write this blog.In fact, some of you may remember the days when I’d try to write 3-4 thoughtful posts a day. I like to think the result was pretty informative.But that was then, and this is now. Two things have happened in the six months that mean the blog is pretty much mothballed for the foreseeable future:

  1. I fell hook-line-and-sinker for Twitter, which I once poo-pooed as an exercise in narcissistic navel-gazing. By contrast, I’ve found that not only is it an effective means of communicating, sometimes on pretty sophisticated topics, but also that it’s great for the kind of ad hoc emergency communication that I specialized in. Therefore, if you want to track what I’m doing, your best bet is to subscribe to my Twitter feed.
  2. More important, I’m facing a really tight deadline, the end of March, to complete a book manuscript, “Democratizing Data — to transform government, workplaces, and our lives,” about what I believe is a revolutionary approach perfectly suited to the combination of circumstances we face today: total loss of faith in government and business, the need for fewer remaining workers to do more with less, and to come up with creative solutions to increasingly complex problems.I believe the democratizing data is the way:
    • making our organizations data-centric: by that I mean instead of laboriously retrieving data from organizational data bases, adding informative metadata to it with XML or KML tags, and distributing it automatically through syndication.
    • designing software (open-source is particularly well suited to this approach) so that all users will be able to automatically share the data, rather than the past practice, in which data pasted into applications was then trapped in those applications.
    • designing a seamless cycling in which workers (with varying levels of permissions based on their roles), regulators, and even the public, will have access to this data, on a real-time basis. Experience from leaders in the field have shown this can be done while respecting strict privacy and security standards.
    • The results will include:
      • giving workers the real-time, often location-based information they need to do their jobs more effectively, and to collaborate with those in other offices and programs who need to share the same data. In many cases, this will be the first time they have had access to this data
      • substituting “smart” regulation for the abysmal failures of the Bush Administration. Following the Dutch model can dramatically reduce corporate compliance costs, and improve regulation by allowing various agencies to share the same data on a real-time basis (there is some evidence such an approach might have actually avoided the excesses that led to the economic collapse).
      • rebuilding public confidence in government and business through a “don’t trust us, track us” approach to transparency that provides facts and lets the public, media and watchdog groups judge for themselves whether officials are truthful.
      • even leveraging the “crowdsourcing” phenomenon to actively involve the public as co-creators of valuable new services, as was done by the District of Columbia’s innovative “Apps for Democracy” contest.

      I’m getting great initial reaction to the approach (probably due in great part to the fact that I was originally going to co-author the book with Vivek Kundra, the charismatic DC CTO who is now likely to become the Obama Administration’s e-government director, in which case it’s likely he’d have to withdraw from the project. Whether or not Vivek is an active participant, the book reflects much of his thinking). The video above (there are 3 other sections, which you can also find on You Tube — it was a hand-held version shot by an attendee at a recent O’Reilly IgniteBoston event) will give you a good introduction to what I’m talking about, as will numerous Slideshares I’ve done.

      So that’s why I haven’t been blogging and am unlikely to resume doing so in the near future (although look for a new wiki I’ll be launching in the next week or so to test sections of the book and solicit crowd-sourcing ideas for it! See you around campus!

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Topics: technology, empowering public, policy and politics, collaboration, e-gov transformation | |