Public Information and the Generational Divide

Older folks seeking public records via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) look to a government official and ask, “May I have...?”  They wonder how long they must wait for a response and how much it will cost.

Millennials seeking public records, expecting proactive disclosure, look at their tablets and ask themselves, “Where can I find...?”  More and more the information will be at their fingertips. They don’t worry about cost, knowing the information will be free.

Older folks wishing to improve FOIA can beseech their legislators, but are often ignored.

Millennials, determined to exploit new technology, look to people like Derek Dobies of Jackson, Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, John Lui of New York and Dr. Clifford Lampe at the University of Michigan for guidance.

It's almost as if the two groups occupy parallel universes. The older group seems to dwell on tinkering with the clunky model of information by request to a government gatekeeper, for all appearances oblivious to the fast, easy and free access available online through proactive disclosure.

Communities with governments that resist proactive disclosure will decline.

Communities with governments that practice openness will thrive.

How do I know? I read tarot cards.

Reviewing Government Spending in Real-Time

Developing a website to make government records, especially financial records, transparent can be a monumental and expensive task.  That’s why I’m impressed by the pains taken by New York City to make its innovative Checkbook software available to all.

In January, 2013, an open source platform based on New York City’s Checkbook NYC 2.0 was introduced on YouTube by Comptroller John C. Liu.

The application is available now to any state or local government.  It enables the public to search easily from a dashboard and review government spending in real-time.  

Government contracts and underlying sub-contracts are absorbed and integrated into the website, so overspending can be observed as soon as it begins.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb98yCJPFSw

Karl Fogel of Open Tech Strategies, LLC wrote, “...the release of the Checkbook NYC code...is significant because of a larger initiative that accompanies it. Long before the code release, the Comptroller's Office started a serious planning process to ensure that the code could be easily adopted by other municipalities, supported by other vendors, and eventually become a long-term multi-stakeholder project...”

“Most cities run an internal financial management system (FMS) of some kind. The FMS manages the city's expenses, revenue, contracts, payroll, and budget, and naturally allows authorized access only. New York City's FMS just exports its non-sensitive data fields on a regular basis to Checkbook NYC—the export is filtered so that any sensitive data never even goes into the public-facing Checkbook system.”

New York’s Comptroller asked FMS vendors “...to contribute in-kind resources to Checkbook maintenance and development—especially to smooth the Checkbook deployment process. That way you'd lower the bar to Checkbook adoption for many cities at one stroke, and at the same time get multiple vendors involved in the code base.”

http://opensource.com/government/13/6/open-source-checkbook

Rebecca Williams of the Sunlight Foundation reported, “...in addition to the spending and expenditure information most similar platforms display, [NYC’s Checkbook] includes information about other essential financial datasets (including budgets, revenue, contracts, and payroll), as well.”

“...this might be the first instance of city officials proactively and premeditatively building civic applications with the intent of having other cities -- and cities with varied software vendors at that -- use and contribute to making that software better.”

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/06/10/the-future-of-civic-software-reuse/

We should encourage adoption of Checkbook NYC 2.0 in state agencies, counties and municipalities throughout the country.