The long tail of eGovernence

What an interesting article, although it seems very quaint at times! So much has changed in only a few years, most of which I would say is expectations of the general public. A few things stuck out though, such as:

-          The two seminal events in the arrival of the internet as a “destination” appeal to the two stereotypes of internet users – geeks (the Mars Pathfinder mission) and those seeking salacious material (Clinton/Lewinski). It’s also interesting that they were both government driven, but I would venture to say that most people got to those websites through more traditional .com sites like cnn.com, yahoo.com or other “news” portals.

-          Not sure I agree with the contracting as the biggest benefit of the internet. Department of Defense shares massive amounts of intelligence over the internet (both secure and unsecure networks). I’d also say that most low-level contracting work is done in person. There is no doubt that the internet is changing how we purchase things, especially large and complex items. But to single out just contracting is a little short-sighted into how vital these networks have become to front line operations.

-          This was obviously written before President Obama – who has a well designed internet site with lots of information, and who was an admitted BlackBerry addict.

-          It’s funny to think that it took an overhaul to add search functionality to the Washington State website. Sometimes I forget what it was like before Google and the other search engines. Everything was portal-like before, with lists of categories and lists within lists.

-          The Hatch Act is a big deal – there is a difference between election sites and official homepages. It’s very important to understand the shadow the Hatch Act extends over everything government officials do. For example, when elected officials want to visit a government building, holding a press conference becomes tricky as electioneering language is outlawed.

What I felt was the best point of the article was the paragraph describing what government officials and academics want out of eGovernment sites. In a nutshell, what academics and political wonks want is much different from what regular people want. Most people just want to get in, get the information they want, and get out. For most people, government isn’t something to interact with (except around elections) but something to either get something from or give something to.

One can argue that this is the point of our representative democracy. For the most part, I don’t really care about how the roads are made, I just care that they are made. Now, if fraud or waste is involved in the process, than the watchdogs should in theory expose them. But for the most part, as we have discussed in class numerous times, most people just have too many things going to on to follow how the process works.

But, this isn’t to say that access to this information isn’t important or useful. It’s a long tail of information. Maybe building roads is only interesting to 100 people, but to those 100 people it’s really interesting. Perhaps they are contractors or economic analysts or journalists or academics looking for ways to better improve either the contracting process or the construction process. Or maybe they just really love construction. Either way, all this infomration is meeting their needs.

One thing the article touches on, but doesn’t go into detail about is that information produced by the government is generally the property of, and accessible to, the taxpayer (with the obvious exceptions of medical records and intelligence/DoD reports). While access to this information has often been hailed as the panacea to government transparency, what people don’t often realize is that without context this information is generally useless.

In any given day, a government agency produces huge amounts of data. Just visit www.data.gov and you will see this. What has changed recently though, is requirements that this information be presented in a usable way with some context so that people can repurpose that data into a usable form. For example, EPA produces lots of reports concerning air and water quality. But because they have made public this information in easy to use formats, people have gone out and made use of free online map software to create great resources that normal people can use to check the environment near their home.

While this article was generally optimistic about what the internet can offer in terms of expanding access to government, what is also important to remember is that just because information is available, people won’t always clamor to use it. What I think is more interesting is the long tail effect of this information. That those who are very interested in very specific topics will find the information they want more easily than ever before. What I hope is that this will lead to a greater interest in the intersections of government resulting ultimately in a more informed public.

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