Clay Johnson is CEO of the Department of Better Technology and co-founder of Blue State Digital,  the firm that built and managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign for the presidency. With the input of Johnson and other thought leaders, Knight Foundation is launching OpenGov and You, a companion to the 2013 Aspen Institute Forum on Communication and Society (FOCAS) that explores how we might tackle the obstacles to government openness and transparency. FOCAS: Clay Johnson

Much of the modern open government movement has its roots in politics. Starting with the Howard Dean campaign for president in 2004, and Dean’s record-breaking fundraising hauls, we saw politicians start recognizing that the Internet, like television and mail, was critical to electoral victory. They started making websites and hiring digital natives to help run their campaigns, and in 2008, you saw many of those digital natives help elect a president and move into the federal administration.

And I think the expectation was that that technology — the kind of engaging technology that helped inspire people to organize and elect Barack Obama — would carry into government. Contractors and vendors certainly thought so: I remember the early days of the Obama administration: For weeks, the Verizon Center arena in Washington, D.C., was wrapped in a banner that said “Adobe means Open Government.” RELATED LINK

“Taking the next steps for open government” by Waldo Jaquith on KnightBlog

“Understanding the citizen” by Ellen S. Miller on KnightBlog

View the series, “Open Gov and You“

Data.gov, to help citizens get data, Recovery.gov, to help citizens track spending, a brand new Federal Register, for the legions of people who track Federal Register notices every day, and We the People — a website with the promise of making the executive branch accountable to the public.

In our eagerness, I think we not only failed to test some assumptions, but we also — in our lack of knowledge of how government worked — missed some fairly significant opportunities to create change. And more importantly, in our rush to engage with the public, we probably created some distractions that could actively cause harm.

Take We the People as an example. It’s the White House’s acclaimed petition website that lets anybody create a petition and if they get over a set-number of responses, the White House says it will respond. It’s a compelling user experience; it’s simple to start petitions, and to sign them. So compelling that this net neutrality petition has over 100,000 signatures. This other one has just under 100,000. And while a third one, only weeks old, has a paltry 60,000, it still as of this writing dwarves requests for comments on the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory comment system (the one that matters): just over 30,000 comments have been submitted.

I won’t argue that We the People is an effective tool for getting the White House to respond to things. But can anyone argue that those quarter million signatures would be far more powerful if they were in front of the regulators in charge of regulating net neutrality? Further, can you believe the design of that commenting system? Go ahead, try to comment.

What if, instead of building a petitioning system, the White House built systems and policies to make regulatory requests for comments concise easy to understand, adjusted policies such that comments could be taken in from a variety of sources (like social media), acknowledged that it shouldn’t be up to the citizen to figure out which regulatory body their comments needed to go to, and developed a centralized method (like We the People) for people to submit both their comments, and their +1s? That would lead to an actually more accountable, transparent, and participatory government. 

There are countless other examples of strong “engagement” taking precedence over process reform. Does a revamped FederalRegister.gov make this notice any more understandable? Does Recovery.gov do any good when it’s this easy to send in bad data? Do open government mandates matter if federal employees are told that exposing data to the public is a security risk?

It’s our job as citizens to engage with government. But that can only happen when you start working from the back of the house towards the front of the house. First, streamline the way regulators ask the public for feedback. Then, streamline the way regulators evaluate and process information. Then once all that’s done, build the beautiful, engaging technology that the citizen will use. 

When you start looking through the lens of technology at the difficulties government has, you come to a realization: The bones of this building are rotten. Let’s not focus on repainting the front door until we’re pretty sure the ceiling isn’t going to cave in.

View the entire video series, “Open Gov and You“