Attending? Please rsvp@resource.org.
Independent Government Observers
The Internet has created a new generation of individuals and institutes that practice the time-honored tradition of observing and reporting on the activities of government. These are reporters in the sense of court reporters, not journalists, auditors as in independent investigators rather than CPAs.
The classic independent observer is the court reporter, such as Henry Wheaton and Richard Peters, two businessmen in the early days of the Republic who took it upon themselves to collect, print, and sell the decisions of courts. Indeed, it was a business spat between those two that led to the classic pronouncement by the Supreme Court on works of government:
The Court is unanimously of opinion that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions, and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right.
Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834)
The new breed of government observers span all walks of life. In addition to a vibrant commercial sector, there are increasingly a number of nonprofit, academic, and individual citizen efforts.
The movement to observe the working of government extend to the legislative and executive branches as well and operate at all levels of government from municipal and special purpose local districts to the state capitols and Washington, D.C. At the local level, small businesses such as EveryBlock have taken it upon themselves to report crime, restaurant inspection, and other vital statistics.
One might argue that providing a comprehensive, archival, easy-to-use interface to the decisions and publications of government is in fact the job of government. But, transparency and sunlight not only keep our government accountable, they make it better. Independently run observers of government can make government more effective by providing:
Organization and Purpose of the IGOtf Non-Conference
In 2007, Public.Resource.Org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, organized two meetings of people involved in placing government information on-line. The first meeting took place October 12, 2007 and brought together CEOs, professors, and nonprofit executives involved in placing case law on the Internet for free access. That meeting was extremely productive in introducing players to each other in a series of cooperative efforts.
On December 7 and 8, a 30-person meeting was called with a broader audience of people working across local, state, and federal levels and with all 3 branches of branches of government. The meeting resulted in additional cooperative efforts among numerous players and the group was able to reach a consensus on 8 fundamental principles of open government.
These initial meetings received sponsorship support from the Omidyar Network, the Sunlight Foundation, Yahoo!, and Google. It was clear to the organizers that any subsequent meetings would need an open procedure for attendance, would need to scale up to larger number of participants, and would require additional organizational efforts.
The results of the post-meeting assessment and interviews with participants and potential sponsors has led us create a more formal structure for a meeting that can accommodate 100 delegates. We have set out several goals for the Task Force in general and the first meeting in particular:
We call this meeting on August 4-5 a "non-conference." Unlike a conference, please do not count on sitting in an audience and listening to speakers read slides. The two rooms will be allocated to a series of working groups per the draft agenda below.
Draft Agenda of the IGOTF Meeting
The non-conference is structured around 3 sets of working group activities:
If you would like to organize a working group, please contact carl at media dot org. If you would like to participate in a working group, please contact the working group chairs. If you put word "IGOTF" in your subject line, that will help us filter mail.
Accomodations
There is no official conference accomodation, but some people are staying at the Embassy Suites Chicago - Downtown/Lakefront at 511 North Columbus Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. The phone number is 1-312-836-5900. The rooms are $250-$300, but many of these are 2-bedroom "suites." Please let us know if you discover alternative hotels.
Attending? Please rsvp@resource.org.