Post in Conf - U.S. Independent Government Observers Task Force - 4-5 Aug 2008 - Chicago

Jun 02 04:20 UTC

From:
http://www.igotf.org

Attending? Please <email obscured>.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Independent Government Observers Task Force
IGOtf.org
Gleacher Conference Center
University of Chicago
August 4-5
I A NON-CONFERENCE I

ORGANIZER
Public.Resource.Org

LOCALHOST
EveryBlock
PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
EFF
CALI
Creative Commons

SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS
Omidyar Network
Sunlight Foundation
Google
Yahoo!

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.

* In Oregon, student reporters at Willamette University provide same-day
summaries of all the opinions of U.S. and Oregon Supreme Courts
decisions, and weekly summaries of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
decisions.

* At the University of Arkansas, students have created a National
Agriculture Law Reporter.

* Marcia Oddi, a sole practitioner and independent recorder of Indiana
Law, won the Excellence in Public Information and Education Award from
the Indiana Judges Association for her work.

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:

* Better Presentation. Access to crime statistics, one of the most
important feeds from local government, is being provided using far more
innovative and intuitive fashion by independent observers, such as
Stamen Design for the City of Oakland and EveryBlock for Chicago and
other cities.

* A More Comprehensive Archive. The Internet Archive has been scanning
millions of pages of Government Printing Office documents, digital data
that the government does not possess. Likewise, the U.S. judiciary does
not possess a digital archive of their own opinions, a function being
provided on the Internet by a coalition of nonprofit and academic
organizations with the active cooperation of several small businesses.

* A More Timely Archive. Same-day summaries and timely news feeds
announcing new opinions are not being provided by the courts. In the
Legislative branch, far more timely information is provided by
GovTrack.us, a service operated by a graduate student, than is being
provided by the U.S. Congress.

* More Rigorous Formatting. All too often, government publishes data in
proprietary formats instead of using open industry standards that can be
used with many different kinds of software. In some cases, copyright is
mistakenly asserted or the public domain nature of the data is unclear.
Independent observers ]can reformat data into standards such as XML
allowing far more sophisticated applications to be built.

* Bulk Access to Data. Government often provides data at a retail
level, creating web sites meant to be used by end users. For example,
the Government Printing Office has a site that allows a keyword search
of documents such as the Federal Register and the Congressional Record,
but does not provide a convenient mechanism for others to download the
series in bulk to create alternative sites. Independent observers are
able to repackage this information and make it available to developers
for reuse without restriction.
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:
* Encourage technical coordination.
* Encourage training and outreach efforts.
* Raise visibility of efforts by citizens to increase transparency of
government.
* Determine the need for and arrive a plan for the creation of support
services, such as scanning of archives or hosting of content.
* Determine the governance mechanism and the model for financing of
future IGOTF meetings.

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:

* Case Law (Working Group Chair: Carl Malamud, carl at media dot org).
This working group brings together individuals groups involved in the
day-to-day work of putting the courts on-line. Topics that will be
considered include markup of citations in cases, "universal resolvers"
for mapping citations to URLs, recycling of PACER and other documents,
and other subjects as appropriate.

* Municipal Governments (Working Group Chair: Daniel X. O'Neil, danx at
everyblock dot com). This group will focus on issues involved in
citizens attempting to build interfaces around municipal government
data. Technical issues such as harvesting techniques and presentation
techniques will be covered, as will social issues such as negotiating
for the release of public data.

* Government and Copyright Issues (Working Group Chair: Fred Von
Lohmann, fred at eff dot org). This working group will focus on
assertion of copyright by government groups.

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.

Accommodations

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 <email obscured>.