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Samantha Power [paraphrasing]

President has said:  “When we gather here next year [Sept 2011], we should bring specific commitments on how we’re going to promote transparency, fight corruption, and enhance democratic accountability by harnessing technology.” This was a major challenge issued in September 2010.

A number of governments then gathered together to think about principles and commitments.  There were a few premises that the President sought to ensure were present. First, it isn’t enough for a group of richer, developed countries to sit around and talk about open government.  We can do this in OECD etc.  There are countries that are leading in this area that are emerging democracies, like Indonesia and Brazil and others.  We needed to bring in these new actors.

Second, the President stressed that government-to-government conversations alone weren’t going to cut it.  This is especially true when you’re talking about citizen empowerment.

Thirdly, the President said that he has long prioritized the fight against corruption as central to foreign policy.  While part of the motivation is coming from donor governments, a driving imperative is that corruption is a great assault on human dignity and on democratic structure. So often the experience of government in developing countries lacks trust.

Fourth, trust in public governments and public service is way down; trend has been going in the wrong direction for several decades. This is a challenge to the basic social contract. We are scratching our heads to think about ways in which we can enhance that social contract and do our part to enhance trust.

Finally, in tough economic times, it’s especially important that citizens know that government is spending its money wisely. Understanding savings associated with transparency and accountability are also important.

Between 2010 and the fall of  2011, some countries (incl Mexico, Philippines, Brazil..) came together and crafted multilateral framework for lesson-learning, less0n-sharing across boundaries and governments.

So – what is OGP?  In September of 2011, eight govts came together to release national action plans, making commitments about how they would move forward. Govts issued the plans, but civil society deeply involved as a partner. What makes this framework unique is that eight govts and nine civil society groups are working together on what happens with OGP.

In April, Brazil will host second ministerial meeting on OGP.  More than 40 additional countries will come forward and issue their national action plans.  Those plans have to have been developed in close consultation with civil society.  What we’ve found around the world is that civil society groups are grateful to have OGP as a hook on which to hang demands of head of state. This makes civil servants feel more empowered also, because head of state has to signal that this is worthwhile.

Officials tend to talk to one another but don’t necessarily develop mechanisms for concrete feedback from citizens – getting these mechanisms in place can enhance trust in government and isn’t necessarily very expensive.

So we’ve seen govts learning from one another, from civil society groups – lots of cross-pollination. This is real energy for best practices. People come to OGP events ready to listen and learn. We talk about best practices all the time, but this seems real.

We’re coming to a head in this next meeting in Brazil. There are challenges associated with expansion of OGP, but we’ve already seen changes in govt that would not happened or would have happened later had it not been for OGP.  You really see these lessons being put to use in real time.

The Arab Spring is the ultimate ratification of this effort. Important to focus on the dignity deficit, not just technology. One of the challenges for OGP is to take advantage of surge of political will where capacity lags behind – and make sure that new actors have some place to go.  We want to make sure that private sector actors and civil society groups are available to be helpful in these transitions.

The more people know about OGP, the more they can use it in their own countries.

We start with Rakesh.

Q: What brought you to the OGP.

A: Open government matters even more in East Africa because the stakes are so high – a matter of life and death. Last January, we had a real problem where money for schools wasn’t getting to schools. Using mobile phones, for less than $5K, we found most schools had not received money.  The act of doing this exercise suddenly got the government and the World Bank all organized.  This triggered $12 million released for schools.

In Kenya, there’s a development fund but citizens don’t know how much money is given and have no way of evaluating how money is being used. People did social audits, suddenly started realizing that there were fake names, fake projects… I can give you a 100 examples of how open government is saving millions of dollars.

But it’s more important to talk about effect on people of open government.

In Kenya, 2/3 of population is under 25.  But young people are frozen out of decisionmaking or any stake.  So we supported a project that put out wickedly funny comic books and a hack-like FM radio program, just 10 minutes a day, giving youth a place to discuss issues of the day and the comic books. So now you have a situation in which youth aren’t marginalized – 100,000 are engaged, and part of the process.

In Uganda, stories of ordinary people are told through radio and are creating such a buzz across the country that even authorities in Kampala have to wake up and pay attention.

And my final story, from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, called [Uezo].  We have a terrific story to tell about more kids in schools, more buildings, better budgets for education, so all that sounds great.  Many accolades, many prizes.  One problem:  All those kids are not learning anything.  So through Uezo.net we’ve galvanized 10s of thousands of people to sit with children to find out what they know.  We are finding illiteracy; not learning, not able to count.  At the community level, this energizes people to make sure kids are literate. And groundswell is concentrating minds of leaders and donors to fix the situation.  They’re feeling the pinch; they won’t be voted in next time if they don’t do something about this.

These three stories are causing a revolution in East Africa.  For the first time, citizens are beginning to see that they matter.  Stories of change; ordinary people are having their voice heard and making a difference.  And so every day there are dozens of examples of citizens making a huge difference; that changes the nature of governance in all of these countries. That’s the true power of open government.

Kelsey leads off a terrific panel on open government and transparency.  Paraphrase:

“Why do I do this?  Because I was once news editor of the Sunday Times.  My mother called to say she thought one of her doctors was killing patients. She started an investigation that revealed that at least 11 lives had been shortened.  The hospital had data that would have revealed this.  So I left the Sunday Times and started Dr. Foster.

The argument for my job is that data can make the difference between life and death for patients. We don’t want avoidable deaths in hospitals, and most effective route against this is transparency.  Open data is the most important contribution our generation will make to policy making.

We in London have a bike sharing scheme. Very popular mini-initiative – govt the source of data, and harvests the insights from the users of that service in real time.  It’s a small thing but it revolutionizes relationship with government.

This is important because transparency makes government accountable. We publish, very rapidly, loads of data on civil service pay, on govt contracts, etc. We need to have debates about how much public sector employees are paid.  We’ve got more data up than any other governemnt in the world.

This is also important because transparency can transform industries. The first online bank was 12 years ago – all digital banking is transparency. We love it – it transforms our customer experience and also the productivity.  22 million out of 60 million in UK only do online banking – no offline.

Two stories of health – which is where I came from.  [Tells Bruce Keogh story of publishing data about heart surgeons' clinical outcomes.] Actually, he was a data terrorist.. And this resulted in 1000 fewer deaths in English heart surgery units each year.  Because doctors wanted to out-perform eachother.

Then we want patients to get their own data.  Story of Margaret Rickson.  Lots of murders in her community. One response to lack of trust in doctor’s community was to make all the data transparent.  Margaret has been able to manage her condition better. She promotes benefits of transparency to her other elderly patients.

Third benefit:  economic growth.  Transparency for us is about growth and enterprise.  This is the future, raw material for new industries. This is a revolution that is bigger than Facebook.  Eg, in life sciences sector, we’re revolutionizing life sciences research by providing real evidence of effect of pharmaceuticals.

UK has been very strong on open data – generating real benefit.  We are not good at participation. But I’m encouraged that countries have different strengths and we can learn from one another.

US has led the world by publishing weather data since 1950s. Was done to promote agricultural productivity. America needed to encourage insurance market to allow farmers to insure against bad weather. This is now a huge 3.5 billion market as an industry. So I can say “we want a chunk of this money!” And now we’re publishing weather data.  It’s a social good.

I don’t think this is fundamentally technology – it’s really data, not the channels the data travels in. Eg, in India with only mobile phones, villages can paint spreadsheets on walls to check on fraud.Tech is an enabler, not a precondition.

[Tells Iceland crowdsourcing constitution story.]  I feel we have so much to learn from the rest of the world.

Now a celebration of the OGP.” [shows OGP film, which has very high production values.]

It’s been a really busy week of registration woes – who’s in, who’s out, and why?? – but I think we’re getting closer to having a class. The site for the class is getting much better thanks to the amazing Kate Kontiris. And today we’re all going to Dudley for their open house.

At the same time, I’m trying to figure out how to help the school become a hotspot for tech/gov efforts. We’re hoping to have some class sessions over at the Media Lab and get space at Harvard’s iLab for group work. We’re also going to do some of the usual speaker-series stuff, but with a twist – organized physically/temporally close to the very-well-attended happy hours at HKS, and with Foo-like breakout rooms for self-nominated interested students in particular discussions. Plus dinner.

The idea is of course to make this not just a brainstorming place but also a creatively critical place, with a focus on real projects. Plus food.

I’m also hoping to arrange quartets soon, if it can be done.

Doc Searls was just here in my new office at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and he said “I had to give up blogging when I was working on the book. I didn’t think I’d have to.”

Well, I did that – and I’m still finishing up the last few nits on the book – and blogging has just not been in the cards. But I have sworn to write about this new class that just kicked off today. I’m trying to make it as public as possible.  The site is here:  https://sites.google.com/site/dpi682spring2012/.  There’s a Twitter account with a really great duck-rabbit avatar:  @tech682. The class will be broadcast, starting next week, at my Google+ profile.

Speakers for the class won’t be Skyping in, I guess.  They’ll be Plus-ing.

The first day was crowded – we don’t know who’s definitely going to be in the class.  I did a quick summary of angles in the gov/tech world, beginning with The Problem With the PlayPump, one of the best cautionary tails about tech-happy-talk ever, for which I have Michael John Gorman of the Science Gallery, Dublin, to thank.

The students had a bunch of comments.

I asked:  How could governments work more effectively using digital technology? They said:

• Instead of moving paper, use a click
• Use technology to track responsible govt actors – reward them for a good job – change incentives
• Help agencies to interact better with one another
• Save money on paper and storage
• Improve service delivery – give information to govt once, instead of many times to many agencies
• Automatically enroll all kids in a particular income bracket into public health programs

Great stuff. We’ve got students from many different countries with widely varying experience.

Then the New Urban Mechanics team came and blew us all away with their description of their agile, virtual, encouraging, innovative approach to bringing new ideas into government.

All in all, it was a great start.  More tomorrow.

where I was lucky to visit the Science Gallery. Perhaps, if you are lucky, a new member of the Science Gallery network will locate itself near you.

I’m determined to get back to blogging – I know I keep saying this – but projects keep intervening.

Today I’m focused (thanks to Simply Noise) on these topics, all of which (naturally) relate:

1. ICANN’s new gTLD program, and particularly Larry Strickling’s speech about it.

2. The OECD’s principles.

and

3. Lightsquared.

Here’s how all of these things interrelate. They start with process:  ICANN has taken years and years and years to develop its gTLD program. Now, for all kinds of adventurous reasons, there are parties that want to derail it by relitigating fights they fought within the ICANN process. The OECD is embracing ICANN’s multistakeholder approach to Internet policymaking – as well as embracing openness generally.  Lightsquared is also the subject of a giant derailment effort, as the GPS community creates a mountain of political interference to Lightsquared’s attempts to modify its proposals and get underway.

They’re also all about disturbed major industries that don’t want to see change. New gTLDs?  Too confusing. Wholesale LTE? Too dangerous.  The OECD’s response is refreshing: let’s let platforms for speech flourish; let’s have less filtering of uncomfortable content; most of all, let’s not have governments acting unilaterally or collectively to constrain the content of online speech.

[The Lightsquared debate is particularly interesting. Lightsquared proposes to operate outside the GPS bands, and at low power; their operations in their "lower band" would likely not interfere with consumer devices, and any interference with precision devices could mostly be mitigated. But I understand that there's a supplemental timing signal that makes the high-precision stuff work - and that Lightsquared sends out that signal for the GPS industry over its own frequency!  So Lightsquared could migrate that supplemental signal at its own expense. And if GPS receivers were smarter, they'd be fine.  But who pays for them to be smarter? That's the age-old problem. Let's hope the facts come out, calmly, eventually, so that the political mudslinging can cease.]

Today’s news that the cable guys and the wireless guys are visibly working together (Comcast/Verizon/TimeWarnerCable/BrightHouse) comes as no surprise.

For almost two years now, I’ve been working away on articles and a book manuscript (coming at SXSW in 2012!) explaining that the cable guys (mostly Comcast, some TWC) control our wired future and don’t want themselves to be directly in the wireless market. AT&T and VZ, for their part, can’t keep up on the wired side (and got jammed with terrible programming deals), so they’re focusing only on wireless. These are great businesses: Like a train line, they’re expensive to build in the first place, depend on government permits/rights-of-way/spectrum, and thrive on scope and scale. It’s just about impossible for anyone new to enter. These four guys allow a bit of competition just for appearance’s sake. We’ve deregulated the whole lot of them.

So now what we’ve got is no competition and no regulatory oversight. Wireless is not substitutable for the kind of wireline Internet access that Comcast and TWC can provide. These are two separate enormous markets, each controlled by a couple of mammoth players. What’s at stake? Everything about the future of information in America.  (Second of two articles here.)

As the WSJ puts it today:

The cable guys, who had been noodling with the idea of getting into the wireless business, are going to let Verizon handle it instead. And Verizon, which has already committed a ton of money to get into the cable TV and broadband business, won’t spend any more.

Call it a virtual merger, or detente, or whatever you like — it’s both sides agreeing to work together by staying out of each other’s way.

Okay, so I was right – and maybe now more people will pay attention – but it’s not a great feeling. This isn’t where America should be.

In developing a course for next term that I’ve labeled “Solving Problems Using Technology,” I’m finding that almost every new person I meet has something interesting to contribute re how that course ought to work. I’m meeting a lot of new people – I keep asking for introductions, telling the story of what I plan to do. There is so much generosity in the people that I’ve been working with. thanks.  So I have gotten a lot of help.

And now it’s time to pull all of these thoughts together – all these many conversations I’ve had over the last few months – into a syllabus. Right now! Of course, the syllabus will change (it always does), but it should serve a function as a useful organizing/persuading document.

Thanks to the generosity of all of these interlocutors, I have a bunch of models. I’ll put links up once I have things figured out.

And:  I finished drafting yet another op-ed today. All suggestions welcome re the subject for the next one.

Where’s that book you used to talk about? you ask. Well, the manuscript is at the publisher. It all takes a while.

In the meantime, earlier this year I did a short overview of some of the subjects that the book covers.  It’s here.

I’ve been writing BloombergView columns. The most recent one is here.  I am hoping to have another opinion piece come out in the next few weeks.

I’m a member of a new Mayor’s Council on Technology and Innovation. It met for the first time yesterday morning. No news yet; we’re just getting started; a welcome atmosphere.

My classes are studying the most interesting subjects around – just yesterday, U.S. v. Jones and the cable regulatory landscape.

I’m developing a new class called “Solving Problems Using Technology” for which I have high hopes and a long list of phone calls to make.

And I’d love to get back to writing medium-sized blog posts every day.

Today:  I wrote a draft column for the people at Bloomberg View; talked to a very able human rights video expert; talked to a civil society group in DC that is using technology in a big way to carry out its mission; talked to a media advocacy group in DC; read and commented on a bunch of student papers; talked to a couple of people at the FCC; talked to someone who used to be at the FCC; and played the viola. But I did not have time to draft a blog post. This seems to be a pattern.

There is always tomorrow.