When is a Government really “open”?

With the election of Barack Obama the United States will have an administration which by its own words is committed to concept of Open Government. The key principle of Open Government is that as much information about the governments’ activities should be available to the public as possible. The following video explains the concept very well:

The process to governmental openness consists of at least two steps: The first is that information is legally open to citizens. Most commonly this step is undertaken with freedom of information legislation of some sort which is vastly different from country to country and many countries still have not implemented even basic freedom of information. The second step is to make the information actually accessible and provided in a way which is useful to the public. This step may be even harder than the first because it does cover legal, technical and procedural questions at the same time.

Mozilla, the Participatory Culture Foundation and Change Congress have stepped forward and offer their three principles for an open transition as a hint to the answers for the questions related to the second step towards Open Government.

These principles seem to be a good basis to further discuss the details related to this subject as for example: What are the technical standards which should be used by government to provide digital information? Should governments actively push information out or should citizens just be able to request information? Is there any information which can rightfully be confidential and if what kind of information would that be?

Openness and accessibility of governmental information is one important factor contributing to a more participatory political cultural and many of the most interesting eParticipation efforts would not be possible without access to this kind of information.

Tags: Barack Obama, open government, transition