Ask Slashdot: Is Making Government More Open and Connected a Good Idea? 73
Nerval's Lobster writes "For quite some time, there's been a theory drifting around that government can be made more open and efficient via the same crowdsourcing and social-networking tools that created such successes out of Facebook, Twitter and Kickstarter. In that spirit, numerous pundits and analysts have advocated the development of 'e-government' or 'government 2.0.' But what if the idea isn't as great as it seems? That's the angle embraced by Evgeny Morozov in a recent essay for The Baffler. Structured as a lengthy takedown of open-source advocate and O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly, the piece veers off to fire a few torpedoes at the idea of making government more responsive and transparent through technology (the latter being something O'Reilly readily advocates). 'One of the main reasons why governments choose not to offload certain services to the private sector is not because they think they can do a better job at innovation or efficiency,' Morozov writes, 'but because other considerations — like fairness and equity of access — come into play.' If O'Reilly himself argues that a government should be 'stripped down to its core' into a form more transparent and collaboration-friendly, Morozov counters with the idea that the 'participation' envisioned by most government 2.0 scenarios is limited, little better in practice than the comments section at the bottom of a corporate blog posting."
The power of the dollar vs. the power of the gun (Score:4, Insightful)
There are people who equate the two, and people who do not. The two camps will never agree. The problem with the first group is that they cannot allow the second to survive.
You've got to be kidding me (Score:2, Insightful)
Politicians, after all, are the easiest people in the world to bribe, it is the only job in America where bribes are legal. The result is something that pervades every aspect of government at all levels called PAY TO PLAY.
This ensures that 1) The biggest briber gets the best deal 2) Everyone else gets screwed.
Worse, governments spout all kinds of emotional propaganda to cover up the actual reality of how the system works, directing people's anger away from the real criminals onto other groups in society. Then they promise "openness" and "transparency:" while doing the exact opposite. Millions of well intentioned good people are duped by this propaganda every single day.
Loopy logic leaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Going from "open government" to "outsourcing" is a non sequitur meant to set up a straw man. It is outsourcing that results in private firms treating government data as proprietary, and it is this kind of outsourcing that open government initiatives seek to avoid.
It's a long piece. Tl;dr: Think tank wonk mistakes Tim O'Reilly for a technolibertarian and turgidly tilts at windmills of his own invention.
Re:Loopy logic leaps (Score:5, Insightful)
We already crowd source our law making process.
The problem is that it's been crowd sourced to lobbyists and not to 'the crowd'