Can the Government Survive Radical Transparency?

Megan, well said!

Avi, I was able to reach out to Chris Sailer, who provided the following responses. Enjoy:

For further clarificaiton: What is your defintion of “radical” in this context ?

I would define ‘radical’ not in a political context, but simply as ‘unprecedented’ – essentially, that the most sensitive areas of a largely unwilling government are being constantly coerced into movement towards a non-governmental or even not-for-profit level of transparency. It has been pushed there before – via the Freedom of Information act, the release of the Pentagon Papers, but fitfully and in stages. What we’re seeing now is significantly different in scope, scale and speed, and it could be argued that the level of pressure for increased informational transparency forced by state ‘competitors’ will grow exponentially over time, or at least in tandem with the expansion in sub-state competitors (sub-national groups and individuals).

Additionally, it is radical in that the state is robbed of the ability to lend context to the information that is released as the product of such coercion; interpretation of what constitutes the ‘truth’ is hijacked by external competitors. I’d suggest looking at the Atlantic’s excellent article (November 2010) by Michael Hirshorn, Truth Lies Here, to get some useful, related context. It is subtitled ‘How can Americans talk to one another – let alone engage in political debate – when the Web allows every side to invent its own facts?’ The idea is that any given sub-state actor’s relentless propaganda push can effectively supplant the truth or present preferred realities to it – an interesting argument is made in the article that in the future, truth itself may become a commodity.

Why is this topic important for you & for others as a priortiy under “collaboration” and PPP ?

It is very important – the private sector security apparatus is interested first and foremost in the government’s interpretation of the ‘truth’ of its data (not in that of its competitors), as we share similar security vulnerabilities; we’d to hear the truth directly from the source, not through surrogates. And we certainly don’t support attacks on the legitimacy of government – the private sector needs effective governance and the assurance of stability. But government is understandably reticent to engage in open information sharing, ‘partnering’ or collaboration with the private sector (excluding DoD contractors and cleared entities).

In reality, information sharing at this level is often a one-way street (with the government entity as the recipient and consumer), largely due to classification restrictions that impede information flow to private groups. Yet the state may ultimately lose out in the long run with such limited collaboration, as OS data is fully expected to eclipse that of the high-side in due time, and the private sector information collection effort (think data warehousing and Google) runs largely unimpeded by law or statute.

If thtese two key qestions are clartified from your perspective, then hopefully others would be able identify their own interests in this topic via both “government culture” and non-govie culture people (such as myself for example).