I was just reading this NextGov interview with Craigslist creator (and GovLoop Advisory Board Member) Craig Newmark, who is trying to raise awareness about President Obama’s open government and transparency efforts. The article begins:
The Obama administration’s open government initiative is discussed regularly in some circles inside the Beltway, but travel just a few miles west and it’s rarely, if ever, a topic of conversation.
That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: do people beyond the Beltway really know about “Open Government”? Do they care?
A couple more great quotes from Newmark:
– “Right now with Recovery.gov and a whole bunch of related efforts, for the most part the mainstream media has just ignored it…they keep missing the point that it’s a tremendous reversal from prior years…this administration is telling the public what is going on and the mainstream media doesn’t talk about that.”– “The idea is for a democracy to survive it needs a relatively informed citizenry. Historically, in any republic, starting with the Romans, it’s only a small minority of people who get involved in this kind of thing. Most people just want things to work. Like me, I’m a couch potato. But the deal is this decade in human history is too important for you to stay on the couch.”
This silence and ignorance is a problem for two reasons:
(a) citizens aren’t aware that they are being courted to contribute more in the process of governance, and
(b) the open government initiative is having no mitigating impact on the sense of unrest and distrust in government across the nation.
If I were to ask my mom about open government, I think she’d say, “Huh?”
How about yours?
Does she know?
Would she care?
And if we tell her, will she act?
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P.S. I’m a big Will Smith fan, so here’s some Friday fun for you: