[liberationtech] What open government public opinion survey questions would you ask?

Mon Jul 28 10:09:00 PDT 2014

If you put it here, I will gladly send it to Pew.

Here is the content of the full message on Facebook:

When our good friends with the Pew Research Center’s Internet and
American Life project - http://www.pewinternet.org - report their
public survey questions, the world takes notice.

Now is your chance to provide some input that will matter. They will
be watching this Facebook topic!

They have asked us for input on what questions would best identify how
the public is using information and communication technologies to
interact with local, state, and federal government.

1. What great question(s) have you always wanted “to put a number to”
in a public survey on the public’s use of ICTs with government?

2. What past Pew (or other) questions do you want to see asked again?
(So we can see trends.)

For a sense of what was asked before in this niche, note Pew’s
“Government Online” related
releases:http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/government-online/pages/2/

Additionally, they have a new goal of trying to find out if the
general public is aware of various “open government” initiatives of
which many of us are a part.

So in John Horrigan’s words (who is working with Lee Rainie and Aaron
Smith on this), can we ...

3. “See how/whether people have engaged with "open government"
initiatives that have arisen in the past several years. Rather than
focus just on e-gov (how people may use the Internet to
communicate/transact with government), the idea is to probe whether
people have a sense about governments' efforts to use the Internet to
be more open and transparent with citizens.”

And

4. Can we “get a read on people's awareness of this [open
government/open data efforts] and attitudes about it.”

So what question ideas do you have for 3 and 4 as well?

* Some initial E-Democracy feedback ...

For me, it will be interesting to find out whether the mass of people
are aware of “open government” initiatives and whether those who are
aware of such efforts indicate more or less trust in government. Is
the public satisfied with the progress of open government? Can they
“see” and “feel” it in how they engage government at *various levels*
comparatively?

I figure that politicians assume these are not bread and butter issues
that sway voters and therefore often make few specific promises about
“open government” beyond platitudes. Perhaps the right public survey
questions might lead to results that counter my assumption here. We
might be able to show that it does hold some relative importance
beyond being a “nice” thing to do or something a ruling party feels it
needs to do more of legislatively/funding wise in reaction to a
scandal. Or as surveys can do, will we confirm that this is niche
cause.

We hear a lot about government agencies being pushed to identify and
release “high value data sets” - so what I wonder, in a world of
scarce resources, could a prioritization question be asked that gets
at this more deeply? (Meaning if a state legislature was going to
spend say $5 million on freeing more open data for public use, which
data or resulting services/innovations does the public want first?
This is hard because people typically don’t ask for things they
haven’t envisioned or considered or the results a nebulous secondary
effects (e.g. open data for a commercial transit app)

On another track, via Open Twin Cities, E-Democracy helped shape a set
of hard questions about open data that didn’t allow candidates to
simply support the concept but not express views on the hard choices
involved. So the questions linked from here (and copied by a number of
cities) may be useful:
http://opentwincities.org/2013/09/11/open-data-questionnaire-press-release/

I am also interested in whether the public essentially supports the
radical vision (the Estonia model) that all legal to share government
data/information should be published online as a default. The Sunlight
Foundation calls this public=online.

On the flip side of the coin, in Minnesota the political concern has
been around privacy and they set up a new legislative commission
-http://www.lcc.leg.mn/lcdp/ - to better deal with requests to make
specific data private (in MN everything is legally public unless the
law specifically says otherwise.) So, again, citing Estonia and the
growing mistrust about what government knows about us that we don’t
know about, a question that asks “should government provide a secure
online means by which you can view and correct private information
held by government agencies about you?” would be extremely forward
looking. Estonia calls this their X-Road -
http://e-estonia.com/component/x-road/ - system and as a reaction to
50 years of communism they understand that not knowing what government
knows about YOU and what it is doing with information about you is
perhaps the most corrosive enemy of trust in government. Open
government can be about an accountability that is hyper individualized
when dealing with power relationships and private/personal data and
not just open to all.

So what are your thoughts?

ᐧ
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
  Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster at mykolab.com> wrote:
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> On 7/28/2014 7:05 AM, Steven Clift wrote:
>
>> I am helping Pew Research's Internet and American Life project
>> gather your ideas on public survey questions about open
>> government:
>>
>> http://bit.ly/pewopengovquestions  -  Details and comment via this
>> Facebook topic
>>
>
> Does this mean that you do not want input from people who are not on
> Facebook?
>
> - - ferg
>
>
>> This is a very exciting opportunity to provide input this week.
>>
>> When Pew Research releases survey results, I know of no project
>> which generates as much technology and society media attention.
>> Also, questions asked by Pew Research tend to trickle around the
>> world. So let's help them ask some insightful questions that tell
>> us more about what we really need to know about public support for
>> open government efforts and related issues.
>>
>> Thanks, Steven Clift
>>
>> Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com Executive Director -
>> http://E-Democracy.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
>> Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072 ᐧ
>>
>
>
> - --
> Paul Ferguson
> VP Threat Intelligence, IID
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