Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Con Beth Noveck a Roma: storie parallele del governo Wiki


Seguo e ammiro da anni il lavoro di Beth Noveck. Americana, professore a NYU, blogger (il suo blog è una delle mie fonti più preziose), Beth ha inventato e diretto Peer to Patent, il primo progetto 2.0 dell’amministrazione federale americana. Peer to Patent è entrato nel radar di Barack Obama, che lo ha molto lodato quando era un candidato alle elezioni presidenziali; quando si è insediato alla Casa Bianca, ha chiamato Beth per guidare il progetto Open Government della sua amministrazione, con il titolo di Deputy Chief Technology Officer. Nel 2009 ha pubblicato un libro che mi è stato utilissimo (stavo lavorando al mio Wikicrazia), dal titolo The Wiki Government, in cui racconta il progetto e come esso permetta di ripensare l’attività amministrativa.

Il mio percorso ricorda a tratti una specie di modello in scala ridotta di quello di Beth: il blog, il primo progetto 2.0 dell’amministrazione centrale italiana, il libro. Da circa un anno ci confrontiamo spesso; generosamente, ha collaborato al mio libro, scrivendo anche un pezzo della prefazione. Per questo motivo sono molto orgoglioso e contento di potere fare una cosa con lei: terremo i due keynotes in una discussione pubblica sulla fase due del governo wiki, quella del passaggio da sperimentazione cool a modalità standard dell’azione amministrativa. L’incontro si terrà il 26 maggio a Roma, alla Sala Capitolare del Senato delle Repubblica alle 16.30, e sarà presieduto dal vicepresidente del Parlamento Europeo Gianni Pittella. Al timone organizzativo sta il bravissimo Fabio Maccione della Fondazione Zefiro (grazie!), e siete tutti invitati, davvero di cuore! Iscrizioni obbligatorie (serve un accreditamento per entrare al Senato) qui. Giacca e cravatta obbligatorie per gli uomini. Dovrò farmi prestare una cravatta da qualcuno anch’io!

With Beth Noveck in Rome: parallel stories of the Wiki government


I admire Beth Noveck‘s work, and I have been following it for years. American, NYU professor, blogger (her blog is a precious source for me), Beth is the founder of Peer to Patent, the first 2.0 project of the American Federal administration. Peer to Patent was much praised by candidate Obama; later, President Obama appointed Beth Deputy CIO to lead the White House’s Open Government initiative. In 2009 she published an excellent book, The Wiki Government, to tell the Peer to Patent story and discuss the implication of a collaborative approach to government.

My own trajectory feels a bit like a smaller scale model of Beth’s. The blog, the first 2.0 project of Italy’s central government administration, the book. We have been in conversation for about a year now: she generously contributed to my book, and even co-authored its preface. So, I am happy and proud to have the chance to work with her: we will hold the two keynote speeches in a public discussion on the Wiki government’s phase two, that of going from cool experimentation to standard work modality for government of all levels. The event will take place on May 26th in Rome, at Sala Capitolare of the Senate, and will be chaired by the Deputy Chairman of the European Parliament Gianni Pittella. At the helm of the organization is the excellent Fabio Maccione (thanks!) from Fondazione Zefiro, and you are all heartily invited. Register here. Jacket and tie are mandatory for men.

A feature, not a bug: the role of WikiLeaks in a governance ecology

UPDATE, December 6th: Clay Shirky has added his authoritative voice to the debate. Like many American citizens, he is mainly concerned with making sense of the behavior of the U.S. government, by far the most committed to getting WikiLeaks out of the picture. His impression is unfavorable, because he sees it going after this goal with means other than a lawsuit (pressure on server space contractors, Paypal etc.). Also, he makes a distinction between short and long haul. I recommend you read the post for yourself, but all in all I think it’s fair to say that, while we wait for a new legal and societal equilibrium for a networked society to emerge, WikiLeaks is functional to a healthy democracy.

I met Julian Assange in 2009 in Barcelona. We were both speakers at Personal Democracy Forum Europe (where the video above was taken), where people interested in augmenting democracy (like him) or governance (like myself) meet to exchange news and views.

WikiLeaks is obviously not a government project. If it were not for this, it would rest well among the examples of Internet-enabled public policies in Wikicrazia because, like them, it is oriented towards some notion of public interest (transparency and accountability of public authorities); and, like them, it mobilizes collective intelligence to sift through a great many data that come from government sources and use them to tell convincing stories about what governments are up to, and why.

I claim that WikiLeaks is oriented towards the public interest because its activity is not directed against the states whose classified documents they are making available. On the contrary, Julian is convinced he is helping them: better informed citizens make for a more robust democracy. If more people think about our past choices, they make it more likely that we will make wiser ones in the future. And I claim it mobilizes collective intelligence because it does not attempt to sell any “truth”: rather, it is trying to supply raw data to journalists, the judiciary, committed citizens and historians. The “truth” is not in the individual document, but rather in the shared interpretation of the documental evidence that will emerge from public debate. WikiLeaks is in the business of putting classified documents in the public domain, and leaving the collective intelligence I refer to in the book to infer the bigger picture. If a single document puts human lives at stake, it is just not released: this is what happened for military documents about U.S. troops deployment in Afghanistan.

On these topics, Julian’s position is strikingly similar to those of leaders committed to transparency and accountability. If you put him in a room with President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron, the three men would agree on almost everything. But not on a key point: WikiLeaks thinks even the most transparent governments abuse confidentiality, and it feels it is both its right and its duty to intervene to put out in the open documents that have no reason to be confidential. For what it’s worth, I agree with the first part of the argument: public authorities do tend to keep their doings away from public scrutiny almost as if by instinct. Most of the time this is useless (they have nothing to hide) or even harmful (by being secretive, they fail to build mutual trust with the citizenry). In Italy – admittedly not the most open of countries – when two consumers association asked to see the paper trail of the ill-fated portal Italia.it, which cost taxpayers 45 million euro and imploded a few weeks from launch they were met with refusal. Clearly there are no lives at stake here, no national security matters, so those documents should be made public. In a democracy, public debate is a source of wisdom and guidance to governments, and the more we feed it information, the better.

I am fairly sure many honest, devoted civil servants would agree, and I imagine it is well meaning insiders that pass information on to WikiLeaks! A little provocatively, you could argue that Julian and his crew are in a mutually supportive relationship with the states that claim to be damaged by what they do: “pro-transparency” civil servants feed WikiLeaks documents, and it in returns help them overcome the blockades built by their colleagues who would prefer a greater degree of confidentiality. An ecologist would speak of symbiosis: WikiLeaks is not like a virus attacking the host, but more like an useful bacterium that helps its metabolism. In computerspeak, it is a feature of democracy, not a bug.

Here’s a prediction: Cablegate will have little, if any, large scale impact on diplomacy, just as so far releasing public data in open formats has had no backlash effect – even when they were potentially controversial, like budgetary data. It’s the diplomatic equivalent of posting your picture taken at a drunken party on Facebook, forgetting your boss might see that too: embarassing, but not that big a deal. According to the Huffington Post two to three million gov employees were cleared to see these documents: hardly top secret. And no revelation has come forth so far. Diplomacy is by definition a cold-blooded, Machiavellian relationship: what individual diplomats think of a foreign head of state is of little consequence.

With time, diplomats and governments themselves will get used to managing their privacy in a connected world, like we all do, and most of what they do will be confortably out in the open (I agree with Micah Sifry on this one) At that point there will be no need for a Wikileaks, and Julian will move on.

Finally, charging him with rape is a very bad idea even from the point of view of his opponents. It is likely to backfire, reducing the space for dialogue between public authorities and the smartest, most idealistic part of the civil society.