Tag Archives: transparency

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.

Spaghetti Open Data: a little thing that feels right

A few weeks ago, after a happy hour in Rome, people started spontaneously to share links on Italian open data and tools to crunch them with. With a few others, I thought it would be nice to collect these links in one place, a sort of one stop shop for people interested in trasparency not just in theory, but in the practice of extracting information from public data. One thing led to another, and today Spaghetti Open Data is born. We aggregated 32 databases; not bad when you consider that data.gov, with all the firepower of the Obama administration, had 47 at launch.

It’s only a small thing, but it feels right for various reasons.

  • Firstly, it is a concrete achievement. I have had enough of complaining about the idle government, the backwardness of Italian culture, the financial crisis, bad luck. I have precious little time to spare, and I would like to invest it on projects that pay me back by yielding some kind of result. The Spaghetti Open Data group has put in some work, and in a few weeks it produced something which is actually there, and it works. If you want to build something with Italian open data you can, right now, without having to wait for structural change or a new generation in government. All it took is some voluntary work and 41 euro for hosting.
  • Secondly, it is intellectually rigorous. We had to ask ourselves the same questions that I imagine confronted the people in charge of data.gov and data.gov.uk. Are statistic data open data? (Apparently not) Does it make sense for statistical and open data to be collected in the same place? (Apparently it does, so that citizens can correlate the ones with the others) How to organize metadata? (We went for compatibility with CKAN, as in data.gov.uk) we have mapped a possible way for Italian open data, and future legitimate websites of open data have an all-Italian benchmark that they can consider, or even copy.
  • Finally, it is the expression of a small community of about fifty bloggers and civil servants that worked together towards a common goal, across their considerable cultural differences, showing mutual respect along the way. I have also had enough of bashing bureaucrats as stupid or evil. Some are just that, others are wonderful people and great war buddies. Most are reasonably clever, well-meaning people who happen to be very different from me: collaborating requires investing a little time and effort to come to understand each other. It is almost always worth it.

In the future, I only want to do this sort of thing. I’m done with declarations, petitions and talk. Simply doing is too much fun, even for a daydreamer like me. 🙂

Spaghetti Open Data: una piccola cosa che mi fa stare bene

Qualche settimana fa, dopo un aperitivo romano, alcune persone hanno cominciato spontaneamente a condividere links a dati aperti italiani e a strumenti per manipolarli. Con alcuni altri, ho pensato che sarebbe stato bello mettere tutti questi links in uno stesso luogo, una specie di one stop shop per chi si interessa di trasparenza non solo in teoria, ma nella pratica della manipolazione dei dati. Poi una cosa tira l’altra, e da oggi è online Spaghetti Open Data. Abbiamo 34 basi dati, neanche male visto che data.gov, con tutta la potenza di fuoco del governo Obama, ne aveva 47 al lancio.

È una piccolissima cosa, ma mi fa stare bene per vari motivi.

  • Anzitutto è una cosa concreta. Mi sono stufato di lamentarmi del governo che non fa, della cultura italiana che non capisce, della crisi economica, della sfortuna. Ho poco tempo, e quel poco lo vorrei dedicare a cose che mi danno la soddisfazione di ripagare con risultati concreti i miei modesti sforzi. Il gruppo di Spaghetti Open Data si è impegnato, e in qualche settimana ha prodotto una cosa che è lì e funziona. Se vuoi cominciare a pasticciare con dati aperti della pubblica amministrazione italiana, lo puoi fare subito, senza aspettare cambiamenti di sistema o ricambi generazionali. Questo ha richiesto solo un po’ di lavoro volontario, e 41 euro per l’hosting.
  • In secondo luogo, è intellettualmente rigorosa. Abbiamo dovuto farci le stesse domande che immagino si siano posti i responsabili di data.gov e data.gov.uk. I dati statistici sono open data? (Pare di no) Ha senso che dati statistici e open data stiano insieme? (Pare di sì, così i civic hackers possono correlare gli uni con gli altri) Come organizzare i metadati? (Abbiamo deciso di privilegiare la compatibilità con CKAN, la strada seguita da data.gov.uk) Insomma, SOD traccia una via possibile agli open data italiani, nel senso che costituisce un precedente che i futuri siti di dati aperti delle pubbliche amministrazioni possono prendere in considerazione e magari copiare.
  • Infine, è espressione di una piccola comunità di circa cinquanta tra bloggers e lavoratori della pubblica amministrazione che hanno collaborato a un obiettivo comune al di sopra delle (notevoli) differenze di cultura, nel massimo rispetto reciproco. Sono stufo anche di maledire i burocrati in quanto stupidi o malvagi: alcuni lo sono, altri sono persone straordinarie con cui si lavora benissimo. I più sono intelligenti, benintenzionati, e molto diversi da me; collaborare richiede l’investimento di un po’ di tempo e qualche sforzo per arrivare a comprendersi. Ne vale quasi sempre la pena.

In futuro vorrei fare solo cose così. Basta proclami, petizioni e chiacchiere. Il semplice fare è troppo divertente, anche per un acchiappanuvole come me. 🙂