Founded and managed by Tim O’Reilly and TechWeb, the Gov 2.0 Summit brings together the government and private sector boffins in order to come up with ideas and technology to solve the nation’s problems. These issues range from education, healthcare, jobs, financial reform, energy, and any other pressing matter that is a hot topic of debate. The types of companies and organizations involved range from Microsoft, to Princeton University, to the State of California.
Ola Rosling, from Google gave an interesting presentation in Washington. He shows a new way of viewing data they have been developing which is like a cross between a pie chart, a bar graph and a video, an innovation for public data.
Rosla first shows a graph axis which compares the world's countries on different scales, showing each country as a big or small bubble. Rosling calls this a "socio- economic world map".
His first example is a graph showing wealth vs health of all the countries. The bottom axis is GDP per capita and the Y-axis is life expectancy.
The graph it makes it clear that there is no simple rich and poor countries but a linear scale of wealth. America is near the top end of wealth, although countries with lower wealth such as Japan have higher life expectancies, or better health. Rosling zooms out to show different scales, when compared with all the countries in the world, America is actually higher up the "healthy scale" than would be expected, but the data clearly shows that wealth does not necessarily equal health.
"However, a static image is lying because the world is changing," says Ola Rosling. He pulls the graph back 200 years then plays it through like a video, showing life expectancy and the world's wealth burst out as the bubbles rise up and across.
It certainly makes for interesting viewing and it is clear that this sort of powerful data combined with the uniquely visual approach could certainly help governments to keep track of things. Gap Minder Visualisations make complex data understandable, it is obvious what is happening, even though the viewer is looking at several different scale factors.
home page http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010
Ola Rosling video:
http://communityindicators.blogspot.com/2009/09/ola-rosling-at-gov-20-summit
E-Government or electronic government is the term used to describe the interaction between a government and its citizens over a digital platform. Through blogging, social networking, and various internet archives/services the government can have more of a two-way conversation with its people than it did in the past.
The benefit of this is a better and more truthful standard of democracy. Everyone, at some point, has had a rant about what they would do if they were president.
Now the people finally have a say, and their voices can be heard by someone more influential than their drinking buddy or squash partner. Due mostly to the internet, current affairs is no longer a playing field for the educated elite or powerfully rich only. The bar has been effectively lowered, allowing access to these issues from all walks of life.
These changes could improve government transparency and effectiveness. For example, the use of social networking sites to communicate with citizens is a way of meeting people on their own turf, so to speak. In doing so, the government can encourage younger people, who are traditionally less interested in politics to join the debate and get involved.
An example of this would be the State of Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo, who regularly uses Twitter to update those who follow her with news about the state cash flow and financial issues.
This type of thing certainly increases government transparency but it also works the other way. The government now collects huge masses of data on its people through electronic means. Through internet monitoring, CCTV coverage, license plate readers etc the government steadily increases the vast bank of information it holds on all citizens, thus making it more powerful.
The question is, can we tell them too much? The idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful government for some reason conjures up images of a Big Brother state, one perhaps more totalitarian than Utopian.