openness

I attended a great conference last week, OpenGovWest. We discussed open government initiatives, involving citizens by opening up government data, using social media to be more open and involve everyone in their government.
People attending the conference included city-level representatives: a few councilmembers, Walter Neary from Lakewood (@wtneary on twitter!) one from the Vancouver, WA area, and many city IT staff members from all around the region. For instance, the chief information or technology officers (or representatives) attended from the cities of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver (BC) and Edmonton, Canada. There were also state-level representatives, mostly from Canada. Private sector and nonprofit tech people also attended. It was a great gathering.
One thing that I took away from the conference was the concept of risks and opportunities with being more open. I’m particularly interested about open government as it relates to communication and my position as a councilmember. There are great opportunities in the use of social media. It’s incredibly open and universally easy to access. Openness is a critical component of government in Washington. As Ramsey Ramerman, an Everett city attorney, said at the conference, “our open government laws are as important to our democracy as the first amendment… These laws are one of the best tools we have to build public trust.” However, there are some risks: for instance, issues with legal risks for cities, and the laws related to open public meetings related to council discussions. We must comply with the law, but not to the exclusion of being open and responsive. That’s why I choose to use twitter and facebook as one more way to being accessible to citizens.
There is more that can be done—blogging here is part of that for me, too. I enjoyed the conference and will be thinking more in the future about opening up government data as an concept related to this topic.