Open government is a citizen-centric philosophy and strategy that believes the best results are usually driven by partnerships between citizens and government, at all levels. It is focused entirely on achieving goals through increased efficiency, better management, information transparency, and citizen engagement and most often leverages newer technologies to achieve the desired outcomes. This is bringing business approaches, business technologies, to government.
Citizens throughout Europe, throughout the world, are engaging with government leaders to build solutions to problems that impact citizens in their home towns. The motivation is to improve the lives of citizens, the efficiencies of government, locally, where the impact can be most strongly felt.
Is your community already leveraging open government practices or technologies? If so, tell us how this began, what the goals are for these efforts, what results you are currently seeing. Examples of such practices are publishing public sector information (budgets, salaries, environmental data etc.) to their web sites, especially if this is done in reusable formats such as XML (open data); encouraging ciizens to use these data to build solutions and apps; deploying free software solution, like Fixmystreet or Ushahidi, to allow citizens to report upon anything from job opportunities to potholes on city streets; using Internet technologies for leveraging high quality citizen participation to public decision-making.
Some websites with useful information to get started:
- Govinthelab
- Personal Democracy Forum Europe
- Goberno Abierto y Datos Publicos (Spanish)
- http://www.gov20.de/ (German)
- Open Knowledge Foundation
- Spaghetti Open Data (Italian)
If you need additional help with this mission, don’t hesitate to contact the team by leaving a message on the Edgeryders profile of the person you want to address. We might even speak your language!
Count me in! How do I participate?
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Like all missions, this one is worth 250 reputation, but extra points are awarded for great content.
Start now! Or get the bigger picture on We, the people.
Big big thanks to John F. Moore for his invaluable help with this mission!