Mar 08 2010

Openness can make citizens collaborators with officials

Published by Laurie Sperry at 2:08 pm under City Hall

Openness can make citizens collaborators with officials

Seattle’s new posting of data on the city’s web site points to better services, technological possibilities, and even new relationships. Citizens may have more reasons to trust an open, transparent government.

By Matt Rosenberg

At its site Data.Seattle.Gov the city of Seattle last week took a modest but promising next step into the high-transparency world of what’s called “Government 2.0″ by adding dozens of data sets on a wide variety of public assets, as the Seattle PI.com reported. Now just a click away are lists (in some cases including links to related city web pages) of public viewpoints, museums and galleries, schools, farmers’ markets, off-leash dog areas, park and rides, heritage trees, fishing spots, beaches, community centers, public art installations, and so forth. True, this information was already parked at the city’s My Neighborhood Map site, but ongoing additions expected to the city data store herald possibilities for a new form of public engagement that could eventually make obsolete today’s easy gibes about public Seattle’s infatuation with process over product.

via Openness can make citizens collaborators with officials.

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One Response to “Openness can make citizens collaborators with officials”

  1. # William (Bill) Leakon 09 Mar 2010 at 10:04 am

    Laurie:

    Absolutely.

    Thanks for shining some light on this topic!

    I post the periodic newsletter from Municipal Research Center(http://www.mrsc.org/) at the KBIN blog and it provides a wealth of information embracing new ideas and best practices we can all swimilarly learn from.

    ~~~ The Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC) is a non-profit, independent organization created in 1969 to continue programs established in 1934 under the Bureau of Governmental Research at the University of Washington. In 1997, Washington counties joined cities in funding MRSC. Our mission is “working together for excellence in local government through professional consultation, research and information services.”