The Uncharted Backwaters of the Unfashionable

Maintenance note

Apparently I need to handle some serious issues in the “My Work” section. It’s on the to-do list. thanks for the e-mails, everyone.

Water records need to be public, too

Phoenix is the capital city of Arizona. It’s also in the middle of a desert. Yet somehow the state has evolved some wack records laws that don’t seem to accept this as a truth.

Most people I talked to are shocked to learn that records of water usage are entirely blocked from public access. It makes sense. Water is our number one resource here; we’re barraged with ways to conserve water and take a of what natural moisture there is.

Yet we also have the most acres of golf courses in the nation. We have green lawns down every block. And every other house has a pool. While there are laws that govern the way water is generally used, especially by large consumers, there is no way for a regular Joey Citizen to see for himself if those laws are being followed. The records are entirely hidden away. It’s illegal for a water district to give them out. It’s a crime for a citizen to have them.

Sometimes it’s hard to explain why not having access to information is bad. Other times, the argument is made for you, and all you have to do is point to it. Enter the Panama City Press Herald, and a phenomenal piece by Matt Dixon.

Here’s the kicker:

Over the past five years, 2.4 billion gallons of water — 23 percent of all water purchased by Panama City — has gone unaccounted for, according to an analysis of utility records obtained in a public records request. In 2006 alone, the city lost 631 million gallons, the largest single-year amount since at least 1996, according to utility records.

Arizona, we deserve to see how we stack up.

The case for transparency

Few things puzzle me more than a government entity actively hiding, obfuscating, or misplacing  its records.  Sure, the excuses range from “We can’t,” (flakspeak for “We don’t know how”) to “We just don’t feel comfortable doing that right now” (flakspeak for “I’m so scared I just peed myself”), but a no is a no regardless of reason.

A big fat nondisclosure is a loss for all parties involved. The journalist loses because they can’t pursue a story or fully contextualize one they already have. The public loses because they’ve been locked out; labeled as untrustworthy by the government they fund.

Then there’s another loser: the government itself. A nondisclosure makes the entity seem secretive, makes it seem like it has something to hide.  A nondisclosure does no favors to officials, keeping the public in the dark and making it impossible for citizens to draw conclusions about how  officials carry out their interests.

For years, I believed in the dichotomy of openness. An entity was either open or closed. Arizona is open. Phoenix is closed. Columbia is open. Springfield is closed. Missouri is open. And so on.

But there’s a third level that is more beneficial to all parties than mere openness: Proactive openness.

Proactive openness is providing information as it comes, nullifying the need for a records request. It is providing information in machine-readable formats, eliminating the need for scraping that’s cumerbsome to both the scraper and the scrapee.  Proactive openness is providing data in its raw form, doing away with spin because there are no aggregates or analysis to sugarcoat the truth.

What I call proactive openness is actually an eGovernance movement gaining traction around the country. A recent survey ranked the programs, finding that Washington D.C. and Portland are the best around. Portland, it should be noted, was so miffed at its showing, it even went out and ordered an RFP to get some citizens involved in making things better.

Et tu, Phoenix? Not surprisingly, the fifth largest city in the nation doesn’t make the list. Not anywhere. And what’s sad is there’s no reason it has to be the case. From my interactions with city personnel, it appears staying away from eGovernance techniques has been a deliberate choice. Phoenix doesn’t even provide electronic data when requested under public records law, so I can only imagine the horror at the concept of sharing data electronically before it’s even requested.

I can understand the fear of being open. Often, people who request documents are looking for shady behavior. Their motives alone make them suspect. But fear of transparency? That’s beyond me. There are plenty of good reasons to pursue proactive openness:

• The public can do the work. A collection of APIs, or a data warehouse as provided by OCTO in D.C., turns every citizen into a web producer. Rather then spend weeks toiling over design and UI, government IT people could focus on simply opening the spigot, and move onto bigger and better things. Or, I guess, making sure the municipal judges have the right screen saver. Whatever. Opening up saves time and taxpayer money while increasing productivity.
• It adds new perspectives. There probably aren’t very many watershed experts/tax policy advisers on the city payroll. Just a guess. Opening data allows for invested, educated and interested citizens to become unpaid interns of a sort, offering their expertise on issues that otherwise would get bogged down in bureaucracy.
• It can save money. Or at least allow the city to better allocate its resources. Check out the list of PIO contacts in the city of Phoenix. That’s a lot of people paid to bang out press releases. When information is freely available, press releases become less necessary to get out a message. At the same time, a transparent city has to walk the walk. If actions don’t match up with words, it won’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Just any dude with the Internets.
• No spin is the best spin. Raw data is like Scoop, the 1930s reporter guy. “Just the facts, ma’am.” Compared to the content of most press releases, it’s Gospel. Where did Councilman Bob use his P-Card last week? How many potholes are there that they haven’t found time to fill the one on my street yet? Questions could be answered quickly using some hypothetical data sources. And the answers would be trusted.
• Because we want it to be easy to care. Civic inolvement is boring. Data are boring. But opening up civic data to the Web opens all sorts of possibilities for making both engaging and… dare I say it?.. fun. Again, it’s easy to look to D.C. for examples. Want to find parking info? Go for it. Curious what those sirens were last night? You’re covered. Opening up — proactively opening up with close to real-time information — will make for a more plugged in citizenry. Ideally, that’s in line with the City’s own desires.

Now obviously, I’m a journalist, and having government crack open its data would make my life better.

But this isn’t borne entirely out of self interest. Being in my admittedly unique situation has given me a front row seat to the inefficiencies of both government and the citizenry, inefficiencies that could largely be addressed by the type of eGovernance that but for the grace of god is catching on. I have had citizens call me up and ask me what happened on their corner last night. I have had PIOs pitch me stories about an uptick in requests for neighborhood cleanups.

Both deserve better.