E.M.: I am sure that's right. I cannot document that. And I think, I'm not certainly opposed to that, if we can get business on our side to ask government to keep, to open this data then anyone can make use of it. We can make it freely available and businesses can find, you know sub-markets which will make them money.
R. K.: I would think that if you go to members of Congress and you say, "you do this and it's going to create billions of dollars in new business in the United States, that could be a good motivation for them.
E.M.: Yes, there are many people who are arguing precisely that.
R. K.: Yeah? So we are coming to the end of the interview. What dreams, that you started with, have come true?
E.M.: Wow. These are great questions [laughs]. I think, for me it's really this cultural transformation, it's that people that, I think that my dream for Sunlight has been that people will be more able and more open to being engaged with government if they feel it is open and transparent. They will will feel that government is more trustworthy, that they will have more trust in government, that it will enhance participation both in terms of voting and then in many many other ways. That it will in fact expand the number of ways people do engage with their government, whether it's the local, the state, the federal, or the global level.
I think all of that is beginning to happen. I mean, of course there are one step forward and two steps back with any kind of radical change like this, and it's not just a cultural transformation but for the people to be engaged we have to have that cultural transformation.
When we see people, Rob, as cynical as they are about government, I step back and say, you know, people, that's not really cynical, that's not really cynicism, that's a really honest reaction to what secrecy and closed government means to people; they're suspicious. So open government is an element in changing that, you know the complexion of what people actually think about government, and I think that's happening. The technology makes it so, it is the tool that enables us to connect with people who are not like us, who are different, who are across the political and the economic spectrum and to allow them to engage in whatever ways they want with government and their politicians. And that is also inherently such a democratic ideal, it's such an inspiring direction for us to go with that this work continues to be exciting and we look for new horizons all the time.
R. K.: Cultural transformation, which to me means people expecting, that the
norm is open government...
E.M.: Exactly and anything less is unacceptable.
R. K.: In the world, with all of our rankings of where the US fits in, how does it fit in in terms of transparency and secrecy?
E.M.: In terms of transparency there was actually an open data in particular, there was a ranking released last week in the global context and we came in actually at number two, under the UK which of course is a much smaller government but has enacted some extremely positive and wide reaching open data policies. There is an international consortium now called the Open Government Partnership that met in London last week, I'm just back from that and what we see is in the two or three years since the Open Government Partnership has been in existence, it has moved from three governments participating to sixty or so governments participating so this is -
R. K.: Beautiful.
E.M.: - a wide phenomenon. So yes, it is terrific and I think this work has to be done in collaboration with the civil society organizations. And so even enforcing that kind of collaboration between civil society and government is a major step forward. There is so much more to be done but it is definitely the right direction.
R. K.: So what can listeners of Bottom Up Radio and the readers of OpEdNews.com do to help you?
E.M.: Well we would love for people to come to the website and take a look at our tools and give us feedback on it. That is really one of the most important things that can be done. That SunlightFoundation.com, the tab right on the front page. We interact a lot with people who use the kind of information that we present and so we would love for people to come and get engaged. We also have a number of distributed projects from time to time where we ask people to do research for us and participate because we're very interested in crowd-sourcing some of the work that we have to do. So, People should come and take a look at what we have and tell us what they think.
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