The Missing Link

Good news from the field of civic society and open governance. A group working on i.a. the enhancement of the feasibility of web 2.0 in civic participation has published its final report, on which the Ministry of Finance is currently requesting for comments.

It is no secret that Finnish public sector still lacks certain dynamics when it comes to information policy and its usage on behalf of  deliberative e-Democracy and e-Participation. Right information for the right people at the right time is an old cliché used by data management professionals, by which we try to justify our existence. It is time this cliché was put more effectively in use.

A cliché it may be, but a justifiable one. In fact, the role of data management could be even bigger in public agencies. I tend to speak about extended data management (fin. laaja tiedonhallinta), which connects the traditional parts of data management – registry (kirjaamo), record management (asiakirjahallinto) and archiving (arkistointi) - with public relations/communication (viestintä/tiedotus), knowledge management (tietämyksenhallinta) and even data administration (tietohallinto).

I believe that in order to reach the aim of above-mentioned cliché and thus effeticely promote electronic civic participation certain measures need to be taken. The preceding clarification of the roles of different branches of information policy is one of them. Nowadays it can be quite unclear who is in charge of issues concerning the promotion of civic participation and freedom of information.

Someone should have a clear vision on the big picture and have a control of every dimension of information. For example, public relations and communication are capable of transmitting the information here and now, but in order to control the time-dimension of information archives are needed. They handle different dimensions of the same information but may never be in any contact with each other. Also, in order to fully utilize the benefits of an active civic society the whole idea of distributing only selected pieces of information is way behind the times. Limitations caused by the law on freedom of information (621/1999 24§) must naturally be taken into account.

A mere enhancement of the feasibility of civic participation is a good start but not enough. From the historian’s point of view equally important issue is the preservation of the context and provenance of the on-line discussions and other forms of deliberative policymaking. It is relatively easy to draw rules for the document management of authorities, but constantly developing and open-to-all wiki-environment is a whole new ballgame, so to say.

In order to achieve a sufficient level of preservation we need historically, societally and technologically savvy information professionals who are aware of the amount, type and provenance of the information as well as legislative issues. In addition to all that, they should be able to innovatively promote civic activity and civic society by means of freely and easily accessible information. Nowadays the gap between a technologically illiterate archivist and a wiki-conscious, microblogging pr-officer can be huge although their jobs should be inter-related in many ways.

Few notes on Obama and data management

Finnish media has coveraged the inauguration and the first weeks of President Obama relatively well. Understandably the main focus has been on foreign politics and economics. Yet an issue which was strongly emphasized on Obama’s campaign and which in fact emerged as one of his first Executive Orders as a president has been a bit neglected.

At his first day in the Oval Office Obama gave an Executive Order which revoked the Bush administation’s order 13233 of November 2001. Order 13233 severly limited access by public to presidential records, which baffled historians, archivists and lawyers alike.

The symbolic value of the first Orders by the new president is significant. Historians and data management professionals have already expressed their delight, as the new president has now given a signal, that the freedom of information and the promotion of civic society are themes White House will treat as a serious matter.

Obama’s PR-convoy also has naturally emphasized president’s will to let his actions to be publicly reviewed as well as his commitment to openness. They obviously want to stress the difference to ex-vice president Cheney, who infamously fought for his right to decide which of his vice presidential documents has to be given to NARA for preservation.

In addition, Obama has to make a decision on the new state archivist as Allen Weinstein resigned from his office in late 2008. The appointment will be  another widely reported action concerning data management.

With these two actions alone, Obama’s administration will give a certain boost to the global respect of civic society, archiving and data management. Questions concerning preservation of documents, free access to historical data and general openness of public administration are becoming more and more important as the amount of global information has sky-rocketed during the last decade.

By better access to information and abilities to create information themselves people will understand the value of information better and better. Hopefully this will help our job of making sure that this valuable information will be well-preserved for the coming generations as well.

Unfortunately electronic gadgets don’t make the process of preservation any easier. We still have to count on our historical knowledge and societal understanding when winnowing out the significant information from the insignificant.