End of Open Data?

The bandwagon of open data has barely started to roll in Europe, while the first chimes of death bells are already feared to be heard from USA.

Data.gov, the mother of all national open data repositories worldwide, is expected to be shut down by the end of May this year. Reasons for shutdown are reportedly financial: US government funding for the transparency scheme is likely to be reduced from $37m to a mere $2m.

It remains to be seen, whether possible shutting of data.gov and several other transparency-related sites in US prove to have a significant and irreversibly negative effect on global open data movement. Probably – and hopefully – not, but what we do know, however, is that the need for comprehensive research on wider social impacts and intrinsic justification of open data is more crucial than ever.

Initial results of studies on the impact of UK Freedom of Information Act have played down the great expectations of FOI’s overly positive social impacts. Only a fraction of people in UK in fact use FOI. People are still aware of its existence, and it is seen to lead to a more accountable and transparent government.

It might be a good idea to stay somewhat realistic about impacts of open data, as well. Nathan Yau makes a good point in his recent article in Guardian, that if data sites are to be put down, very few people outside open data community would in fact even notice it.

It is increasingly important to ask the question ‘what does open data really bring to transparency and society at large?’ There are calculations on its positive economic impact and hopes for increased levels of public participation, but is there any intrinsic justification for spending public money to open up government data sets for a small minority who effectively are able to use the data? Furthermore, should there be more alternative methods of measuring the impacts of open data?

Interestingly, the UK government has argued in favour of open data mainly due to accountability and efficiency factors; government is spending money to publish data sets in order to save money in the long run. However, if it proves that economic impacts of open data are not as significant as expected, will the austerity measures hit hard on open data policies, as well?

We live in interesting times. Reactive FOI is feared to be too expensive, but arguably it still remains the only proper way of truly holding officials to account. It is highly unlikely, that all public information would some day be published proactively in open format, thus in the end it is up to government officials to decide, what data sets are to be published. FOI remains a primary tool to ask for those that are not.

Perhaps we should not put our hopes too heavily on the beatific capacities of open data. It is a delightful bonus and worth to fight for, but in terms of ensuring the functionality of transparency regime, reactive FOI is still needed. If FOI is played down in favour of proactive publishing of data, what do we have left if the axe eventually hits the open data movement?

Finns and Swedes and the General Election

In praise of the upcoming Finnish general election I thought to play a little with ideas. In a normative sense, it is quite relevant question whether it does make any difference to the justification of electoral system if voters know or don’t know beforehand what kind of coalition parties would be likely to form after the election. Text is based on an exercise that was part of an MRes degree I’m currently doing at UCL. It’s not directly freedom of information- or info management-related, but you’ll just have to cope with it.

Let’s compare Finland with our dear neighbours, the Swedes. In Swedish parliamentary election 2010 the electorate was more or less aware already before the election what kind of coalition alternatives they were choosing from, whereas in the latest Finnish election 2007 political parties started negotiating and thus compromising on their pre-election programmes only after the election. This is the case this year, as well. It was only yesterday (31.3.) when party leaders gave identical answers – ”let’s not speculate with the coalition alternatives, that’s for people to decide in the election” – to a question of who would they pick as a coalition partner if given a chance to lead negotiations.

In parliamentary elections 2010 Swedish parties formed two alternative coalitions already before the election, giving voters effectively two options. Opposition parties (Social Democrats, Green Party, Left Party) formed an alliance against the then incumbent coalition government (Moderate Party, Liberal People’s Party, Centre Party and Christian Democrats). Election resulted in a narrow victory for the incumbent coalition and a minority government.

In the latest Finnish parliamentary election in 2007, no one knew before the election what kind of coalition would be formed, thus creating surprises for several voters. To mention an example, the Green Party was fundamentally against nuclear power in their election manifest. In the election they gained 8,5% of the popular vote and joined in the coalition with the Centre Party, National Coalition Party and the Swedish People’s Party. During the summer 2010 coalition government decided to give permission to build three new nuclear power plants in Finland, which lead to a wide criticism towards the Green Party, who were accused of betraying their supporters and effectively wasting their votes.

Question I play with here is whether Finnish and Swedish voters are as equal in terms of knowing how their candidate would behave if elected, and whether their vote would thus be likely to be ”wasted” or not. Thomas Christiano sees voting as a resourcist action, where vote is primarily a resource or a tool. Furthermore, the rules of voting should ensure that these resources are distributed in an equal way. (Christiano 1995) I read this equality to include – in addition to the actual possibility to vote – the understanding of possible outcomes, as well.

I base this argument on the principle of equal consideration of interests. (Dahl 1989; Christiano 2004⁾ To over-simplify: each person should be able to see that his/her interests are treated equally in the society. In both systems examined here each adult citizen has an equal right to cast a vote, but only in other one (s)he can be relatively sure how his/her candidate will behave in terms of political alignment if elected. In the other system, party may join unwanted coalition and in the process of negotiation give up that part of the pre-election manifesto why they were voted for in the first place.

Now, some voters may understand that it is intrinsic for democracy to reach for compromises and thus they vote for the most suitable party regardless of possible coalition. Also, some voters may have been able to define a few possible coalition alternatives beforehand and therefore placed their votes strategically, but not nearly all have that kind of competence, access to relevant information or sufficient level of political awareness.

There are several comprehensive studies made on the impact of political information on individuals’ political awareness and voting behaviour. (e.g. Bartels 2005; Blais et al. 2009) The general outcome of these studies is that voters are in inequal position when it comes to the amount and quality of political information they are able to receive. According to Bartels, less-informed voters are simply confused what is in their own interests. (Bartels 2005) Arguably it would be easier for less-informed voters to form a voting decision if they were aware of how their candidate will align after the election. At minimum, it would spare them from unpleasant surprises.

Arguably the fact that some people’s votes seem to be wasted because of their seeming ignorance of the procedures and rules of coalition forming is against the principle of equal consideration of interests. Since Finnish voters have inequal standing points in terms of competence to form an informed opinion, all voters are not able to see that their interests are being treated equally, which effectively decreases public trust in government and ultimately undermines the justification of such a system.

According to Christiano and principles of weak publicity and equal considerations of interest, in strictly normative and theoretical sense it appears that the Swedish system prevails. However, the question is more complex than that and would require further toying to form a more comprehensive argument. It could be argued, for example, that despite the lack of clarity on how Finnish parties will negotiate after the elections, Finnish voters are still treated as equals. They are just treated as equally poor in terms of how parties respond to their wishes about potential coalitions.

Another question dismissed here is the possibility of empirical evidence whether ignorance of post-election alignment has in fact had much impact on voting outcome and on the general perception of politics. An enlightened guess might be that those without sufficient awareness of their candidates post-election alignment would be in aggregate level more disappointed on the coalition politics than those who were already aware beforehand how their candidate would align him/herself after the election.

Bibliography:

Bartels, Larry: Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind, Perspective on Politics, Vol. 3, No 1, March 2005, pp. 15-31

Blais, André et al.: Information, Visibility and elections: Why electoral outcomes differ when voters are better informed, European Journal of Political Research 48, 2009, pp.256-280

Christiano, Thomas: Voting and Democracy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 25, No 3, September 1995, pp. 395-414

Christiano, Thomas: The Authority of Democracy, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 12, No 3, 2004, pp.266-290

Dahl, Robert: Democracy and Its Critics, Yale University Press, 1989

Empty archives syndrome and democratising archival information

In the preface of a newish compilation Freedom of Information: Open Access, Empty Archives (Routledge, 2009) co-editors Dr Andrew Flinn and Dr Harriett Jones highlight so-called Empty Archive syndrome.

To quote them, the concept refers to situation when “faced with the possibility that potentially controversial decisions could be released immediately into the public domain, politicians and civil servants might simply avoid committing themselves on paper, leading to an ‘oral’ culture of policy-making that renders government unaccountable, not only in short term, but also potentially damaging the historical record” (p. 5).

Quite strikingly the phenomenon seems to have hit hardest in the Swedish archives. According to Dr Fredrik Eriksson and prof Kjell Östberg the culture in Sweden, whose Freedom of the Press Act is regarded the oldest in the world and thus cited as a source of a national pride (p.113), causes severe problems concerning the public scrutiny of highly important documents.

Eriksson and Östberg mention several critics of the Swedish system, who argue that the Swedish freedom of information is merely a myth because most of what is of the greatest interest is not written down and hence not available for scrutiny (p.118).

Tightened government secrecy clearly isn’t a suitable solution to the problem of empty archives, although historians tend to love the newly opened archives of security organisations and other archives, whose administrators have not had the need to wonder whether their documents would go under public scrutiny or not at the time of their creation.

In  a case where polical culture is somewhat questionable the possible solution should arise from below. In modern Sweden – and EU in general – there should be no reason for authorities to fear written documentation and its public scrutiny. As Eriksson and Östberg also point out, “the real problem is that the authorities are flouting the rules and that a culture of oral decision-making has been allowed to prevail” (p.123). It is indeed our duty as citizens to demand better handling of public information.

In a larger scale, the whole idea of information created mostly by state authorities is rather arguable. We still tend to consider information as something that is given to us from above. Information created in the daily life of a democratic civic society is generally not regarded as important as the official documents with the state stamps on them.

Still, history – and politics – is made as much in the grassroot level as in the chambers of Whitehall or Riksdagen. And every social phenomenon regardless of its origins needs information of different sorts as its fuel.There is a golden opportunity for archivists and other information professionals to enhance the general consciousness of the proper usage of information.

One question relevant enough to be asked is, whether the empty archives syndrome would still take place in the case of deliberatively and openly created community archives? Would the full democratisation of archival information result in archives, where there would be no need to fear the consequences of the disclosure of documents?

Archives, archivists and nation-building

Just a quick thought to put an end to over a month-long silence.

I’ve been wondering if there are some extensive studies made on the role of archives and archivists in nation-building and even as gate keepers of history and thus altering the human thought and ideas, which – according to Collingwood – history is all about. Question is, that shouldn’t archives be construed as a construction or an interpretation itself? It is always a conscious decision which documents are to be kept safe and which destroyed. Destruction of national heritage is also a widely used mean of warfare, recently used in e.g. the savagery of Bosnia in 1990′s.

Deliberate disposal of information on behalf of political goals is widely recognised phenomenon, but the formation of archives should be put under closer scrutiny, as well. An example: I was in the archives of Finnish foreign ministry looking for information on the Finnish-Hungarian relations and how Finnish diplomats used to emphasise the idea of a special kinship between Finns and Hungarians. An interesting notice was, that there is a specific dossier for the documents concerning the “kindred nations” (mainly Hungary and Estonia) although the whole idea of kinship between separate nations is nowadays rather disputable.

In addition to state archives there is the daily, grass root level archive forming where the archivist doesn’t serve any political or national goals. Even so, it is up to her/him how the future historian will construe the thoughts and ideas of her/his time. It would be interesting to compare archives from different decades and see if there are some patterns which could be derived from the zeitgeist of the respective time, assuming that deriving something from the “zeitgeist” is even possible.

The issue is fairly topical on a state-level scale, as some form of state-building is constantly taking place somewhere. Frederik Rosén has come up with an interesting article (Off the record: outsourcing security and state building to private firms and the question of record keeping, archives, and collective memory. Archival Science, vol. 8, 1/2008 p. 1-14), on which he raises a question on how privatisation of post-war recovery and security governance causes a lack of proper record keeping and archiving. He argues that this might severely affect future dynamics of societal memory and cause black holes in the history of a nation.

In my point of view, it isn’t enough to treat a single document as a subjective source of information, but the whole archives as well. Questions like who formed the archives, how it was formed, how the dossiers were named and what kind of documents were put in certain dossiers are not to be neglected. Archives itself can reveal suprisingly lot about thought and ideas of the time of its formation. It would be intriguing to read more on that particular subject.

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.

Institutional Cooperation Instrument

Last year the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs started a new, promising-sounding program for development cooperation. Inter-institutional development cooperation - Institutional Cooperation Instrument, to be more precise – makes interaction between Finnish public agency and its counterpart in the partner country possible. Thanks to the ICI, Finnish institutions can share their knowledge and know-how with their partner institutions in developing countries and thus strengthen their skills.

According to the Foreign Ministry, years 2008 and 2009 will be the monitoring years, when the Department for Development Cooperation will follow ICIs use and results. If the pilot projects turn out successfully there should be no reason why ICI wouldn’t become even larger-scale program for development cooperation.

Should this be the case, Finnish data management and archiving professionals could take the advantage and distribute their knowledge for the cause of development cooperation. Finnish standards for record keeping and archiving are internationally highly valued and data management an essential part of functional and democratic civic society.

If there is an opportunity to enhance the level of freedom of information and thus the level of democratic civic society we should use it.  Active and efficient cooperation between historians and archiving specialists in Finland and the partner country would be a truly intriguing scenario.

It will be interesting to follow the development of ICI. Right now it seems, that it would be a great opportunity for Finnish archivists and other information specialists to enhance their professional reputation significantly and give a new dimension to existing development policy.