data.gov, Whitehouse open gov, Rewired UK Parliament and whither Canada

Data.gov is live.

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data.

But there's more.  Much, much more.

In the Whitehouse (yes, The Whitehouse) Open Government blog http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/blog/ they have announced a national consultation on open government.  Note the very aggressive timeline.

Today we are kicking off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking on the White House website. In a sea change from conventional practice, we are not asking for comments on an already-finished set of draft recommendations, but are seeking fresh ideas from you early in the process of creating recommendations. We will carefully consider your comments, suggestions, and proposals.

Here’s how the public engagement process will work. It will take place in 3 phases: Brainstorming, Discussion, and Drafting.

Beginning today, we will have a brainstorming session for suggesting ideas for the open government recommendations. You can vote on suggested ideas or add your own.

Then on June 3rd, the most compelling ideas from the brainstorming will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase. On June 15th, we will invite you to use a wiki to draft recommendations in collaborative fashion.

These three phases will build upon one another and inform the crafting of recommendations on open government.

There are more details from the Collaboration Project

Today, the National Academy of Public Administration, in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has launched an Open Government Dialogue to solicit ideas from the public on how the government can become more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. This online brainstorming session which is now open through 1pm on Thursday, May 28th, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government, including innovative approaches to policy, specific project suggestions, government-wide or agency-specific instructions, and any relevant examples and stories relating to law, policy, technology, culture, or practice.

We would like to ask you to participate by doing the following:

1. Go to http://opengov.ideascale.com/ to participate in the dialogue, and

2. Follow @ogovbrainstorm on Twitter to keep up with the highest rated ideas.

They are hashtagging things #ogov

But wait, there's more...
Sunlight Labs has announced Apps for America 2

I'm pleased to wave the green flag on Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge. This is a development and visualization challenge to see who can come up with the best application and visualization for data from Data.gov. These are exciting times for us-- the walls between Government and Developers are starting to shrink, and we here in Sunlight Labs are terribly excited to get to work on doing great things with the data that's coming out. Government has made a move in the right direction-- now it is time for us to show them what we can do.

and in the UK at a grassroots level the Rewired State project has announced Rewired Parliament is coming up, along with many hacking events.

above info from Twitter - edsu, ideascale, citymark and rewiredstate

There are no comparable Canadian federal initiatives.

Nothing even close. The only thing even remotely along these lines is the internal-only IT Innovation Campaign.  (Which, don't get me wrong, is an amazing development - just not on the scale and without the public visibility and engagement of the Obama administration's initiatives.)

There are some municipal level activities, such as the recent Vancouver open city announcement (see it on YouTube being read into the record), but nothing on a national scale.

My tiny little group is trying to bring up a site with some data about the budget (StimulusWatch.ca), but just that is a huge challenge.

We need Canadian open government leaders at all levels of government.  We can do some from the grassroots (as we just demonstrated at ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009), but we need our political leaders to embrace this vision.  Even if you don't care about the tech bits, here's the takeaway: opening up government and government data will create tremendous opportunities for technological innovation and efficiency, and increase the wealth and competitiveness of Canada.

Previously:
March 5, 2009  data.gov is coming - Vivek Kundra named US Federal CIO