(Raw notes from the Reinventing Government Session at RootsCamp in Washington DC on April 13, 2008)

Workers Rights Advocacy Group Person:

-FOIA Requests

-Help National Labor Relations Board

-Analyze Government Data: 9 month process to compare data sets

-Open Mashable Data

-Federal Officials Schedules

Nancy Scola: data accessibility

-The Open House Project

-Sunlight Foundation

New Hampshire Democratic Party

Strategies:

-Fast Government Blog

-DIGG style idea registry?

-Citizen demand?

-State level?

-International Standards?

-Open APIs

-State level?

-Streamline Federal Agencies to core expertise areas?  Or tap outside experts?

CATEGORIES:

***-Transparency:  public markup, data accessibility

***-Participation: Making public service cool again / technology for efficiency

***-Coordinattion: Role of private sector vs government vs NGOs, and their coordination

OPPORTUNITIES:

Ireland: most government information not shared

British are personalizing public service - 21st Century Citizenship: State vs Voluntary vs Private - National Health Service success in Britain is because Middle Class actually uses it

DEMOS.co.uk-

British Government has an innovation unit to think about this stuff; Number 10

- mySociety (UK charity: www.mysociety.org) built Number 10's epetitions site (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/), recently launched an FOI site (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/), and just started a campaign to "gently encourage Parliament to publish bills in a 21st century way, please, now" (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/)

***Should a government agency be a think tank of domain experts with minimal bureaucracy, or should it be a bureaucratic/administrative vehicle with staff to implement what outside domain experts work on?

Department of Labor employee union have a dirty dozen list of the top 12 political appointees who have turned into career civil servants who need to be purged under a new administration

***Public official rating/reputation system? and org chart?