Reboot

The current technological landscape is obsessed with data. Open data, data API's, walled gardens, data silos, data stores, the semantic web - the list is endless. Gov 2.0 is all about getting access to government data: the US has data.gov, the UK assigned Tim Berners-Lee to kick off data.gov.uk, and similar efforts are underway elsewhere. Data, data, data. Indeed, Tim O'Reilly says the internet OS is a data OS. In reality, all operating systems are data operating systems, and the internet OS is no different.

Data or Process?

So what's wrong? Well, we seem to be confused: we seem to be separating data from the processes which operate on that data. Open data and open software are separate topics right now. Inert data as the next internet frontier is being heralded as a profound observation, and that's a mistake. Sometimes boiling things down so that they're simple and concise shows a superior grasp of both the subject matter and the communication medium. Sometimes it just means you've missed something important.

The processes which operate on data are data. If you look at the bits and bytes of your hard drive, it is impossible to distinguish between Photoshop the application and the Photoshop files. They're just data. Look at it another way - when a developer saves a code file, the code is data to the development environment. And the code for the development environment is data to whatever was used to develop it. Even more philosophically - which came first - data or process? A simple demonstration of how much easier this makes things: transparency in government - we don't just want census 'data' to be made available, we also want the process of census taking to be open. In fact, the latter has significantly greater implications for our ability to participate in the government machine.

From this perspective, the internet OS is just like any other - a magical structure that bootstraps itself from a singularity and delivers a universe of complexity and beauty. How we managed to use the term operating system and forget process is a mystery. We can observe the damage that is caused quite plainly - what would an OS that didn't appreciate process look like? All the applications would be completely different, they would each require separate logins, have different controls, non-standard interfaces, install differently, fail differently, report differently, vary significantly in quality, fail to integrate in most cases, or in ad-hoc manner in a few - we'd have silo's and lack of transparency, lack of trust, poor resource usage, lock-in... what a nightmare! Oh wait... that's the internet - an OS that's way too focussed on a concept of inert data. We are starting to see the open data discussion extend to things like - 'who should maintain this data?', 'how should this data be analysed?', 'what means were used to collect this data?' - Oops! Did we forget something? Time to apply our understanding of how an OS really works. Time to reboot with a new kernel version that better understands process.

The Incumbent and the Challenger

For a startup business, there's nothing more necessary than heterogeneity - your niche, your market opportunity, that little difference that gives you the edge. You stick your wedge in and start hammering - differentiating. If things pan out right, if the risks pay off, you'll carve yourself a space. You'll convince as many people as you can that it's better 'over here'. You'll compete, you'll make your space sweet and attractive, you'll advertise and persuade. How excellent it would be if everyone came 'over here'. Consolidate. And in time, with success, your niche becomes a chasm, and the last thing you need is some upstart calling everyone to somewhere else.  You are now the incumbent.

Life as the incumbent is a different world. It's go steady, be loyal to your customers, stay on message, don't take risks, react. The world as a homogenous market for your product is the holy grail, and you yourself are proof that you can neither attain nor retain it.  Rising entropy is just what you need.

It's not just business - its anything you care to name:

Opponents tend to bet more aggressively against you and make risky plays in the hope of scoring big against the champ. So you need to play more conservatively and protect your chips.

In politics, the incumbent talks of security, while the challenger calls for change. In sport, the tactics and strategy of the most successful are mimicked - but it is the challenger that plays differently who succeeds in toppling the champion. When you are young, you take risks - everything is new - you are the startup business.  As you get old you homogenise - your perspective is much the same as it was five, ten, twenty years ago. You play it safe - there's more at stake.

An interesting example of incumbent homogeneity being challenged is genetic mutation - very useful stuff. Evolution is the process of choosing the successful challenger - biological, cultural, political, technological and more. The challenger is the wellspring of diversity and the only means we have to reduce entropy - but it is a never-ending battle, for the successful challenger's destiny is to become the incumbent.

In the process of cultural evolution, a new meme is at first both strange and wondrous - but it begins to homogenise in our cultural consciousness as soon as it is born.  It's a pattern observed in many places, and as we become the borg, the patterns of our cultural evolution will become less diverse - we will begin to evolve as one. Resistance is futile.

Public Participation in Policy - PPP

For this year's Web 2.0 Summit, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle produced a white paper defining 'Web Squared' - their next evolutionary step beyond Web 2.0. It's about the opportunities for harnessing our collective intelligence. Data in context, in real-time. It's about seeing the web as a conduit for making real things happen in the real world, in ways that couldn't possibly occur without it.

This is the first example of web squared from the above white paper:

'The election of Barack Obama has demonstrated how the Internet can be used to transform politics. Now, his administration is committed to exploring how it might be used to transform the actual practice of governing.

The US Federal government has made a major commitment to transparency and open data. Data.gov now hosts more than 100,000 data feeds from US government sources, and the White House blog is considering a commitment to the 8 Open Data Principles articulated by a group of open data activists in late 2007. There’s a celebration of the successes that many are now calling "Government 2.0." We’d love to hear about Government 2.0 success stories from around the world.

But in his advice on the direction of the Government 2.0 Summit Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra has urged us not to focus on the successes of Web 2.0 in government, but rather on the unsolved problems. How can the technology community help with such problems as tracking the progress of the economic stimulus package in creating new jobs? How can it speed our progress towards energy independence and a reduction in CO2 emissions? How can it help us remake our education system to produce a more competitive workforce? How can it help us reduce the ballooning costs of healthcare?'

There are a number of points to take from this -

1. The provision of data in context, with semantic meaning, is the main achievement to date e.g. data.gov . This delivers transparency on what's already happened, and to a lesser degree on what's happening.
2. We are now looking at how we can go further than simple data provision, to solve problems - to act on this information. Not only transparency, but application.
   
3. We are looking at application in terms of achieving actual policy outcomes.
4. If you read between the lines - we need to create the means to crowdsource involvement in the  policy process - discussion, definition, implementation, communication, review and measurement. Transparency not only on what's happening, but on how and why things happen.

Provision of government data and services is really just the tip of an iceberg - the real value will come when we can provide the capacity for transparency of, and participation in the entire policy process. The complexity of the policy process is immense - it makes sense to start with data and services, but the vision for Gov 2.0 will inevitably be PPP. There is no doubt that Tim O'Reilly is heading in the right direction when he talks about government as a platform.

It is no surprise that we currently use a representational system to manage our democracy - fine grained public participation in the policy process is a deeply complex vision.  It is a whole new paradigm for our democracy - the ultimate crowdsourcing endeavour, and one that is only now becoming feasible as we enter the world of 'Web Squared'.