Note on Code Swaraj
glove with Congressman Darrell Issa, a conservative Republican committee chairman, to liberate huge amounts of congressional video.
Internationally, tremendous effort was put into an Open Government Partnership by the White House. Officials from numerous countries met frequently and developed open government plans and goals. In the U.S., each federal agency was required to come up with an open government plan. Agencies started being ranked based on how many “data sets” they released to the public. Transparency became the watchword. Open was a goal.
To bring more techies into government service, the U.S. emulated a pathbreaking agency in the United Kingdom, the Government Digital Service, which was bringing modern computer programming directly into visible online government services. The newly-minuted U.S. Digital Service was joined by another group, named “18F,” located in the General Services Administration, and staffed with a hundred bright, young, experienced techies. (The odd name for the organization comes from their location at an office building at the corner of 18th and F streets.)
Aaron Swartz wrote an essay around that time, which I have attached as an appendix. He cautioned that transparency as a sole goal was the wrong goal, and I shared his concern. I actually used to bristle when people said I was doing my work because of a single-minded desire for transparency in government. Don’t get me wrong. I totally believe in transparency as a means to more effective operation not only government agencies, but also public charities like my own. But, I think it is the wrong frame for what we do. Transparency is a vague goal and standing by itself, it does not reach the specificity one needs to conduct an effective campaign of satygraha. You need more than just sunlight as a goal.
I did what I did because it made government work better. I was interested in revamping how the government made the law available to itself, the bar, and the public. I wanted congressional hearings online because it was a tool for educating students across the country and because it made it easier for congressional staff to run a better congress.
What I found with the open government movement was a large number of well-meaning people thinking they were going to change the system from within. Let me be clear: many of them have achieved much. Look at the miracle job a small SWAT team did to rescue healthcare.gov from contractor hell. But, many people felt that the inside path was a club, if you weren’t in the government, you
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