At a panel discussion on redesigning government websites at PDF09, a question was raised about regulating US agencies to publish standards compliant information. A suggestion from the floor came up: “Don’t worry about regulation. Create software that makes it cheaper and easier for governments to publish standards compliant data, and agencies will use it.”

It’s a great point. Showing governments that something can be done by doing it first can inspire/shame the powers that be into action. It also creates a path of least resistance for agencies to follow. As Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs argues: “We can get government to change by writing code and writing websites faster than we can get members of congress to agree how to do it. So let's do it for them." (from video linked here)

The US government website USASpending.gov shows how this process can work. Three years ago, a group of senators including Barack Obama and John McCain introduced a bill to US congress called the ‘Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act’. The act stipulated that the office of Management and Budget create a searchable website of nearly all government spending by 2008. According to a report by the US non-profit OMBWatch:

“At the time, the Bush administration and others believed that such a website could not be created, and if it could, it would be very costly and take many years to put into place.” (p. 19)

Regardless, the act passed. Faced with having to implement the website, the US Office of Management and Budget found that the easiest and most cost effective thing to do was to copy a non-profit site already in use that was doing the same thing. fedspending.org, built by the non-profit OMBWatch, had for some time been collecting and sharing information on federal spending obtained from Freedom of Information requests and other sources. The Office of Management and Budget licensed the software behind fedspending.org, and launched it as USASpending.gov, supplying the same information directly from the government.

As described in the Washington Post, the OMB was initially reluctant to participate with the non-profit, quoting OMB associate director Robert Shea as saying:

"OMB Watch spends a great deal of its efforts criticizing what I do the rest of my day, trying to improve program performance, [so] my level of interest in cooperating with them was very low,"

But finally Shea decided:

"OMB Watch had already proven it could be done, so why do it from scratch?"

Exactly. The OMB delivered the site ahead of schedule, and for exponentially less than the originally anticipated cost. Further, USASpending.gov kept many of the innovative features implemented by OMBWatch, including an API for programmers to access the data – a groundbreaking move at the time.

Creating websites that push the envelope on visualizing, sharing, and publishing government information drives innovation within government by showing what’s possible. As in the example of USASpending.gov, these websites can even become the cheapest and best option for governments to adopt internally. Governments are, in general, terrible places for creativity and experimentation – the Outside-In model may well be the most viable way of getting innovation into government websites.

Stay tuned for an in-depth comparison of the federal contract data available on USASpending.gov, and the data that’s available in Canada under proactive disclosure laws.