Shaping Network Society

Alex Schellong and I wrote down a longer conversation we have been having over the years and published it in the Harvard International Review:

The evolution of modern society is marked by continuous rise of government size, obligations and market interactions. According to Juergen Habermas, the expansion of the state into more and more private affairs led to a slow demise of the public debates over ideas and conflicts—the expression varying with context, history, and technology. Citizen-government interaction is reduced to election periods, interest groups and media-spin.

However, there was opposition to this development. Henry David Thoreau argued in his essay “Civil Disobedience” in the late 18th century, “government is best which governs least.” It implies a government reduced to the minimum in size accountable to its people. Because American government in the 18th century was already on its way to assemble the contrary, Thoreau suggested that if as many people as possible join peaceful protests, their actions would “clog the machinery of the state”, eventually leading to change. However, he did not succeed. And over the next 200 years, the state developed as the most successful organization form, an “imagined community” that structured the lives of most people on this planet. Today, however, with the advent of new network-based social platforms, Thoreau might have been more successful with his attempt to let his voice be heard and activate others for his cause.

In the 21st Century the ‘network’ has transcended the academic context and entered the wider field of the political discourse. Policy networks, networked governance, peer production, massive collaboration, open government, and radical transparency have become part of our political vocabulary that we rely on to legitimize why and how we act collectively. With web technologies and social media, such as interchangeable data-formats, wikis, transparency, and social networking, network society has become part of the mainstream global public policy discourse.

The early 21st Century evoke a Machiavellian time—a time when new technologies and new forms of thinking and governance emerged. So, if we are living in times of transformative change, where Internet technologies and an understanding of society as a network of inclusive, some-how like-minded, outcome-oriented, collaborators emerges we need to ask, what the logic of network society is, to be able to explain our world and predict future developments. Dave Clark, one of the original architects of the Internet, argued in 1971: We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code…

Read more on Macchiavelli 2.0 – Fundamentals of Network Society at the Harvard International Review.

There are not many instances when a governmental memo shaped the political philosophy of a generation. Clearly Kennan’s Long Telegram comes to mind:

The ‘Long Telegram’ was sent by George Kennan from the United States Embassy in Moscow to Washington, where it was received on February 22nd 1946. The telegram was prompted by US enquiries about Soviet behaviour, especially with regards to their refusal to join the newly created World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In his text, Kennan outlined Soviet belief and practice and proposed the policy of ‘containment‘, making the Telegram a key document in the history of the Cold War. The name ‘long’ derives from the telegram’s 8000 word length. (quote from About.com)

The social media community believes Obama’s Transparency/Participation/Collaboration memo will have a similar impact on our century. The framework implied in the memo has been taken up governments worldwide, real world policies have been implemented, and the “access-to-information-legislation” topic has moved from arcane to center field. It is surprising, however, that not much is known about the background/history of the memo. Who drafted it? Who developed the TPC framework? Who brought the topic onto the agenda? Who knows more? Who can point me to the relevant people?

I just spent the day at the Futures of Modernity Symposium in Munich, held in honor of Ulrich Beck, the grand sociologist and author of Risk Society (1992). The idea of the event was:

Throughout the world, contemporary societies are facing the challenges posed by a set of heterogeneous phenomena of social change which are not only placing existing convictions and interpretations in question, but are already creating new and multiple realities that escape the established categories of thought. The emerging outlines of a Cosmopolitan World Risk Society cannot be grasped in terms yesterday’s sociology which takes its orientation from industrial society in the nation-state and from the exclusiveness of European (i.e. Western) modernity. Nevertheless, the multitude of social phenomena which point to epochal transitions towards a new future open up novel horizons of critical analysis and discussion and pose a range of pressing questions that must be addressed today if we are to be ready for the challenges of tomorrow.

It was a great event, however, I was shocked that nobody spoke about the emancipatory potential or the totalitarian dangers of new forms of technologically mediated ideation, deliberation, and collaboration. New forms of collective action such as peer production, crowd-sourcing, and networked governance were completely ignored, as if all that had happened recently was the 40th anniversary of the landing on the moon and the 20th of the fall of the Berlin Wall. What about Twitter, the opening of the Facebook stream APIs, or the Open Government Initiative? :)

Ulrich Beck’s main thesis is that we live in a second modernity. Modernity for Beck is the move to instrumental rationality (ends-means rationality) as the main mode of thinking. This means during modernity (roughly 17^th to the end of the 20^th century) the aim was to control nature and human institutions to reduce risks to our societies.

Second modernity develops when we realize that we cannot control all risks because the complexity of institutions we created to control risks, states, the financial markets, insurance companies, nuclear energy, or genetic engineering, themselves create new uncontrollable and global risks.

Beck states that in second modernity we have left modernity, but cannot go back to premodern forms: all flavors of fundamentalisms (Christian, Islamic, or other) are modern responses to the challenges of our age not premodern uprisings. He also warns that post-modernity neither gives substantive answers to the challenges that risks confront us with, nor to the inequalities of our worlds. This means we are effectively living in a Gramscian interregnum.

This framework of risk society allows us to describe all types of phenomena from the injustice of the subcontracting in the global supply chain to the risk propensity of Wall Street bankers that show no remorse about their actions, explaing responsibility away by calling it “systemic failure.” Because these human manufactured uncertainties are of planetary nature, Beck calls for cosmopolitan Realpolitik as a response to the challenges of second modernity. He asks, how can national states re-conquer a state-political meta power vis-à-vis those economic actors – in order to force a cosmopolitical regime upon world-political capital that includes political freedom, global justice, social security, and ecological sustainability?

And here is where I would want to disagree. It is not by re-awakening early modern zombies that will save the planet.

The emancipatory power of concepts like radical transparency, open collaboration, and network governance stems from an emerging new paradigm in social theory. Unfortunately, at this point there is no enough political philosophy or social theory discussion on this important topic, which will probably shape human societies for the next 300 years.

Clearly, it is time to collaborate on this “beyond modern” planetary political theory and public policy project!

Carl Malamud is a public domain advocate heading public.resource.org. His approach is the publication of public domain information from local, state, and federal government agencies. Over the years the publication of governmental data has become a surprisingly lucrative business for niche publishers. The gain of open access to the general public is distributed, while the loss of a revenue stream to the individual publishers is very clearly felt, so they have invested a lot to prevent the government from opening up.

His latest letter to the US CIO and CTO is a great example of the types of political battles we will be seeing all over the world in the years to come.

Dear Mr. Kundra and Mr. Chopra:
I am writing to request your assistance in making available at no charge and for bulk
access two of the most important legal databases maintained by the executive branch:

Publications in the Federal Register System, maintained by the National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA).

Patents, maintained by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
While the U.S. government maintains a minimal web presence for both databases,
those web sites are only useful for casual browsing. In both cases, the underlying
source code for the documents is only available for substantial fees.
A yearly subscription to the Code of Federal Regulations for bulk access to the “SGML”
source code with images is $17,000/year. The same $17,000 fee applies to other
NARA databases such as the Federal Register. While there are PDF versions of the
Federal Register and text versions of the Code of Federal Regulations available for
browsing, it is impossible to easily download them in bulk, and the underlying source
code which could be used for creating new versions of these documents is prohibitively
priced.
Likewise, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office makes a web site available for casual
searching and browsing, but the only bulk access to patent data is limited to the first
page of a patent. To get the full text of current and historical patents requires a very
substantial fee. For example, the Patent Grant Data/XML v. 4.2 ICE (Current Calendar
Year Subscription) (EIP-5300P-OL) costs a breathtaking $39,000.
These fees are so substantial that they actively discourage the use of these key U.S.
government databases by public interest groups and scholars, limiting access to a few
well-heeled corporations. In particular, at Public.Resource.Org, we would make much
more extensive use of these databases if we could afford access, helping fulfill our
mission of making America’s primary legal materials available to the public.

Our desire to work with this data is shared by many other groups, including our
colleagues at the Sunlight Foundation, Columbia University, Cornell University,
University of Colorado, Harvard University, Northwestern University, Stanford
University, and GovTrack.US. All of these academic and nonprofit groups have notable
track records for providing innovative uses of government data, and the lack of bulk
access to these databases has greatly discouraged development of new applications.
Patents and “the law” have a very special place in our system of government, being the
only two executive branch databases specifically called out in the U.S. Constitution:
The very purpose of the patent database is to “Promote the Progress of Science
and useful Arts.” The very essence of a patent is publication, and deliberately
restricting access goes against the explicit language of the Constitution. While
we are sympathetic with the desire of the U.S. Patent Office to derive revenue
from the sale of these bulk feeds, such a policy runs directly contrary to their
primary mission. Filing fees imposed on those that seek economic gain from
the public through the issuance of a patent are more than sufficient to make up
any revenue shortfall created by making bulk data available at no cost.
Likewise, the purpose of the Federal Register system is to provide a systematic
vehicle for notification and publication of regulations that are enacted by the
government. Restricting access to this data by putting it behind a series of
$17,000 pay walls yields less than $200,000 in annual revenue to the
government, yet is costly enough that only a few well-heeled corporations have
access. The public interest simply can’t afford to play.
Initiatives such as Data.Gov have been very successful and you are both to be
applauded for the dramatic change in philosophy in the U.S. Government when it
comes to release and dissemination of information. However, it is my worry, a worry
shared with my colleagues listed above, that any progress on releasing the USPTO and
NARA databases in bulk will become entangled in bureaucratic delay, and I am writing
to urge that you make these crucial documents of our democracy available sooner
rather than later.
Respectfully yours,

Carl Malamud

The exciting idea of “bulk access” is to make government data available not in edited form, but in machine readable (xml) formats, so that the user can decide what to do with it. In the words of Ed Felten et al:

Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

Is this salient for your work? How is it different in Europe, the Americas, Africa, or Asia? What is your experience with fully opening up databases to the public?

(written by Emilene Martinez, the National Security Archives, Washington DC and LNS-Guestblogger)

I started working at the National Security Archive in 2001 requesting information related to US foreign policy in Latin America to one of the most secretive administrations in American history. Asking for government records was not easy – to begin with, backlogs plagued the system (with requests related to Mexico being responded in an average of 2 years, although the Freedom of Information Act clearly states that agencies have 20 days to comply). Furthermore, the administration issued clear guidelines that encouraged government officials to withhold information: the President rewrote the Executive Order on Classified National Security Information, removing a section that instructed agencies to declassify information if they doubted it merited to be classified. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a Memorandum on Freedom of Information in May 2001 encouraging agencies to: “carefully consider the protection” of national security when making disclosure decisions under the FOIA.

Increased transparency and government accountability were key commitments of Obama’s presidential campaign. More than sixty organizations, among them the National Security Archive, called on President-elect Obama to fulfill campaign promises and to: “restore efficiency and openness to the Freedom of Information Act process, reform the classification system to reduce overclassification and facilitate greater declassification, and ensure that presidential records are handled in accordance with the law and Congress’ intent”. On day one in office, President Barack Obama issued a memo on FOIA which directs all agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” and apply this presumption “to all decisions involving FOIA.” President Obama also made clear that “the government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.” Moreover Attorney General Eric Holder issued a Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act last month, where he encourages agencies to: “make discretionary disclosures of information” and clearly specifies that “an agency should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the records fall within a scope of a FOI exemption.”

Now, the challenge for openness advocates is to put the new transparency guidelines to the test.

In December 2008, in partnership with journalist Manuel Mora MacBeath, the Archive requested information related to the activities of Mexican right-wing organizations in the 70s. To our surprise, last March we got a response from the CIA (after 3 months not 2 years) to two specific requests informing us that the agency could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of the records pertaining our request because of “the fact of the existence or nonexistence” of the requested records is classified. Our request was denied pursuant to FOIA exemptions (b) (1) and (b) (3) related to national security and information identifying personnel in sensitive units.

Yesterday, we filed an appeal to the CIA’s Release Panel arguing that records related to the right-wing organizations mentioned in the request have been already disclosed in Mexico. Intelligence records from the Mexican Federal Security Directorate (Dirección Federal de Seguridad) regarding these groups’ activities are available for public access at the Mexican National Archives and have been mentioned in countless publications, including the bestseller by journalist Álvaro Delgado “El Yunque: The Radical Right in Power”. The fact that the information regarding these organizations is publicly available in Mexico, and is no longer considered sensitive, lead us to question how the release of information related to them would affect the current national security of the United States. Furthermore, in the past the Archive has successfully obtained records from the CIA related to activities of other Mexican dissident groups during the same time period.

In our appeal, of course, we quoted the Obama and Ashcroft directives – let us see how well all the discourse is put into practice. I will keep you posted on any new developments on the case!

*The CIA denial generated front-page news in León Guanajuato (a right-wing stronghold), you can view the article here: http://www.am.com.mx/Nota.aspx?ID=320127. More information on this case is also available at Manuel Mora’s blog: http://mejoroficio.blogspot.com.

Jerry Brito wrote a great primer into what we should expect of open government in the 21st century in 2007, Hack, Mash & Peer: Crowdsourcing Government Transparency, it is available at the SSRN:

If government data is made available online in useful and flexible formats, citizens will be able to utilize modern Internet tools to shed light on government activities. Such tools include mashups, which highlight hidden connections between different data sets, and crowdsourcing, which makes light work of sifting through mountains of data by focusing thousands of eyes on a particular set of data.

Today, however, the state of government’s online offerings is very sad indeed. Some nominally publicly available information is not online at all, and the data that is online is often not in useful formats. Government should be encouraged to release public information online in a structured, open, and searchable manner. To the extent that government does not modernize, however, we should hope that private third parties build unofficial databases and make these available in a useful form to the public.

About 10 days ago, Barak Obama published the following memo. It is a must-read. His TPC Framework (transparency, participation, collaboration) reminds us that the three need to play together if we want to make networked governance work.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent.  Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.  Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative.  Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.  Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA