Transparency and government have long been unrelated terms in our recent history. A recent editorial in the New York Times stated that “the government has more than 10,000 major internal information systems” and an unnumbered amount of paper documents that cannot be accessed digitally. A staggering majority of these systems remain closed to the public and are not cross-referenced, leading anyone trying to procure data down a twisting path of technological red tape. How citizens, armed with greater broadband access and web proficiency, gain this information and hold the government accountable has become a central, if as of yet unanswered, question. The onus to change, however, has not fallen solely on the government: if more data becomes available digitally and in a central location, enterprising citizens will need to respond with interest and action to keep pressure on the government to continue this trend.

In describing the immensity and amount of time it will take to reform federal information systems, Saul Hansell wrote in March 2009 that "reforming the entire health care system may be easier," referring to the health care reforms proposed by congressional Democrats. Standardizing federal computer systems, opening access to declassified data, and ensuring back-end support for a new wave of online traffic are just a few of the issues that require years of involvement and reform on the part of the government. Hansell, a technology and communications blogger for the New York Times, leaves the impression that the campaign for more openness and transparency will span multiple administrations against an uphill battle against bureaucratic inactivity and public unawareness.

The idea of a digital open government, however, is not a new phenomenon and has been a component in several administrative initiatives. During the Clinton administration, Congress passed the Clinger-Cohen Act, which paved the way for a federal IT policy and instated CIO positions in most departments of the federal government. Four years later, President Clinton and Vice-President Gore made a first-ever presidential webcast unveiling federal initiatives in the name of "E-Government": comprehensive and searchable online resources, "one-stop" access to online grants and procurement, and a public forum for improving e-government. And President Bush signed into law the US eGovernment Act of 2002 that, in short, set to provide a framework for government agencies to share information online while also securing confidentiality of personal information.

Based on the aims of the legislation passed during their terms, both administrations underlined the importance of building a single federal IT policy and standardizing practices for disseminating human-readable documents and resources online, such as PDFs and Word files. Within a year of assuming office in 2009, President Obama and Federal CIO Vivek Kundra have charted a different kind of IT policy, emphasizing access to machine-readable formats of data for public use and providing channels for participation and engagement based on this raw data. The trend toward machine readability is in response to the difficulty in parsing and subsequently utilizing formats such as PDF beyond simply reading the documents. Web, mobile and desktop applications require formats such as XML and JSON, which are difficult for humans to read but allow numerous methods for filtering and extracting specific information from large datasets. These applications in turn provide citizens, with Internet access, the ability to view trends from the data, distribute them through social networks and come to their own conclusions on whether the government is acting in their best interests.

As a recent example, during the 2009 Virginia elections for Governor, Attorney-General and Lieutenant-General positions this month, results were posted in real-time and in XML format on the state's website. In addition to providing their own web application allowing users to explore results on a state and county scale, the State Board of Elections presented the public an opportunity to manipulate raw election data and provide hour-by-hour results through their own channels of communication, whether through social networks or blogs. This unprecedented level of transparency during a state-wide election could lay a foundation of public engagement in how political data of this nature can be presented across multiple platforms, such as mobile devices and web applications, and multiple publics on a federal, state or local level.

Consequently, the shift in federal IT policy concentrating on machine-readable data has raised a slew of new issues that have not yet been addressed by policymakers or the Obama administration. Perhaps the most central among them is the persona of the API-savvy Internet user, who will more readily embrace the new wealth of raw data, and how this affects the character of public engagement as defined in these open government reforms. In its effort to democratize access to the great swell of newly released digital databases provided by all federal departments, the Obama administration will have to ensure that everyone can benefit and participate with this information, whether they are high-minded developers or simple consumers.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported last year that slightly less than half of all Americans "used the internet to get news about the [2008] campaigns, share their views, and mobilize others." Despite the fact that the Internet and telephone were currently sharing the same levels of activity during campaigns, the Pew Institute later concluded that, post-election, the Internet was characterized more as a place to consume government information rather than use it to participate in civil discourse. Their report found specifically that levels of involvement were deeply tied to socio-economic background, with the most politically active (sending emails to representatives, signing petitions, accessing information) Internet users making 100,000 dollars or more a year. These wealthy individuals are on average more educated, have more resources to spend on greater bandwidth to support richer media, and are more technologically proficient and understand how to use and benefit from raw government data.

In the same report, the Pew Institute found that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were encouraging greater political participation within a broader socio-economic spectrum. Around 37% of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 29, used digital tools like social networking sites and blogs to participate in political activities. Digital tools have collectively formed a kind of Swiss army knife capable of joining all kinds of online activity into a familiar and connected platform, without any need of technical knowledge for development, and the rise in popularity of these services challenges the previous status-quo described by the Pew Institute’s findings. But the raw, machine-readable data provided by federal API services like data.gov and other publicly funded initiatives like the Sunlight Foundation will not spark much interest for those who do not have some development competency or familiarity with raw data formats like XML.

Possible public interest in the Obama administration's push for providing raw data is undoubtedly a catalyst for the kind of sweeping reforms proposed by Federal CIO Kundra. Currently those who have the most to gain from these reforms are an elite few capable of building applications that young, connected and politically active Internet users benefit from, but does this place too much power in the hands of developers or those in a different socio-economic stratum? One of data.gov's stated goals is to enable "the public to participate in government by providing downloadable Federal datasets to build applications, conduct analyses, and perform research," but how many participants among the American public will actually have the capacity to build, conduct and research using such formats? Participatory democracy demands equal access and understanding of available resources, but the Obama administration has yet to address the divide that now exists between the vast stores of federal information and the eager public without a clue as to how they can dig their hands into it.