Demand a more open-source government
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0:01 - 0:03So when the White House was built
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0:03 - 0:06in the early 19th century, it was an open house.
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0:06 - 0:09Neighbors came and went. Under President Adams,
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0:09 - 0:10a local dentist happened by.
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0:10 - 0:13He wanted to shake the President's hand.
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0:13 - 0:15The President dismissed the Secretary of State,
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0:15 - 0:17whom he was conferring with, and asked the dentist
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0:17 - 0:19if he would remove a tooth.
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0:19 - 0:22Later, in the 1850s, under President Pierce,
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0:22 - 0:23he was known to have remarked
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0:23 - 0:26— probably the only thing he's known for —
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0:26 - 0:29when a neighbor passed by and said, "I'd love to see
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0:29 - 0:31the beautiful house," and Pierce said to him,
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0:31 - 0:33"Why my dear sir, of course you may come in.
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0:33 - 0:37This isn't my house. It is the people's house."
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0:37 - 0:39Well, when I got to the White House in the beginning
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0:39 - 0:42of 2009, at the start of the Obama Administration,
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0:42 - 0:45the White House was anything but open.
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0:45 - 0:48Bomb blast curtains covered my windows.
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0:48 - 0:50We were running Windows 2000.
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0:50 - 0:52Social media were blocked at the firewall.
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0:52 - 0:55We didn't have a blog, let alone a dozen twitter accounts
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0:55 - 0:57like we have today.
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0:57 - 0:59I came in to become the head of Open Government,
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0:59 - 1:02to take the values and the practices of transparency,
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1:02 - 1:06participation and collaboration, and instill them
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1:06 - 1:08into the way that we work, to open up government,
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1:08 - 1:10to work with people.
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1:10 - 1:13Now one of the things that we know
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1:13 - 1:16is that companies are very good at getting people to work
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1:16 - 1:18together in teams and in networks to make
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1:18 - 1:22very complex products, like cars and computers,
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1:22 - 1:25and the more complex the products are a society creates,
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1:25 - 1:28the more successful the society is over time.
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1:28 - 1:31Companies make goods, but governments,
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1:31 - 1:34they make public goods. They work on the cure for cancer
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1:34 - 1:37and educating our children and making roads,
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1:37 - 1:40but we don't have institutions that are particularly good
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1:40 - 1:43at this kind of complexity. We don't have institutions
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1:43 - 1:46that are good at bringing our talents to bear,
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1:46 - 1:51at working with us in this kind of open and collaborative way.
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1:51 - 1:53So when we wanted to create our Open Government policy,
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1:53 - 1:55what did we do? We wanted, naturally, to ask public sector
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1:55 - 1:58employees how we should open up government.
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1:58 - 2:02Turns out that had never been done before.
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2:02 - 2:04We wanted to ask members of the public to help us
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2:04 - 2:07come up with a policy, not after the fact, commenting
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2:07 - 2:11on a rule after it's written, the way is typically the case,
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2:11 - 2:14but in advance. There was no legal precedent,
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2:14 - 2:17no cultural precedent, no technical way of doing this.
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2:17 - 2:20In fact, many people told us it was illegal.
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2:20 - 2:23Here's the crux of the obstacle.
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2:23 - 2:26Governments exist to channel the flow of two things,
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2:26 - 2:29really, values and expertise to and from government
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2:29 - 2:33and to and from citizens to the end of making decisions.
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2:33 - 2:36But the way that our institutions are designed,
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2:36 - 2:39in our rather 18th-century, centralized model,
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2:39 - 2:42is to channel the flow of values through voting,
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2:42 - 2:44once every four years, once every two years, at best,
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2:44 - 2:48once a year. This is a rather anemic and thin way, in this
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2:48 - 2:52era of social media, for us to actually express our values.
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2:52 - 2:55Today we have technology that lets us express ourselves
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2:55 - 2:58a great deal, perhaps a little too much.
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2:58 - 3:00Then in the 19th century, we layer on
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3:00 - 3:02the concept of bureaucracy and the administrative state
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3:02 - 3:05to help us govern complex and large societies.
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3:05 - 3:09But we've centralized these bureaucracies.
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3:09 - 3:11We've entrenched them. And we know that
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3:11 - 3:14the smartest person always works for someone else.
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3:14 - 3:17We need to only look around this room to know that
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3:17 - 3:20expertise and intelligence is widely distributed in society,
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3:20 - 3:24and not limited simply to our institutions.
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3:24 - 3:27Scientists have been studying in recent years
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3:27 - 3:29the phenomenon that they often describe as flow,
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3:29 - 3:32that the design of our systems, whether natural or social,
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3:32 - 3:35channel the flow of whatever runs through them.
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3:35 - 3:38So a river is designed to channel the flow of water,
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3:38 - 3:41and the lightning bolt that comes out of a cloud channels
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3:41 - 3:44the flow of electricity, and a leaf is designed to channel
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3:44 - 3:46the flow of nutrients to the tree,
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3:46 - 3:49sometimes even having to route around an obstacle,
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3:49 - 3:52but to get that nutrition flowing.
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3:52 - 3:54The same can be said for our social systems, for our
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3:54 - 3:57systems of government, where, at the very least,
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3:57 - 4:00flow offers us a helpful metaphor for understanding
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4:00 - 4:03what the problem is, what's really broken,
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4:03 - 4:06and the urgent need that we have, that we all feel today,
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4:06 - 4:10to redesign the flow of our institutions.
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4:10 - 4:14We live in a Cambrian era of big data, of social networks,
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4:14 - 4:18and we have this opportunity to redesign these institutions
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4:18 - 4:21that are actually quite recent.
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4:21 - 4:24Think about it: What other business do you know,
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4:24 - 4:27what other sector of the economy, and especially one
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4:27 - 4:31as big as the public sector, that doesn't seek to reinvent
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4:31 - 4:34its business model on a regular basis?
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4:34 - 4:37Sure, we invest plenty in innovation. We invest
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4:37 - 4:41in broadband and science education and science grants,
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4:41 - 4:44but we invest far too little in reinventing and redesigning
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4:44 - 4:47the institutions that we have.
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4:47 - 4:49Now, it's very easy to complain, of course, about
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4:49 - 4:52partisan politics and entrenched bureaucracy, and we love
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4:52 - 4:55to complain about government. It's a perennial pastime,
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4:55 - 4:58especially around election time, but
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4:58 - 5:01the world is complex. We soon will have 10 billion people,
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5:01 - 5:04many of whom will lack basic resources.
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5:04 - 5:07So complain as we might, what actually can replace
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5:07 - 5:10what we have today?
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5:10 - 5:14What comes the day after the Arab Spring?
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5:14 - 5:18Well, one attractive alternative that obviously presents itself
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5:18 - 5:21to us is that of networks. Right? Networks
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5:21 - 5:23like Facebook and Twitter. They're lean. They're mean.
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5:23 - 5:26You've got 3,000 employees at Facebook
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5:26 - 5:29governing 900 million inhabitants.
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5:29 - 5:31We might even call them citizens, because they've recently
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5:31 - 5:35risen up to fight against legislative incursion,
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5:35 - 5:37and the citizens of these networks work together
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5:37 - 5:41to serve each other in great ways.
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5:41 - 5:43But private communities, private, corporate,
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5:43 - 5:47privatizing communities, are not bottom-up democracies.
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5:47 - 5:49They cannot replace government.
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5:49 - 5:52Friending someone on Facebook is not complex enough
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5:52 - 5:54to do the hard work of you and I collaborating
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5:54 - 5:58with each other and doing the hard work of governance.
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5:58 - 6:01But social media do teach us something.
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6:01 - 6:06Why is Twitter so successful? Because it opens up its platform.
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6:06 - 6:09It opens up the API to allow hundreds of thousands
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6:09 - 6:12of new applications to be built on top of it, so that we can
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6:12 - 6:16read and process information in new and exciting ways.
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6:16 - 6:19We need to think about how to open up the API
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6:19 - 6:23of government, and the way that we're going to do that,
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6:23 - 6:26the next great superpower is going to be the one
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6:26 - 6:32who can successfully combine the hierarchy of institution --
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6:32 - 6:34because we have to maintain those public values,
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6:34 - 6:37we have to coordinate the flow -- but with the diversity
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6:37 - 6:40and the pulsating life and the chaos and the excitement
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6:40 - 6:43of networks, all of us working together to build
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6:43 - 6:47these new innovations on top of our institutions,
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6:47 - 6:49to engage in the practice of governance.
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6:49 - 6:52We have a precedent for this. Good old Henry II here,
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6:52 - 6:56in the 12th century, invented the jury.
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6:56 - 7:00Powerful, practical, palpable model for handing power
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7:00 - 7:03from government to citizens.
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7:03 - 7:06Today we have the opportunity, and we have
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7:06 - 7:10the imperative, to create thousands of new ways
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7:10 - 7:13of interconnecting between networks and institutions,
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7:13 - 7:16thousands of new kinds of juries: the citizen jury,
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7:16 - 7:19the Carrotmob, the hackathon, we are just beginning
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7:19 - 7:22to invent the models by which we can cocreate
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7:22 - 7:24the process of governance.
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7:24 - 7:27Now, we don't fully have a picture of what this will look like
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7:27 - 7:29yet, but we're seeing pockets of evolution
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7:29 - 7:32emerging all around us -- maybe not even evolution,
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7:32 - 7:36I'd even start to call it a revolution -- in the way that we govern.
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7:36 - 7:38Some of it's very high-tech,
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7:38 - 7:40and some of it is extremely low-tech,
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7:40 - 7:43such as the project that MKSS is running in Rajasthan,
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7:43 - 7:47India, where they take the spending data of the state
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7:47 - 7:50and paint it on 100,000 village walls,
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7:50 - 7:52and then invite the villagers to come and comment
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7:52 - 7:55who is on the government payroll, who's actually died,
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7:55 - 7:57what are the bridges that have been built to nowhere,
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7:57 - 8:00and to work together through civic engagement to save
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8:00 - 8:04real money and participate and have access to that budget.
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8:04 - 8:06But it's not just about policing government.
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8:06 - 8:08It's also about creating government.
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8:08 - 8:11Spacehive in the U.K. is engaging in crowd-funding,
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8:11 - 8:13getting you and me to raise the money to build
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8:13 - 8:16the goalposts and the park benches that will actually
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8:16 - 8:20allow us to deliver better services in our communities.
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8:20 - 8:23No one is better at this activity of actually getting us
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8:23 - 8:27to engage in delivering services,
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8:27 - 8:30sometimes where none exist, than Ushahidi.
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8:30 - 8:34Created after the post-election riots in Kenya in 2008,
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8:34 - 8:38this crisis-mapping website and community is actually able
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8:38 - 8:41to crowdsource and target the delivery of
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8:41 - 8:44better rescue services to people trapped under the rubble,
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8:44 - 8:46whether it's after the earthquakes in Haiti,
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8:46 - 8:49or more recently in Italy.
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8:49 - 8:52And the Red Cross too is training volunteers and Twitter
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8:52 - 8:55is certifying them, not simply to supplement existing
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8:55 - 8:59government institutions, but in many cases, to replace them.
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8:59 - 9:02Now what we're seeing lots of examples of, obviously,
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9:02 - 9:03is the opening up of government data,
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9:03 - 9:06not enough examples of this yet, but we're starting
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9:06 - 9:10to see this practice of people creating and generating
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9:10 - 9:13innovative applications on top of government data.
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9:13 - 9:16There's so many examples I could have picked, and I
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9:16 - 9:19selected this one of Jon Bon Jovi. Some of you
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9:19 - 9:21may or may not know that he runs a soup kitchen
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9:21 - 9:24in New Jersey, where he caters to and serves the homeless
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9:24 - 9:26and particularly homeless veterans.
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9:26 - 9:28In February, he approached the White House, and said,
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9:28 - 9:32"I would like to fund a prize to create scalable national
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9:32 - 9:36applications, apps, that will help not only the homeless
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9:36 - 9:39but those who deliver services [to] them to do so better."
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9:39 - 9:43February 2012 to June of 2012,
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9:43 - 9:46the finalists are announced in the competition.
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9:46 - 9:48Can you imagine, in the bureaucratic world of yesteryear,
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9:48 - 9:51getting anything done in a four-month period of time?
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9:51 - 9:53You can barely fill out the forms in that amount of time,
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9:53 - 9:56let alone generate real, palpable innovations
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9:56 - 9:58that improve people's lives.
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9:58 - 10:01And I want to be clear to mention that this open government
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10:01 - 10:05revolution is not about privatizing government,
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10:05 - 10:08because in many cases what it can do when we have
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10:08 - 10:11the will to do so is to deliver more progressive
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10:11 - 10:15and better policy than the regulations and the legislative
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10:15 - 10:18and litigation-oriented strategies
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10:18 - 10:21by which we make policy today.
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10:21 - 10:25In the State of Texas, they regulate 515 professions,
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10:25 - 10:27from well-driller to florist.
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10:27 - 10:30Now, you can carry a gun into a church in Dallas,
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10:30 - 10:33but do not make a flower arrangement without a license,
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10:33 - 10:36because that will land you in jail.
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10:36 - 10:40So what is Texas doing? They're asking you and me,
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10:40 - 10:44using online policy wikis, to help not simply get rid of
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10:44 - 10:47burdensome regulations that impede entrepreneurship,
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10:47 - 10:50but to replace those regulations with more innovative
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10:50 - 10:53alternatives, sometimes using transparency in the creation
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10:53 - 10:55of new iPhone apps that will allows us
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10:55 - 10:57both to protect consumers and the public
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10:57 - 11:01and to encourage economic development.
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11:01 - 11:04That is a nice sideline of open government.
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11:04 - 11:07It's not only the benefits that we've talked about with regard
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11:07 - 11:10to development. It's the economic benefits and the
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11:10 - 11:15job creation that's coming from this open innovation work.
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11:15 - 11:18Sberbank, the largest and oldest bank in Russia,
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11:18 - 11:19largely owned by the Russian government,
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11:19 - 11:22has started practicing crowdsourcing, engaging
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11:22 - 11:26its employees and citizens in the public in developing innovations.
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11:26 - 11:30Last year they saved a billion dollars, 30 billion rubles,
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11:30 - 11:33from open innovation, and they're pushing radically
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11:33 - 11:36the extension of crowdsourcing, not only from banking,
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11:36 - 11:38but into the public sector.
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11:38 - 11:40And we see lots of examples of these innovators using
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11:40 - 11:43open government data, not simply to make apps,
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11:43 - 11:45but then to make companies and to hire people
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11:45 - 11:48to build them working with the government.
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11:48 - 11:50So a lot of these innovations are local.
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11:50 - 11:53In San Ramon, California, they published an iPhone app
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11:53 - 11:56in which they allow you or me to say we are certified
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11:56 - 12:00CPR-trained, and then when someone has a heart attack,
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12:00 - 12:02a notification goes out so that you
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12:02 - 12:06can rush over to the person over here and deliver CPR.
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12:06 - 12:09The victim who receives bystander CPR
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12:09 - 12:11is more than twice as likely to survive.
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12:11 - 12:15"There is a hero in all of us," is their slogan.
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12:15 - 12:17But it's not limited to the local.
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12:17 - 12:20British Columbia, Canada, is publishing a catalogue
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12:20 - 12:23of all the ways that its residents and citizens can engage
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12:23 - 12:27with the state in the cocreation of governance.
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12:27 - 12:30Let me be very clear,
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12:30 - 12:31and perhaps controversial,
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12:31 - 12:34that open government is not
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12:34 - 12:36about transparent government.
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12:36 - 12:39Simply throwing data over the transom doesn't change
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12:39 - 12:40how government works.
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12:40 - 12:43It doesn't get anybody to do anything with that data
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12:43 - 12:47to change lives, to solve problems, and it doesn't change
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12:47 - 12:48government.
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12:48 - 12:51What it does is it creates an adversarial relationship
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12:51 - 12:53between civil society and government
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12:53 - 12:56over the control and ownership of information.
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12:56 - 12:58And transparency, by itself, is not reducing the flow
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12:58 - 13:01of money into politics, and arguably,
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13:01 - 13:03it's not even producing accountability as well as it might
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13:03 - 13:07if we took the next step of combining participation and
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13:07 - 13:11collaboration with transparency to transform how we work.
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13:11 - 13:14We're going to see this evolution really in two phases,
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13:14 - 13:17I think. The first phase of the open government revolution
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13:17 - 13:21is delivering better information from the crowd
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13:21 - 13:22into the center.
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13:22 - 13:25Starting in 2005, and this is how this open government
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13:25 - 13:27work in the U.S. really got started,
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13:27 - 13:29I was teaching a patent law class to my students and
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13:29 - 13:33explaining to them how a single person in the bureaucracy
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13:33 - 13:35has the power to make a decision
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13:35 - 13:40about which patent application becomes the next patent,
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13:40 - 13:42and therefore monopolizes for 20 years the rights
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13:42 - 13:45over an entire field of inventive activity.
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13:45 - 13:48Well, what did we do? We said, we can make a website,
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13:48 - 13:51we can make an expert network, a social network,
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13:51 - 13:53that would connect the network to the institution
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13:53 - 13:55to allow scientists and technologists to get
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13:55 - 13:58better information to the patent office
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13:58 - 14:00to aid in making those decisions.
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14:00 - 14:03We piloted the work in the U.S. and the U.K. and Japan
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14:03 - 14:06and Australia, and now I'm pleased to report
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14:06 - 14:08that the United States Patent Office will be rolling out
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14:08 - 14:13universal, complete, and total openness,
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14:13 - 14:16so that all patent applications will now be open
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14:16 - 14:19for citizen participation, beginning this year.
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14:19 - 14:22The second phase of this evolution — Yeah. (Applause)
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14:22 - 14:25They deserve a hand. (Applause)
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14:25 - 14:28The first phase is in getting better information in.
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14:28 - 14:32The second phase is in getting decision-making power out.
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14:32 - 14:34Participatory budgeting has long been practiced
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14:34 - 14:36in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
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14:36 - 14:39They're just starting it in the 49th Ward in Chicago.
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14:39 - 14:42Russia is using wikis to get citizens writing law together,
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14:42 - 14:45as is Lithuania. When we start to see
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14:45 - 14:47power over the core functions of government
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14:47 - 14:50— spending, legislation, decision-making —
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14:50 - 14:54then we're well on our way to an open government revolution.
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14:54 - 14:58There are many things that we can do to get us there.
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14:58 - 15:01Obviously opening up the data is one,
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15:01 - 15:03but the important thing is to create lots more --
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15:03 - 15:08create and curate -- lots more participatory opportunities.
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15:08 - 15:10Hackathons and mashathons and working with data
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15:10 - 15:14to build apps is an intelligible way for people to engage
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15:14 - 15:16and participate, like the jury is,
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15:16 - 15:20but we're going to need lots more things like it.
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15:20 - 15:24And that's why we need to start with our youngest people.
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15:24 - 15:27We've heard talk here at TED about people
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15:27 - 15:31biohacking and hacking their plants with Arduino,
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15:31 - 15:34and Mozilla is doing work around the world in getting
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15:34 - 15:37young people to build websites and make videos.
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15:37 - 15:40When we start by teaching young people that we live,
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15:40 - 15:44not in a passive society, a read-only society,
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15:44 - 15:46but in a writable society, where we have the power
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15:46 - 15:50to change our communities, to change our institutions,
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15:50 - 15:53that's when we begin to really put ourselves on the pathway
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15:53 - 15:56towards this open government innovation,
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15:56 - 15:58towards this open government movement,
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15:58 - 16:00towards this open government revolution.
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16:00 - 16:03So let me close by saying that I think the important thing
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16:03 - 16:08for us to do is to talk about and demand this revolution.
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16:08 - 16:12We don't have words, really, to describe it yet.
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16:12 - 16:14Words like equality and fairness and the traditional
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16:14 - 16:18elections, democracy, these are not really great terms yet.
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16:18 - 16:21They're not fun enough. They're not exciting enough
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16:21 - 16:24to get us engaged in this tremendous opportunity
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16:24 - 16:28that awaits us. But I would argue that if we want to see
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16:28 - 16:30the kinds of innovations, the hopeful and exciting
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16:30 - 16:33innovations that we hear talked about here at TED,
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16:33 - 16:35in clean energy, in clean education,
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16:35 - 16:38in development, if we want to see those adopted
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16:38 - 16:40and we want to see those scaled,
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16:40 - 16:43we want to see them become the governance of tomorrow,
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16:43 - 16:45then we must all participate,
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16:45 - 16:46then we must get involved.
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16:46 - 16:49We must open up our institutions, and like the leaf,
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16:49 - 16:54we must let the nutrients flow throughout our body politic,
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16:54 - 16:57throughout our culture, to create open institutions
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16:57 - 16:59to create a stronger democracy, a better tomorrow.
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16:59 - 17:02Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- Demand a more open-source government
- Speaker:
- Beth Noveck
- Description:
-
What can governments learn from the open-data revolution? In this stirring talk, Beth Noveck, the former deputy CTO at the White House, shares a vision of practical openness -- connecting bureaucracies to citizens, sharing data, creating a truly participatory democracy. Imagine the "writable society" ...
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 17:23
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
linh truong hoang edited English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Demand a more open-source government | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |