Us: Transparency, Them: Collaboration
- Written by
- Clay Johnson
- Date
- 06/01/2009 3:58 p.m.
Today, the White House, via the Office of Science and Technology Policy released the Government "Conversation on Collaboration" that they've been having since February, in conjuction with the public Open Government Dialogue. This conversation happened on OMBMax wiki, a wiki powered by the Office of Management and Budget.
So after our analysis on Friday of The Open Government Dialogue this gives us the opportunity to make a comparison-- what are people inside the government saying vs. the general public?
Now we can see what people are saying inside the government and outside the government. I went ahead and used the rest of Sunlight's "word cloud" credit on creating a new word cloud of what people are saying on the inside, so we could put it next to one on the outside. Here it is:
Now, this isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. For the Open Government Dialogue word cloud, I used only titles of ideas. Since there were no titles for the OMBMax wiki posting, I used the full text of everything. I tried to remove some of the less substantive words from the wiki posting like month names, and noise-words like "all" and "already" to get it to a more meaningful post. Also: on the Open Gov Dialogue site, there were over 1000 ideas, whereas the OpenGov wiki had only about 10% of that diversity.
But it looks like a disconnect: on the outside, people are talking data and transparency. On the inside, people are talking collaboration and tools. Looking closer at the Open Gov dialogue, we can take the average scores of each category and see what people voted up more, too:
The average scores tend to correlate with the word cloud for the Open Government Dialogue. Not only did people say transparency more, but on average, making data more available got more votes than building collaborative tools. Remarkably, people aren't into participation or collaboration that much according to the votes on the Open Government Dialogue. If you bundle each subject into its parent category, here's what you end up with for average votes:
This is a pretty interesting find with the data. It seems to me like there may be a sign that there is a hefty disconnect between what people on the outside want (data, policy changes), and what people on the inside want to build (collaborative tools, web applications). Now here's something that hopefully we'll be engaged in, in terms of discussion for when the next phase of the Open Government Dialogue begins later this week.
Until then, Sunlight Labs will be on a brief word cloud hiatus.
Discussion
What are Your Thoughts?
Have thoughts that might fuel this discussion further, post them below. (Markdown syntax is supported in comments.)
"But it looks like a disconnect: on the outside, people are talking data and transparency. On the inside, people are talking collaboration and tools."
Unless the headers are wrong, it actually looks like the inside are talking about collaboration.
Although I wouldn't attach too much analysis to a wordle or tag cloud as it has no reference to context (i.e. "I hate collaboration").
@KimRees: Err-- isn't that what I said? People on the outside are talking transparency. People on the inside are talking about collaboration?
To me, it looks like people inside are talking buzzwords and people outside are talking capability/let's-get-on-with-it.
The convo inside is limited, but outside it's nuanced and detailed.
Awesome stuff. Late.
Ditto Kim and Frymaster. I've been working with the opengov data and have skimmed the MAX data (will return to it later). The only substantive conclusion that can be drawn at the level of "word clouds" (which are not an analytic, but a presentation device, and not a great one IMHO) is that a lot was written and people used the same words to descirbe different ideas. The minute one does more than examine keywords/buzzwords in titles, the less relevant the data is rendered. Context is the key, and that goes for the MAX data too, where even my cursory scanning of the posts suggest that the "collaboration" discussed is at the level of intra- and inter-agency, not with the public per se. That being said, nice pictures.
Yes, a "word cloud" is a crude indicator of what people are talking about.
But even a crude indicator can be accurate, as I believe this one is.
And Clay's conclusion could apply to ANY social situation where new people are being invited to enter a new environment. That is:
Outsiders (the invitees) are unclear about what is happening "inside". Before joining in, they want a better idea of "what's going on" (that's why "transparency" is on their lips).
Insiders (the inviters) already know what is happening "inside". So, they are all ready for the new people to join in "what's going on". (that's why "collaboration" is on their lips).
And just like a house-party, the "regulars" already know what to expect from each other (pretty much). But the harder part is making it clear (transparent) to your NEW friend what kind of party and people will be there.
If that's not clear, then the new people will opt NOT to show up, be it a social event or a public meeting. (We all try to avoid getting trapped in a "bad place.)
And that's why it's important to FIRST recognize and addressing the Outsider's need for Transparency so that they then can understand and be comfortable in Collaboration (with the Insiders).
I really enjoyed the article but I have to agree with Stephen on this one, you have to take into account the enviroments, which you re placing the 'outsiders' in.
Plus a tag cloud hardly takes into account the meaning of the sentence the words were being used in. Many of the words in this tag cloud could be used completely out of context.
It is a great use of a tag cloud as it offer a quick analysis of the key points. However, I think the validity suffers due to the point made above about the words not being used in the context we would expect. Nevertheless, you made some very interesting points, nice work.
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