The handwriting on the form was perfect, the sort of beautiful penmanship I’d always wished I’d had and that you always see on love letters or old documents from another era. On the form: Election returns. Hand-written.
In Kansas’ Anderson County, in Walker Township, the elegant lettering noted, voters had cast more than one hundred ballots for the Republican. Eighty-seven had voted for the independent candidate. A handful had voted for the Libertarian, and six — or was it just a very ornate zero? — voted for a write-in candidate.
But this was not a historical document. These were election returns from 2014. And what I was reading was not something fished out of the archives of American political history, but rather something that had been faxed — faxed!! — to OpenElections, an operation supported by volunteers and private foundations to provide to citizens something their own government was too often unable to provide: easily consumable, searchable and usable election data.
And while the faxed, handwritten election returns OpenElections received a year and a half after Election Day may seem like an extreme example, chat with anyone who works on voter or government data and they’ll tell you a similar story — of well-intentioned but out-of-date, tech-unsavvy officials who think JSON isn’t a data format but rather the name of their grandson.
Election data aren’t the only government data that could do a lot of good in the hands of an informed citizenry but that, all too often, are out of reach. Regularly, our government makes good data about things like weather available to the public, but keeps data about things like expenditures, procedures and outcomes shrouded.
And while most of the attention these days is being paid to the heated and highly partisan 2016 campaign, there’s an awful lot of good that can be done on a smaller scale, and in a nonpartisan fashion, to make government work better by giving citizens the power to make government truly work for them.
In the 2008 election, Barack Obama was swept into office with a promise of hope and change, and also a pledge to ensure government takes full advantage of technology to improve its operations. President Obama appointed a chief technology officer shortly after entering office.
But “open data” is not just a Democratic agenda item, and Republicans would be wise to make it a bigger piece of their message about the need to make government more transparent, efficient and accountable. Though champions of “limited government,” Republicans are often positioned as anti-government. Open data is one area where the government has a valuable but limited role that can actually let citizens make it more accountable.
“Open data has been an area with consistent bipartisan agreement,” said Matt Lira, who has worked on modernizing government for many Republican congressional leaders, recently told the Washington Examiner. “Open data creates a more efficient, effective and accountable government. In my view, it is the foundation by which many other major policy challenges could be answered.”
At the state and city level, some Republicans are making serious inroads. Ohio’s treasurer, Josh Mandel, a rising star on the right, recently launched OhioCheckBook.com to give citizens a closer look at how the Buckeye State spends its taxpayer dollars. In Indianapolis, Mayor Greg Ballard has been known as a champion of open data, and in late 2015 the city proudly announced an open data portal that gives citizens access to data about things like police incidents where officers used force.
Congress has been trying to make progress as well. Without even leaving Capitol Hill, the government generates an enormous volume of data that can offer insight into how Congress works — bill summaries, information on congressional rules and more.
In recent years, efforts have been made to move congressional data into “machine-readable” formats, meaning that they are able to be interpreted and used by computers instead of being readable only by the human eye. Once data are in a useful format, software engineers can tap into the data streams and create all kinds of new tools that citizens can use to keep government accountable.
Whether it’s the state’s power to tax and spend or law enforcement’s powers in the line of duty, where trust between citizens and government may be strained, additional data can help the people themselves hunt for solutions to their concerns. In a world where nearly every issue seems hyper-partisan, open data should be a no-brainer for those looking to make government work better.
Switching some of Congress’ public documents over to a new electronic format may not seem like groundbreaking stuff to most people. But while it is easy to praise booming speeches and comprehensive plans to fix enormous problems, sometimes it’s little things that will help our government become more efficient, transparent and accountable.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
