If government data gets on Internet, citizens can help find solutions ?

WHAT do America's state and local governments do with theboatloads of information they're continually collecting, from zoningpermits to illegal billboards, police arrests to public healthindicators? As far as most citizens know, the data disappear into ablack hole. Government information specialist David Stephensonlikens it to the final scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," when theArk of the Covenant is boxed and moved to storage in a governmentwarehouse. The viewer just knows the Ark will never be seen again.

But now, there's pressure to break the information loose,disclose it to the public, combine and mix and use it in creativeways. The movement is variously called e-government, transparentgovernment, Google government, or Web 2.0.

What's Web 2.0? We all know Web 1.0, the original Internet, adramatic invention but in reality just one-way communicationsthrough static Web pages. Web 2.0, by contrast, is interactive,personalized, a platform for collaboration. It's Facebook andYouTube with their 80 million users. It's real-people interchange;it's Wikipedia, where you and I can be creators and contributors.And, in geekese, it's the highly interactive world of blogs andwikis, RSS and podcasts.

Proponents claim Web 2.0 represents a historic opportunity tobreak down government's familiar walls of secrecy. Insidegovernment, 2.0 lets workers compare notes and think fresh aboutproblem-solving across organizational lines -- especially liberatingfor younger employees who might otherwise be reluctant to buckhierarchies to expose their ideas.

Open the sluice gates of data to the public, argue formerIndianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and others, and citizens canlook inside the maze, assemble data their own way, nominate andoften help solve problems they consider the most acute.

Web 2.0 affects government in many ways. One is simply whistle-blowing.

Take IllegalSigns.ca, the clever Toronto "mashup" of governmentdata and Google mapping. It pinpoints the location of illegalbillboards and holds city government accountable for action toremove them.

In Los Angeles, academics and neighborhood activists arecollaborating to apply city data to identify blocks withsuspiciously high numbers of negative indicators such as codeviolations and property tax delinquencies. The idea is to use "real-time" (current) data to pinpoint problem areas before they escalate.

The Web site CrimeReports.com is trying to get police departmentsnationwide to show and renew daily data on criminal activity byprecise street location. A scattering of cities have agreed, amongthem San Jose, Calif., Columbus, Ohio, Reno, Nev., and Washington,D.C.

There's a fascinating twist to the Web 2.0 story -- its lead cityis America's often-maligned national capital. Stephenson arguesconvincingly that "Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty and his chieftechnology officer, Vivek Kundra, are this country's hands-downleaders on use of data feeds and data visualization." The Districtof Columbia is providing 215 real-time data feeds on every area fromzoning permits to health care to potholes to computers in schools,available government workers, indeed any Web user, through itsCitywide Data Warehouse.

Why? "There's very little government does that needs to be lockedup, sealed, behind closed doors," Kundra replied.

Recalling his wonder on coming to America at age 11 (he'd beenborn in India, raised in Tanzania), Kundra talks with excitement oflearning of government focused on serving citizens. America'sFounding Fathers, he notes, "understood that government must bepracticed in the public square -- that absolute power is ripe forcorruption. This is why we in the D.C. government have mounted moredata feeds than anywhere else in the world."

The data is used at Washington's "CapStat" sessions, at whichFenty and his chief administrators assemble department heads andprobe for explanations and answers to tough problems -- an iterationof the CitiStat system that Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley inventedas mayor of Baltimore.

But Washington now aims further -- to make citizens co-producersof problem solutions. "Our dream," says Kundra, "is to haveactivists out there looking at our data, slicing and dicing it, andproviding approaches and connections we may not have thought of."

Could the idea of an electronic commons, a new civic switchboard,materially improve city governments? And could it also draw youngeridealists into government as the baby-boom professionals start toretire in droves?

That's the hope. There's an even wider possibility.

Governments everywhere are facing local versions of the toughestchallenges of the times -- energy, global warming, immigration andothers. Narrowly conceived solutions born inside governmenthierarchies won't do. So how about engaging citizens as co-producers of answers and ideas in the virtual world's public square?Could we advance government itself from 1.0 to 2.0. Why not?

Neal Peirce writes for Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15thSt. N.W., Washington 20071. E-mail: nrp@citistates.com.