2016 Q2 ISSUE COSTTREE CAPTURE. 15
At times, it is hard to say whether technological innovation drives public expectation or if public expectation drives technological innovation. This “chicken or the egg” argument aside, a self-perpetuating cycle exists. The availability of better tools drives new users and, with more potential customers, the incentives to create better tools rise, and the stakes for quality get higher and higher. This is not an article about the technological singularity. Rather, it is an article about the transformation of the governmental space that is resulting from new tools and the data they create.
The leavings of the masses huddled behind our glowing screens using these tools is data—more and more data. We mine that data and predict outcomes. We graph the data and trends emerge. We crawl the data and find answers. Most importantly, that helps us to understand. We expect any and all information about the actions of the governments we elect, the nonprofits we donate to, or the public companies we invest in, to be available on demand and, not only available but justifiable and coherent. What better way to define transparency than as “information that is available, justifiable, and coherent” (other than whatever Webster wrote, I suppose).
THE
TRANSFORMATION
OF
TRANSPARENCY