How Open Must an Open Government Platform be?

Andrew Updegrove, Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

4/10/2009
(Original Publish Date: 3/1/2009)

The advent of the Internet and the realization of the promise of open standards presents challenges as well as opportunities to governments. Internally, these technological tools can provide the means to finally allow information locked in disparate proprietary "silos" to pass freely between all units and levels of government. Externally, they can provide cheaper and better ways to serve the public, providing not only traditional services more efficiently, but enabling new types of openness and interactivity as well. Achieving either of these goals individually would be difficult, and providing both simultaneously is challenging indeed, in part because providing government services on line raises new issues that must be addressed relating to vendor neutrality, physical and economic accessibility, data preservation, and much more. Governments are only now confronting these new issues. Those that deal with them effectively and rapidly will not only provide better services to their citizens sooner, but ensure that their substantial investments in upgrading legacy systems will be best rewarded.