Open (-source) government/politics

Open-source politics is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the

philosophies of the open source and open content movements to democratic principles

in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki

document.

In recent years, expectations and definitions of open government have changed, now

that information is often freely and readily available via Internet. For example, a US

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request may result in a packet of documents mailed

to the requesting citizen, who instead would prefer or expect that data be given to them

in an electronic, machine-readable format for easier extrapolation and analysis.

The term open-source government (Gov 2.0) is often used interchangeably with the

term open government, but more accurately refers to the utilization of open,

collaborative technologies to create a platform through which government and

individuals can work together to improve transparency and efficiency of government

services. Governments use open standards and provide government data in open

formats through which individuals or companies can create new apps, websites, and

mashups for the benefit of the public. The underlying belief common to the use of open

formats is that citizens should not be forced to buy a specific brand or type of software

in order to interact with their governments.

Use of open standards and formats also has the added benefit of helping governments

avoid lock-in to those very brands or types of software. In addition to expectations of

use of open standards and formats, there are also calls for government-produced (and

taxpayer-funded) software to be released as open source. (1)

(1) opensource.com