Interview with John Wonderlich on The Open House Project

Thanks! Happy to do so.

The Open House Project started because many different people were all trying to address the same sorts of issues: redefining accessibility and openness in light of the increasingly relevant Internet. I wouldn't want to claim to have founded something so community driven. It grew out of individual efforts that discovered a shared interest in developing recommendations for the 110th Congress. I was working with a community of citizen activists on Daily Kos, a project we called the Congressional Committees Project, and initially connected with Pelosi's staff, The Sunlight Foundation, Matt Stoller, David All, and Rob Bluey, and the project rapidly expanded to include many other citizens and staffers with an interest in congressional technology.

I've grown used to dealing with Congress's idiosyncratic attention span, since their agenda is defined by a shifting agenda and justified partisan maneuvering; that's what to expect from the way Congress is structured.

Given that structure, the way something exists as a "true priority" in Congress is much different than what that looks like in other contexts.

Working with others necessarily involves understanding that their priorities need to be fungible, and that an unanswered email to a staffer should never be taken as a sign of neglect.

That said, one of the great surprises for me after relocating to DC was that congressional staff are some of our staunchest allies, and that public access and staff (and Member) IT resources are integrally linked. For example, if a more robust congressional video processing system existed, then members and staff could do a better job of what's happening on the floor and in the various committee hearings they're scheduled to attend, often in conflict with one another.

My practical advice, though, is to recognize the different kinds of interests insiders have in what your work is, and to treat them as assets and allies. Volunteering to help, or sharing information, is always a good idea.

Some partisan fights are inevitable, and to be expected. The electoral imperative is the built in incentive structure for representative government.

"Paving the Cowpaths", or what I sometimes call "practical attainable or incremental reform" has served the Open House Project well as a central theme, since consensus is easier to organize around than brainstorming.

Both parties are free to politicize government reform issues as much as they want, and they'll have to answer to an electorate inasmuch as any bad-faith participation is understood by their constituencies. Our focus, however, is on the underlying issues behind the struggles, which often overlap far more than the arguments make it seem.

Republicans and Democrats can embrace technology kicking and screaming, or they can do it holding hands, or one party can drag the other onward despite heel-dragging. Facilitating reform is the project's primary goal.

No. I think there are some fundamental changes happening, and a big part of that involves having Representatives and staffers who understand and use technology.

As a general principle though, finding the first levers to push on from a public perspective was something largely missing from the dialog about government.

Ongoing government reform will involve visionary ideas, administrative minutae, and political struggles, and an appeal to any one of those catalysts will always involve the others, at least obliquely.

The new communities that we're seeing developing through technology (to borrow from Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody) are able to form and dissolve with much more agility than traditionally possible. This means that an organizations identity is more malleable, and more able to engage in whatever the situation calls for more easily, rather than being stuck in an academic, or advocacy, or legalistic framework. We can pick and choose the best features.

The Open House Project is a project of the Sunlight Foundation, so the relationship couldn't be closer.

The reaction overall has been really positive. Staffers often think about these issues tangentially to the rest of their work, wondering why the Congressional Record isn't text-searchable, or why there's no centralized list of all upcoming committee hearings, or lists of all organizations that have endorsed specific bills.

Many of them appreciate an external context in which to bring up these concerns, even anonymously.

Several of their platform positions are outside the purview of the transparency reform issue, but I'm delighted that they've chosen to add a transparency plank. I'm also happy whenever people involved in other areas like Intellectual Property, or those from the tech community, can come to understand why government reform is important, and gain a better view of how Congress functions, and how our laws are written.

Lessig is also on Sunlight's Advisory Board.

To see the Open House Project priorities, you can check out the report here: http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/the-open-house-project-report/

The reforms are broken down into chapters with specific categories. The Open House Project community has also weighed in on a number of issues in the same area, like the potentially reinstated Office of Technology Assessment, or on digital records management procedures, or digitization best practices.

The Open House Google Group has continued to grow and develop, and is really a concentrated group of experts and citizens, successfully grappling with complex institutional issues.

I didn't expect that dialog, or that community to have as much continuing success and relevance as it has, and it's still growing.

http://groups.google.com/group/openhouseproject

What's the steak without the sizzle? :)

There's this phenomenon about social networking and blogging that I find fascinating: we love to talk about the things we use to talk. I wonder what percent of all tweets are about twitter?

There's a real divide between those who feel comfortable interacting online and those who don't. Anyone who enjoys twitter, or has started a blog (especially before 2005) will probably understand this. There's something comfortable, and something really empowering about interacting with people you don't know, and having your ideas stand on their merits. Personality drops out of the equation, and you can be really selective about what you listen to, and what you say (like this interview).

That experience of engaging in what Mark Pesce calls hyperempowerment is really satisfying, and has big implications for the way we socially assign value to ideas.

When considering the complex questions around member web use restrictions, we realized that there's no better community to encourage Congress to use things like twitter than the community of people that have found it useful in their lives.

That's what I see when I look at the stream of people signing the petition -- http://letourcongresstweet.org/ -- people saying "I find immense value in connecting online, and I want Congress to benefit the same way."

Political struggles aside, that's what I'm interested in, in terms of Franking reform: seeing Congress not miss out on the opportunities to really connect online.

It's not unlike deciding at what age a child or adolescent should be given uncensored Internet access: there's a balance.

Sunlight is the sole official supporter of OHP, although many other organizations and individuals have volunteered time and support. We had a panel at the Heritage Foundation shortly after the report's release, I've been in close consultation with both Speaker Pelosi's and Minority Leader Boehner's staff, and we enjoy a great relationship with a community of bloggers, open government advocates, librarians (especially through freegovinfo.org), and staff and Members throughout Congress and the relevant committees. Citizen technologists, like Josh Tauberer (and his GovTrack.us) have also played a huge part in the project's success.

I think a realistic view of Member's responsibilities would help their perception overall, although there are some really frustrating aspects, like the amount of time they spend doing things like fundraising, which wouldn't help the approval ratings much.

I suspect that the busy-ness of congressional staff would be surprising to many. Staff and members' schedules are pretty ridiculous, and these incredibly important decisions are being made by young staffers...

I think a realistic understanding of what goes on in Congress would help us to value the work of people making decisions a little more, at least as compared to those trying to /influence/ the decisions. Why should a lobbyist make four times as much as the staffers they influence? Something seems wrong about that. I'd love to see MRAs (congressional office budgets) increase, or at least to see some reasoned discussion about whether or not this is a good idea.

Incidentally, I think the GAO should expand siginficantly, since their work results in a net savings.

It's been a pleasure!

Thank You!