How Filipinos can push gov't transparency

MANILA, Philippines — The media and the public can encourage people in government to make data available by recognizing positive and significant trends from it, an American official who recently visited the capital said.

Macon Phillips, chief of the US Department of State's International Information Programs, said that from the perspective of transparency advocates from within government, the avalanche of petty reports based on open data make them less motivated to go through the complicated processes to make the numbers available.

"You have to 'incentivize' people in government by doing great stories from that data," Phillips told a small group of online journalists and bloggers on Wednesday.

Phillips said that in the United States, like in the Philippines, initiatives of government to be more transparent is a great challenge due to the overwhelming amount of feedback it faces.

While insisting that critical reports and so-called bad news is valuable, Phillips said the media and online communities also have to make officials and agencies want to be more transparent.

Phillips, who served as chief digital strategist for President Obama, admitted that while it is reasonable for government to respond to and interact with the online crowd, the idea is problematic in practice.

He said the variety and amount of feedback is difficult to sort in terms of quality, appeal and sensibility.

"On the one hand [government listening to netizens] makes a lot of sense ... On the other, it's pretty chilling," he explained.

One initiative attempting to bridge the information and feedback gap between the government and the public is a platform that allows people to create petitions on issues they want Washington to act on.

We the People, a site under the White House which Phillips spearheaded, is a mechanism for civil sector advocates to collect as many signatures for petitions. Once 100,000 people have signed an appeal, the Obama administration is compelled to issue a statement or position on it.

"When people care about an issue, it's impossible to ignore it," Phillips said.