Panelist notes politics of putting agency information online
From Government Executive:
Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, chose to participate in a Tuesday workshop sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Web Science Research Initiative because she wants to convince techies that the government's underutilization of the Internet has a lot to do with politics.The workshop, held this week at the National Academy of Sciences, brought together government officials, computer scientists, academics, Web standards leaders and government vendors. W3C, an Internet standards group, organized the event to facilitate the deployment of Web standards across government Web sites; help shape research agendas; and guide officials in crafting Web policy that increases access to government information.
After speaking at the event, which was closed to the press, McDermott told Technology Daily: "What the people in there -- mostly technology people -- don't understand is that it's not just a resource decision, it's a political decision to expose that information. It's really more the politics than the policy."