Primarily, the people I see excited about Data.gov and similar efforts are what I call "tech elites." Bloggers, evangelists, startup companies, software developers, former CTO's, large tech company execs, and the like. They hold apps contests, they run BarCAmps on weekends, they create new websites with open data, they get consulting contracts with local, state, and federal government. I see nothing wrong with tech elites or their behavior per se. But I wonder if a larger community – average citizens – has been ignored to some degree.

Ellen Miller related to me that the Sunlight Foundation did a poll which showed 80% of citizens were in favor of more government transparency. Interesting, but that could mean many different things. I'm interested in knowing if there's a poll, or even some man-on-the-street type video, asking citizens if they want more government data, and if so, what – specifically and individually – they would do with it. I suspect that few people want more data.

The data might benefit them indirectly, through websites and tools that others develop, no doubt about it. But what citizens – the real community the government serves – really want is information. They want news. They want analysis. They want content. Not XML, a tool catalog, or geodata. To me, this begs the question of whether the government should have an Information.gov site full of compelling, immediately useful, simple content for average citizens. What do you think?

It's great that the government can check some boxes on a form and say, yes, we have a new "open" website, and yes, we have made more data public and available (counting the number of data sets per agency has become a bit of an amateur sport). But if the citizens don't care, who is it helping? Forget the lobbyists people love to complain about – While they're enjoying their eggs benedict, have tech elites stealthily become the newest powerful special interest group in Washington, DC?

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous