Two of Gov. Bev Perdue’s first five executive orders may sound familiar if you’ve been reading things from the Locke Foundation over the past couple years.
Back in May 2007, I suggested a commission that would work like the base realignment and closure (BRAC) commission. She kept the BRAC name instead of my suggested STAR Commission, but we’re talking basically about the same thing.
In May 2008, we looked at transparency in state and local governments. Glad to see Gov. Perdue is on board with that, too.
As Jerry Brito and Douglas McGray have recently emphasized, the key next step is to make sure government information is not just available and searchable, but also mashable. It needs to be structured for API so that non-government individuals or groups “can grab that data and slice it, dice it, chart it, graph it, map it, or mash it up with new feeds,” as McGray wrote.
Guv, if you’re looking for more good ideas, we’ve got ’em.
