Jonathan Reichental, Chief Information Officer, City of Palo Alto, CA

Transparency and its Discontents: Democratic Prospects and Challenges

Open data, social media, geographic information systems, wireless communications, and mobile devices are transforming the relationship between government institutions at all levels and the constituents they represent. The open data movement, fueled by technical innovations, offers opportunities to increase accountability and citizen participation through greater transparency and by generating more effective, crowd-sourced solutions to public problems. At the same time, questions of access and inclusion must also be addressed. Which groups are enabled to participate by these tools and whose voices are omitted? This one-day conference explores the impact of open data on public policy and democratic governance in the digital age.

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