I was recently talking to a friend about a project she was doing. She was trying to figure out how much of government assistance is accessed via community organizations vs direct application to the government. Unfortunately, we couldn't think of any good source for this kind of information.
If you were faced with the possibility that a program you work with was going to be changed would you know exactly what the choke points are? Would you be able to prove it with data, whether yours or that of other organizations? Do you know how long it really takes to get an application through the process? Does anyone know what percentage of applications go through community organizations vs direct applications? Could anyone find out how what percentage of applications are incorrectly denied, much less figure out if there is a difference between applications filed directly vs through a community organization?
This is where data collection and openness becomes important. If you collect data on your assistance, you know how long it takes for your clients. If organizations doing something similar collect the same kind of data, then you have a basis of comparison. Equally important, when you aggregate all this data, you get a good idea of the broader picture. But, there are some things you can't do by yourself or even with other agencies. For instance, you can't compare organization outcomes vs direct interaction with the government agencies. Which also means that you can't really get a full picture.
That's where data openness comes in. Even if government agencies collect the data, if they don't open it to the public, then it may as well not exist. Of course, if the data is not flattering it's no surprise that an agency might not want the data made public. That's not what they are going to say, of course, but that's a reality. And, it's really important reason, in my opinion, to push for open data. As long as there is no light on this information, agencies can hide the data and pretend that all is well. But, when the data is out in the open, then agencies can't pretend so easily. They have only one choice to deal with embarrassing data: Improve the process!
The bottom line is that data collection is a great advocacy tool. And open data is a good way to keep public organizations honest and operating at their best.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
How does information access affect us?
Access to huge amounts of information and educational material has the potential to be a game changer. Some organizations will benefit and some won't. Some agendas will benefit, and other won't. Here are some of the potential effects I see.
Increased organizational transparency: Whether organizations like it or not, it's a lot less easy to hide things anymore. True, not everything is open, but the reality is that when documents like your 990 are easily found on-line, it becomes much harder to keep things secret.
The potential to improve the education of any group, inexpensively: Whether we want materials that are engaging enough to help people learn to read, or truly help them understand a subject not well covered by textbooks, or give them the information they need to navigate some type of situation, it's almost certainly out there. Whatever issues may stand in our way, lack of materials can no longer be a reason or excuse.
A better educated constituency: For the organization who wants to work with its community, to give people tools, to be an enabler, this is a great opportunity. Not such good news for the organization that just wants to "do for" its community, and be the gatekeeper of growth and development.
The ability to match advocacy with actual facts: If you have an agenda that is not backed by the facts, that's very bad news. But, if your agenda actually reflects the real world, then this is great, since you can now prove your point much more easily. (You still need to tell a compelling story, get the word out and provide reasonable solutions, but at least you have first base covered.)
I'm sure there is more. What do you think?
Increased organizational transparency: Whether organizations like it or not, it's a lot less easy to hide things anymore. True, not everything is open, but the reality is that when documents like your 990 are easily found on-line, it becomes much harder to keep things secret.
The potential to improve the education of any group, inexpensively: Whether we want materials that are engaging enough to help people learn to read, or truly help them understand a subject not well covered by textbooks, or give them the information they need to navigate some type of situation, it's almost certainly out there. Whatever issues may stand in our way, lack of materials can no longer be a reason or excuse.
A better educated constituency: For the organization who wants to work with its community, to give people tools, to be an enabler, this is a great opportunity. Not such good news for the organization that just wants to "do for" its community, and be the gatekeeper of growth and development.
The ability to match advocacy with actual facts: If you have an agenda that is not backed by the facts, that's very bad news. But, if your agenda actually reflects the real world, then this is great, since you can now prove your point much more easily. (You still need to tell a compelling story, get the word out and provide reasonable solutions, but at least you have first base covered.)
I'm sure there is more. What do you think?
Monday, January 18, 2010
Some More information resources
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the amount of literature and information that is available "out there". What I discussed is a drop in the bucket, really. The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/index.php) contains not only the texts from the Library of Congress, but a full library (70,000 books) from Cornell University, Project Gutenberg, the Open Content Alliance and other collections. Pubmed.gov (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/) provides access to a vast collection of medical articles. In some cases, only abstracts are available. Generally, you can get the full article, frequently for free. In fact, the National Institutes of Health is working on providing electronic access to all articles published by NIH researchers, which will increase access to medical information. Another example of a search-able collection of articles is ERIC (http://www.eric.ed.gov/), which provides search-able access to thousands of education related articles, many for free.
Collections of articles and texts are not the only thing available. There are many other search-able databases with a wide variety of information, some more complete than others. Even the less complete ones, show the potential of these efforts. For instance, Drugs@FDA (http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/Scripts/cder/DrugsatFDA/index.cfm) is meant to provide the information that the FDA has on each medication that has been approved by the FDA. Unfortunately, this is not as complete as one would like. While every drug can be found, not all of the information that the FDA is actually available on line. Once you've done a search, though, it's easy to see how useful this could get. Drugs.com provides information from the consumer section of the Physicians desk Reference and Information from the FDA (in fact, in some cases, it shows more information than the FDA's own web site.) EDGAR (http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml) is the SEC database of public information and filings of publicly traded companies. And, Guiestar (www.guidestar.org) makes it easy to find a wealth of information about a vast number of non-profits in the US. Much of that information overlaps what is available in many states, such as New York State's Charities Bureau website (http://www.charitiesnys.com/home.html)
There is a vast amount of really valuable information in various forms on the internet. Lets make sure to use it.
Collections of articles and texts are not the only thing available. There are many other search-able databases with a wide variety of information, some more complete than others. Even the less complete ones, show the potential of these efforts. For instance, Drugs@FDA (http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/Scripts/cder/DrugsatFDA/index.cfm) is meant to provide the information that the FDA has on each medication that has been approved by the FDA. Unfortunately, this is not as complete as one would like. While every drug can be found, not all of the information that the FDA is actually available on line. Once you've done a search, though, it's easy to see how useful this could get. Drugs.com provides information from the consumer section of the Physicians desk Reference and Information from the FDA (in fact, in some cases, it shows more information than the FDA's own web site.) EDGAR (http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml) is the SEC database of public information and filings of publicly traded companies. And, Guiestar (www.guidestar.org) makes it easy to find a wealth of information about a vast number of non-profits in the US. Much of that information overlaps what is available in many states, such as New York State's Charities Bureau website (http://www.charitiesnys.com/home.html)
There is a vast amount of really valuable information in various forms on the internet. Lets make sure to use it.
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