Government Technology - September 2008 - (Page 58)

signal: noise BY PAU L W. TAYLO R CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT index Jurisdictions/Agencies: j Public Records and That Pesky Web 2.0 y successor in state service earns $121,920 a year. My boss’ successor earns $137,160. They are doing better than we did — how much better is a matter of public record. But a decade ago when I was on the public payroll, public employees’ salary records enjoyed a level of obscurity because they were bound in a book that sat on a shelf behind the counter. With the rise of the commodity Internet, self-styled government accountability activists predictably began to post that information online. These efforts tended to use public disclosure laws to obtain flat files, which produced static tables that didn’t lend themselves to robust search or comparison. Enter XML and third parties — daily newspapers chief among them — that made the data more widely available and provided tools for more sophisticated display and interrogation. For example, The Sacramento Bee recently created a firestorm of controversy in the California capital when it posted public employees’ salary information on its Web site — by name, title and department. The debate that followed pitted those who claimed it was a reckless action in an age of rampant identity theft versus taxpayer advocates who claimed a public right to know. Such local skirmishes have flared up across the country, but tend to get resolved without much fanfare, and as a result, maintain the appearance of containment. That’s largely and increasingly an illusion. What if an Internet startup were to do for salary information what Zillow did for real estate values (through secondary use of public property tax records) and Expedia did for travel arrangements? We are about to find out. Rich Barton — the serial entrepreneur behind Expedia and Zillow, among others SEPT_08 M — has taken the wraps off Glassdoor.com. Like his earlier launches, Glassdoor was created to make transparent the information that’s obscure and hard to get in usable form. This latest venture — with a de rigueur Web 2.0 twist — wraps salary details in the context of anonymous workplace reviews and rankings from the employees who actually work at the companies. In published reports, Barton describes the new company’s origins as a break room fluke. He unintentionally printed the results of a Zillow employee survey that included individual salary information. Seen in the context of a quasi-public space, Barton had an idea. “It raised a really interesting question for me, which was, why not? Why shouldn’t that be public?” he asked. A consumer survey released to coincide with the debut of Glassdoor underscores the lack of consensus on the merits of sharing detailed salary information. It is still taboo for 11 percent of respondents, but more than half (52 percent) approve of sharing such details if it can be done anonymously — a boost attributed to the less starchy views of younger workers. The user-generated reviews are anonymous, but the site does name names. The early concentration is on tech-industry executives, but can public executives be far behind? After all, the data for them is free, public and digital. So much for local containment. Glassdoor provides a useful reminder that everything we know about records management is wrong. Sure, that’s hyperbole, but Barton isn’t exaggerating when he claims, “People’s appetite for this information … is effectively infinite.” Once again, the Internet will show us what happens when public records are actually public. Alameda County, Calif. 8 Alaska 12 California Department of Food and Agriculture ..22 California Department of Transportation 16 California Office of Information Security and Privacy Protection 44 California 58 Charles County, Md 8 Colorado 22 Frederick County, Md. 8 Grants.gov 42 Loudoun County, Va. 8 Minneapolis 22 New York Office of Children and Family Services 48 Ohio Department of Transportation 16 Orange County, Calif. 8 Portage, Ohio, Area Regional Transportation Authority 16 Portsmouth, Ohio 38 Sacramento County, Calif 42 San Diego County, Calif 8 Texas Health and Human Services Commission 32 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 42 University of Washington 10 Washington, D.C. 22 Westchester County, N.Y 44 Vendors: Autodesk 38 Belkin 54 BlackBerry 48 Centene Corp. 32 Computer Associates 22 Deloitte 8 GammaTech 56 Genius 54 Glassdoor.com 58 Google 52 Hewlett-Packard 38 IBM Foundation 36 Microsoft 16 NAVTEQ 16 Nissan 16 Nokia 16 Oracle 38 Other World Computing 54 Panasonic 16 QuickPAD 48 Salesforce.com Foundation 36 Skype 54 Symantec 44 VXL Instruments 54 WebEx 42 Advertisers Index Bearing Point 13 Brother 29 CDW-G 30-31 ESRI 25, 46 GOV Connection 21 Hewlett-Packard TSG Blades 2 Hewlett-Packard TSG Low End 5 IBM 39 Ingram Micro 41 Lenovo 59 Microsoft 60 Panasonic Toughbook 35 PC Mall Gov 57 SAP 7 University of Maryland 49 Verizon Wireless 9 http://Grants.gov http://Glassdoor.com http://Glassdoor.com http://Salesforce.com http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - September 2008

Government Technology - September 2008 Contents Point of View On the Scene Big Picture Four Questions for... Up Close Fork in the Road On Time and On Target On the Record, Off the Charts Government’s Greatest Asset? Easy Access Finding the Money Security in the Wireless World The Case for Mobility Spectrum Products Two Cents signal:noise Digital Communities Contents A New Government Paradigm News is Now Transformation Web 2.0 Style Protecting Community Media Thinking Regionally Government at La-Z-Boy Speed

Government Technology - September 2008

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