This noteworthy comment, filched from a Lord David HumidCity blog post, identifies a number of problems which NolaStat aspires to solve through greater transparency — specifically, with access to open data — fostering improved civic engagement, and accountability:

# Lizzy Caston Says:
April 9th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

I learned these things in my Urban Planning grad school and they hold true for New Orleans:

* Incompetence is a form of corruption
* Lack of understanding can lead to incompetence
* A city in crises can often lead to new opportunities for reform
* Reform is often an ugly process because those in power don’t want to reform and lose their power
* Reform can only happen if people demand it and hold leadership accountable
* A city must have checks and balances in order to operate in a functional manner
*Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There are no checks and balances with absolute power.
* Knowledge and information are power. When knowledge and information becomes open and shared, power becomes shared and absolute power dissipates.
* Those in absolute power don’t like to share knowledge and information because this means losing power.

What we are seeing in New Orleans is that Katrina and the aftermath crises have blown the lid off of a type of dysfunctional machine politics that has been driving the city for years. Coupled with new information technologies such as email, blogs, etc. there is now a democratization of information which means the old order can no longer hide their incompetence, corruption or whatever else.

Honestly, it’s nothing short of a revolution. However like all revolutions, there is a bloody battle of winners and losers. I think its going to keep being ugly for a while until it gets better and NOLA is at a cross roads for sure where the city could take a turn for the better or worse. But I think New Orleans and New Orleans have it in themselves to demand change and make it happen.

Hell, it happened on a national level recently with the election. Change can happen in New Orleans too.

Tags: Accountability, Civic Participation, Transparency

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Why NolaStat?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.