“The Freedom of Information Act should not be necessary because data should already be readily available to all citizens,” author Jeff Jarvis said to participants of the Personal Democracy Forum conference currently underway in New York City.

“We need for transparency to be the default government,” Jarvis said. “We need a government that is searchable, clickable and linkable.”

Jarvis said that government needs to risk releasing embarrassing information for transparency initiatives to succeed, and recommended that citizens be less judgmental of embarrassing revelations. “We must give the government permission to fail,” he said. “And, that needs to come from us.”

Meanwhile, government should get out of the business of creating Web sites, and get more into the business of furnishing raw data, said Ali Felski, the Sunlight Foundation’s senior designer. Private development of data-rich Web sites is far more innovative and agile than government can match, so the government should get out of the way.

“Industry is racing ahead and the gap is widening for government,” Felski said.

Conference attendees should be happy with the Obama administration, which opened up the Data.gov Web site on May 21st, to publish data that programmers can mash-up with innovative new applications.

Tags: Conferences, Digital Democracy, Open Data, Personal Democracy Forum, Transparency

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