Healthcare, IT and the US Veterans Administration

Very weighty article from Andy Oram on the US Vetrans Administration approach to IT and Healthcare.

"The VA provides a model being adopted around the world -- Leading health care institutions in several countries, notably Jordan and Mexico, have implemented or are implementing VistA and its information-driven care model. It's happening in the U.S. too. Adoption is slow to start with because there are only a few small companies actively marketing VistA solutions (and they don't cooperate as well as they should). But the huge provider Kaiser Permanente interoperates with the VA and uses many of its techniques."

Gov 2.0 From the Left AND Right

Nat Torkington on O'Reilly gives us a nice comparison of how two different views of politics will continue to reflect in Open Gov. To summarize: is it better services or doing more with less ?

The governments of Obama and Cameron have indicated different rationales for pursuing Government 2.0 but the goal is the same: open and responsive government, with a better connection to the people they are enlisted to serve.

Fioretti on Citizens in Open Government

Summary of a talk given by Marco Fioretti in Santander, Spain.

Fioretti correctly points out that far fewer citizens are interested in being members of an active thinking 'public' than one of the television-supplied 'masses'.

You can download the full talk at mfioretti.com. The main points were:

• Using computers doesn't automatically make services more efficient
• In and by itself, using only Free/Open Source software on government computers gives no openness: you can build the perfect police state using ONLY “Free as in Freedom” software
• Publishing data online does very little good if it doesn't come with the right laws and practices

and, above all:

• the crucial role EU senior citizens may play in acceptance of Open Government is really overlooked
• Open Government done right destroys many more white collar public jobs than the economic crisis: will people accept it once they realize the impact on what is the biggest employer in many states?
• Open Data work only if many more citizens are both willing and able to process numbers than it is the case today