Open government information awareness

In the United States, there is a widening gap between a citizen's ability to monitor his or her government and the government's ability to monitor a citizen. Average citizens have limited access to important government records, while available information is often illegible. Meanwhile, the government's eagerness and means to oversee a citizen's personal activity is rapidly increasing. As the government broadens internal surveillance, and collaborates with private institutions to access data on the public, it is crucial that we maintain a symmetry of accountability. If we believe the United States should be a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" it is of central importance to provide citizens with the power to oversee their government. At least as much effort should be spent building tools to facilitate citizens supervising their government as tools to help the government monitor individuals. In this thesis, I discuss the motivations, design, and implementation of Government Information Awareness, a citizen run database on our government. Fundamentally, this system relies on an organizational structure that accepts information from an anonymous population, stores it, and represents it with enough context to maintain legibility. My work in this thesis is offering a framework for a system that could help citizens pool their collective knowledge, and through this process, create a more informed public capable of self-rule.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• McKinley, Ryan, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chris P. Csikszentmihályi.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/62042

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/62042