This idea is under construction.  So please, as they say, pardon the dust.  I read Lawrence Lessig’s Against Transparency as well as the responses (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).  Mixed in some of Lucy Bernholz’ and then Allison Fine’s thinking about how Lessig’s arguments apply or don’t to the nonprofit sector. I read Rachel Weidinger’s Will it take a village to bring our communities online?  All of that, against the back drop of the role I’m increasingly convinced NGOs must play as a community access point.

Let’s assume, because it seems reasonable to assume, that transparency is here to stay. And let’s assume that the government is going to be providing more and more data.  And so will citizens. They will provide data about what needs to be fixed in their communities, about their mortgages, about all sorts of things.

And let’s also grant David Weinberger’s assertion in his counterpoint to Lessig’s piece:

The problem isn’t the over-abundance of data: It’s a system that rewards riling up great storms of stupidity. Greater access to more data will be an important part of the fight against systemic stupidity and the predations of the stupidity mongers.

But there’s another important part of the fight. Lessig hits the nail on the head:

Think about the requirement that car manufacturers publish average mile-per-gallon statistics for all new cars. We all can compare 36 mpg to 21 mpg. We all understand what that comparison means. That “targeted transparency” rule simplifies the data and presents it in a way that conveys meaningful information. Once simplified and standardized, it makes it possible for consumers to change the way the market works.

The problem, however, is that not all data satisfies the simple requirement that they be information that consumers can use, presented in a way they can use it. “More information,” as Fung and his colleagues put it, “does not always produce markets that are more efficient.” Instead, “responses to information are inseparable from their interests, desires, resources, cognitive capacities, and social contexts. Owing to these and other factors, people may ignore information, or misunderstand it, or misuse it. Whether and how new information is used to further public objectives depends upon its incorporation into complex chains of comprehension, action, and response.”

So, we have an increase in the amount of data, a system that rewards quick and sensational conclusions, and a need to pay deep attention to make the numbers comparable and relevant to decision-makers. 

That last point, I believe, gets at the role that NGOs can play.  Nonprofits have spent years, decades even, saying, in essence, Look at this.  Here.  This is a problem.  And they have pushed to find data and to describe it and to get it in front of community members and policy makers.  Trends are moving the challenge:  it is moving from finding the data to getting insight out of it.

NGOs need to step up to this new challenge. 

NGOs are the connective tissue between data points that help us, as a society, get insight into what the data tells us.  This means a few things, I think. It means embracing the idea that transparency is here to stay and, you know, that it includes you.  It’s hard to share your data. I know.  I run into that issue in my own organization. I want to be sure that the data is correct, that it is meaningful, that I provide any additional context.  All of that takes time I don’t have. 

But it needs to be a part of what we all consider our jobs.  We are unique collectors of data. We find out about the people and issues that are too frequently un- and under-counted, and we have to make that a part of the public conversation.  As Allison writes, “[We must] take the walls down, make transparency the default setting.” 

It also requires, I believe, some data standards across the sector so that we can tell a story that provides insight at hyper local, regional and national levels.  So we can tell the stories that truly are representative of the whole picture, or, at least, most of the picture.

Without these standards, I worry that we won’t be able to reap some of the potential benefits of technology advances, like cloud computing.  Holly Ross writes about those benefits in Cloud Computing in Our Stormy Present: 

Making sense of all this data is going to be our key challenge as a sector as we move forward. But the cloud is going to help us in this regard, because the cloud makes it exponentially easier for us to move data around. 

In the cloud, we can share client service data with other organizations and map it against the need demonstrated by census data. In the cloud, we can create visualizations of our data that make those multi-colored spreadsheets finally make REAL sense. In the cloud, we’ll be able to record even more of the ways our constituents interact with us, and interpret what that means. 

That’s the promise of the cloud. Now all we have to do is live up to it. 

I think — I think — that I’m suggesting that living up to it means aggressively sharing our data, collecting and share the representative stories and, agreeing on some data standards across the sector so that we can achieve the dream of having simplified, relevant data that informs decision-makers and provides support to the social changes we seek.

(photo credit slides – help on how to scan by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³)