Data is a big headache for sneaky politicians

Maybe you already know about the Great Fort Lee Traffic Jam of 2013. If you don’t, here’s what happened:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s punished the mayor (and citizens) of Fort Lee, New Jersey, for the mayor’s lack of support in a recent race for governor. Christie’s cronies shut down lanes on the Fort Lee onramp to the I-80 and caused a remarkably painful traffic jam. But this isn’t your father’s era of dirty tricks in government.

Where once politics was about perception and spin, today’s political reality is about cold, hard data. We know how bad the problem was thanks to cameras and sensors on the bridge and we know who know who’s responsible thanks to indiscreet emails sent by Christie’s staff before, during and after the traffic fiasco. Christie has no place to hide.

Welcome to the age of data that delivers transparency, Governor.

Control Panel LA

This kind of transparency is the key to understanding where and how our elected officials are misbehaving, but also for views into how they perform their jobs. There are transparency projects underway today like Control Panel LA, a website dedicated to how the City of Los Angeles spends its money. This is a ground breaking move by new Major Eric Garcetti and sets the stage for citizens to know exactly how and where their money is spent.

Transparency like this would have prevented the scandal in Bell, California, where Mayor Robert Rizzo conspired to give himself an annual pension of $976,771. This was only possible because there was no government transparency in a city where the average household income is only $24,000.

Garcetti’s promised next move is to publish data on common services like the time it takes to get potholes repaired and how long permits take to process.

Going after your own data

Transparency doesn’t come only from sites that filter and visualize. Websites like data.gov.uk are being set up to provide raw data that citizens and private groups can use to sift and analyze as they see fit. This opens what would have been government-only data on things as broad as the census, weather and spending. When data comes directly from the source, it becomes an innovation opportunity transparency at the same time.

Chris Christie won’t be the last politician caught with his data down. It will take a generation or several similar examples before our leaders fully understand how much their work can be tracked. In the meantime, citizens should push for more access to more government data. It’s as much our responsibility to demand access to information about government’s behavior as it is to vote.

Bruce Springsteen and the working man

Just last week in a move that had to be painful for Christie, his idol, Bruce Springsteen, joined Late Night host Jimmy Fallon in putting the blame squarely on the Governor. Watch the video below, which ends with the line,”…your killing the working man.” Ouch…