CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- Its creators hope it will become a Google of government, a massive Internet clearinghouse of information to help citizens track their leaders as effectively as their leaders track them.
On Friday, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab debuted a Web site called "Government Information Awareness," that aspires to be far more than just another, dime-a-dozen assemblage of government documents and resources.
Instead, GIA hopes to create a self-sustaining community where, as occurs with popular Web sites eBay and Google, the users keep it running and credible.
Its creators at Media Lab -- a research center whose eclectic projects bridge technology, the arts and media -- view the project as a way to pool the wisdom of government watchdogs and counter new government technologies that are consolidating information about citizens.
Sifting through data
GIA's name and mission are a kind of reverse version of "Terrorism Information Awareness," a $20 million Pentagon project to help sift through electronic information with the goal of preventing terrorist attacks.
"It seemed very odd that the same level of effort isn't spent working on technologies that help citizens understand the government's links, networking and influences," said Ryan McKinley, a graduate student behind the project.
McKinley hopes it will offer new ways to pull together information, helping users, for instance, identify politicians who belonged to the same fraternity, then cross-referencing the list to their voting records or campaign contributions.
McKinley has "seeded" the site with politics-related databases but beginning Friday its content will be contributed largely by users. For example: posting an environmental group's ranking of a senator's voting record.
Solid info will rise to the top?
Some information will prove unwieldy, not to mention inaccurate or unfair.
But GIA hopes useful, fair information will dominate just as useful Web sites rise to the top on the search engine Google (which ranks sites by popularity) and as dishonest sellers are rooted out of the auction site eBay. Users will rank postings for credibility, and balanced postings are essential.
And someone looking simply for reliable numbers could limit a search to official government documents.
Attempts to use the Internet to revolutionize how citizens interact with government have largely flopped. But Steven Johnson, author of the book "Emergence," likes McKinley's idea because there's no obvious way to pool watchdog information and the endless data the government itself produces.
"What I love about this idea is, it says, this is an information design problem that the government is not going to solve on its own," he said. "It's almost like we're being informally subcontracted out by the government about how to make this useful."
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