Earlier this week, Chris clued me into Carl Malamud’s campaign to be be appointed Public Printer of the United States. The first thing I noticed upon visiting his campaign site, yeswescan.org, was his “committee to reboot .gov”—a short list of people including a few of my personal heroes: Lawrence Lessig, Brewster Kahle, Ellen Miller, and Adrian Holovaty. Below the list is a link asking me if I want to join the committee. I can’t imagine a more effective way to get me involved.
So I did some research. It turns out that I really like Carl, and no matter the results of his campaign, I’m eager to participate in the conversation he’s starting.
It is, of course, not a new conversation. Countless people are trying to influence the sea change affecting government domains across the country (a bunch of my colleagues are talking about it right now at Transparency Camp). However, what I like about Carl’s version of the conversation is, for lack of a better term, his style.
He’s a printer
He might not be a trained printer, but the fact that he’s running for National Printer indicates a healthy regard for the craft. As an amateur screen printer, I am obligated to recognize the value of a good printer: a person dedicated to a complicated craft, who does a job requiring exceptional attention to detail, who produces the media that educates, informs, and inspires us.
There is evidence of a printer’s touch on Carl’s various websites, all of them easy to read and elegantly laid-out. This isn’t trivial. I wish more websites were built with the care of a printer.
He gives librarians the props they deserve
The #2 issue that Carl wants to address in his campaign is librarians, saying that “librarians are the bedrock of the public domain and the defenders of our fundamental right to access knowledge.” I almost fell on the floor when I read this. Ever since my tenure trying to wrangle the world’s event information at Eventful, I’ve been convinced that librarians hold the key to the future. There is no way the Internet, .gov or not, is going to reach its full potential without tapping into the long-term and profound thinking of librarians.
The rising generation of Internet librarians are the people who are going to guide the world through the necessary changes required to organize our data and make it useful. Adrian Holovaty gives an excellent explanation of what kinds of changes I’m talking about in his piece A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change.
He’s doing the right thing
Carl’s been publishing government information on the Internet for over 20 years, but he got some press recently by mobilizing a small army of volunteers to download roughly 19,856,160 of federal legal papers from the Federal Judiciary’s outdated Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system for him to repost for free at his site, Public.Resource.org. He didn’t do anything illegal by doing it, but it freaked out some people at the Judiciary and, more importantly, it got some press.
The solution on Public.Resource.org is not ideal (it raises some important privacy concerns), but his work highlights the fact that voters are beginning to expect a lot of the Internet, and the government needs to rise to meet those expectations. Imagine how much more he could do at the helm of the Government Printing Office!
What really has me convinced that Carl’s doing the right thing, however, is this quote: “If [appointed as Public Printer], I will certainly serve. But if not called, I will probably serve anyway.” I consider myself very lucky to be able to work as a pseudo-public servant (are consultants public servants?), but Carl’s work is an inspiring reminder that I can always serve no matter what.
Let’s get to work!
