Last Friday, the Sunlight Foundation and Mitchell Kapor Foundation gathered the tech- and politics-savvy together in San Francisco for a workshop on government data, transparency and the web, dubbed Open Data/Open Government (or, alternately, Open(Data)/Open[Gov] or ODOG). The idea was to brainstorm on how to make previously unavailable and/or hard-to-understand data as friendly as possible to the average web-surfer.

The basic subtext: To most Americans, government operates opaquely, its decisions driven by money and special interests. Making data more transparent (and, by extension, decision-making and patterns of influence) will draw interested citizens to be more engaged, and – one hopes – make politicians more accountable. (Of course, lobbyists and interest groups can also access this information and use it to refine their tactics.).

I felt a little out of place at times amid the technical jargon flying. But it was a fascinating meeting. Like most reporters working in Washington, I’ve pored over campaign finance information, data on lobbying expenditures and federal contracts. Sometimes this is smartly crunched and organized, as on the Center for Responsive Politics site. More often, though, it’s heavy going. A couple of years ago, seeking information on lobbyist-paid trips by House members, I trekked to an office in the basement of the Capitol, where a guy handed me alphabetized binders – only one out at a time – with handwritten sheets for each member and his/her staff. The information was “public” – but not really. (I’m told it’s now online)

Now, thanks to the relentless march of digitization, a flood of this data is coming online – as are new and ever more powerful tools for analyzing it. All available to anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection.

Simply trolling through OMB Watch’s contracts database raises lots of questions about how government works – companies you’ve never heard of are getting billions of dollars to do … what, exactly?

New websites can integrate data, graphs, background information, media coverage, blog commentary on individual issues. One, MAPLight.org, tracks bills going through legislatures (right now, it’s just California, but will expand to Congress and other states). It has a neat timeline feature that shows a bill moving through committees to eventual passage of failure – and also tracks the strategically-timed campaign donations of interest groups. As the vote approaches, the money flows.

Interesting ideas emerged. One was to create an “Open PAC” that would donate money to politicians who promote transparency in government.

Some issues came up. Many of the new web ventures represented had similar goals and content – info on Congress. There are more gaps on the state and local level, though the Institute on Money in State Politics is covering a lot of ground on state legislatures. For NewAssignment, this is where citizen involvement could prove particularly useful – if someone can go to their local county office or city hall and dig up some data or contract information, then contribute via email or online data repository.

The conference dealt with making data more accessible and developing tools to interpret it. But as a journalist – and, for that matter, as a citizen – I’m looking for more than access to data. I’m looking for patterns that reveal an interesting story. Why is Industry X giving so much Senator Y? Why did Industry X suddenly become interested in this issue this year after ignoring it in the past? Is something fishy going on? Is some hidden economic earthquake changing the way Industry X operates? And so on.

In one breakout session, we touched on this idea – if websites (both new and established ones) can point to where the most interesting/revealing data or facts or events are this week or this month – that adds a lot of value.

The meeting also dramatized how technology has blurred of the once sharply-defined lines between media and the public.

Sunlight’s Ellen Miller (see her post on the conference here) remarked at one point that the media used to be the prime customer for the datasets assembled by the Center for Responsive Politics (which she founded). But now, interested citizens are primary, traditional media secondary on CRP’s list of customers/readers. That points to broader changes that will benefit a model like NewAssignment. Rather than journalists gathering information and dispensing it to the masses, there is now a continuum that includes interested citizens, bloggers, and journalists. All have access to more information than ever before. We can all trade it and collaborate more easily. At the same time, with no Walter Cronkites in sight and the New York Timeses losing their cultural primacy, where’s the authoritative voice? Whom do you believe?

One final note – the Open Data meeting was held at the Kapor Foundation offices. Beforehand, participants were advised that the office was a dog-friendly environment. Sure enough, during one of our breakout sessions a couple of dogs started barking loudly at each other outside the door. Well, I thought, it’s a long way from the grizzled city desk editor with the bottle Scotch in his drawer.