Many Americans surfing for hard facts about government

Forty percent of adults who use the Internet are surfing for data about the business of government, a proportion that shocked researchers, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

"People want to know what's going on in government," said the report's author Aaron Smith, a researcher at the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. "I think the number of people doing that was extremely surprising to us."

The project, one of seven at the center, produces reports on the effects of the Internet on families, communities, daily life, education, health care, government and politics.

For years, surveys by Pew, the American Customer Satisfaction Index and other researchers have indicated an upward trend in the use of the Internet to access government services, including the latest ACSI quarterly report, which also was issued on Tuesday.

But the Pew survey is the only one that indicates people also are going online for raw government data, such as spending statistics, policy statements and campaign contributions. Pew's last detailed assessment of online government was conducted in 2003. "There was no YouTube. There were no social networking sites. There was very little text-messaging," Smith said. "It's effectively the first report of its kind."

He attributed the large number of Americans seeking data to the government's outreach efforts and the public's interest in the information. "This is a fairly recent trend on the government's side to push for openness and transparency in government data," Smith said.

In 2009, President Obama instructed agencies to err on the side of disclosure and greater collaboration with the private sector, engagement with citizens, and overall transparency. Smith said the work of government accountability advocates who analyze official data to provide greater insight into agency statistics also contributed to the public's increased interest in the information.

Pew's report on online government measured the extent to which Americans are accessing government facts either through official federal sites or third-party sites that rely on official data. The study sought to capture users who visit .gov sites, as well as those looking at mash-ups on nongovernment sites, which meld official data and statistics from other sources to find correlations.

The independent websites StimulusWatch.org and RegulationRoom.org, for example, repackage official stimulus spending and rule-making data into summaries, graphs and other breakdowns to tease out the most salient information. Pew surveyed via telephone 1,676 Internet users age 18 and older and conducted its research between Nov. 30 and Dec. 27, 2009, during the debate over health care reform. The error rate was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

The survey found that during the past year --

--23 percent of adults looked online to see how money from the 2009 stimulus package was being spent

--22 percent downloaded or read the text of bills

--16 percent visited a site that provides access to government data, such as Data.gov, Recovery.gov or USAspending.gov. Data.gov is an online warehouse of statistics that agencies supply to the White House for public consumption. Recovery.gov provides raw data on stimulus expenditures, jobs created and other information reported by funding recipients.

--14 percent looked for information on who is contributing to the campaigns of elected officials

Ed Pound, spokesman for the government board that oversees stimulus spending, said he believes as the government continues to upgrade Recovery.gov, online traffic will increase. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board also was pleased to learn that people are searching for stimulus information on nongovernment sites that repurpose its data. "That's one of the things that we wanted these outside groups and watchdog groups to do," Pound said.

In addition to measuring interest in government data, Pew's study also examined the popularity of interacting with the government through Web-based transactions, such as electronic forms, and more dynamic channels, such as the text-messaging service Twitter. Forty-one percent of Internet users said they had downloaded government forms in the past year. Only 2 percent had followed a government agency or public official on Twitter. The number of people who had directly exchanged Twitter messages with an agency or official was too small to report.

While a significant number of adults are accessing facts about policies and government activities, that does not mean they all believe the administration is being transparent and accountable by disclosing such information, according to survey results. The political leanings of Internet users colored people's perceptions, with Democrats tending to express more positive attitudes toward the government's openness when they looked at official data. Republicans tended to be skeptical about government transparency, even if they received this type of data online.

Because government data is available online does not make it meaningful or useful, said Trey Hodgkins, who specializes in federal contracting as vice president for national security and procurement policy at TechAmerica, an industry group. The Pew study did not ask whether users felt the information they found was meaningful.

"If I had gone to Data.gov, I don't know if I would find the raw data of any use to me. The same could be said for Regulations.gov. Some of that may as well have been written in hieroglyphics," Hodgkins said of the government's rule-tracking site. "I can go read a bill, but I'm not going to necessarily understand what it says. As someone who's done this for 25 years, I'm probably going to have problems with reading a number of sections [in the health care reform bills]."

He also noted that some of the available federal data is incorrect or incomplete, because agency methodologies for collecting the information could be flawed or the computer systems managing the data are undergoing upgrades.

Still, it's a good sign that people at least are looking for the information, Hodgkins noted. "We're moving in the right directions," he said. "We're seeing the right technologies be brought online. You've got a bunch of government executives that Tweet daily."