Birthers and Transparency

Programmers may extract data from a White House-led online discussion about transparency to analyze the influence of participants who are out to prove that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen.

Since May, the administration has been seeking public input on a forthcoming presidential directive on open government through various social media, including a blog, wiki and voting mechanisms.

So-called "birthers" commandeered parts of the discussion to further their cause.

A June 6 public comment read:

Transparency' a buzz word for smoke and mirrors. Why else would you go to such lengths to try and obfuscate the Constitution?

Long form of the valid Birth Certificate, please.

WE THE PEOPLE [Natural Born Americans] have a right to KNOW that the Constitution is not being damaged. It is not a lot to request. WE THE PEOPLE have to produce OUR valid Birth Certificate all the time.

THAT IS A TRANSPARENCY PRINCIPLE!

The online activities were intended to inform a decree that will instruct agencies on how to create a more transparent, participatory and collaborative government. Obama on Jan. 21 committed to issuing the directive but has yet to deliver. In the meantime, the administration on Aug. 7 released the content from the open forums in downloadable Excel and WORD files. A White House blogger encouraged Internet users "to help distill what we've learned."

Washington-based Sunlight Labs, a branch of the Sunlight Foundation that builds technologies to promote government transparency and accountability, has called upon volunteer coders from across the country to manipulate the data.

Labs Director Clay Johnson is "trying to get people who are not us to do it. It's a much better victory for us if we can sort of inspire other developers. . . . If that doesn't work out over the next couple days, we'll do something ourselves."

The approach he's mulling is "mining" for birther effects, or finding correlations among fields in the data that demonstrate the effect of the special interest movement on the dynamics of the dialogue.

Did it drown out the project or motivate innovators to speak louder? See for yourself.