Cutting Through The Clutter

Carolyn Duffy Marsan has a terrific feature in our May issue about what it will take for agencies to comply with the Obama administration's directive, due Thursday, that they take public comment more into account. Marsan writes:

What worries federal officials most about the OMB directive is how they will manage millions of public comments in a meaningful way without tying up too many resources. They want to benefit from real-time constituent feedback, but they need to set realistic expectations so the exercise doesn't come off like a publicity stunt. Automation is the answer. Observers say business intelligence software - including data mining, decision support, reporting and Web analytics tools - will help agencies extract useful information from public comments.

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Web-based commentary can provide agencies with information on all aspects of government policy. "The issue is how to mine it, how to tap into it, and how to look at patterns and trends," Kobielus says. "The geeky parlance is to look for entities and relationships and sentiments that are expressed in that unstructured content."

I think this feature is critical reading for a couple of reasons: