A White House adviser last week made a plea for open, collaborative use of IT in government--a model that would make use of decentralized, crowd-sourced approaches.

Beth Noveck, an adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told a conference hosted by the National Association of State CIOs that the Obama administration wants to do more than just make static data available online, and hopes to use technology to tap "the intelligence and expertise of the American people."

She cited as an example the Patent and Trademark Office's Peer-to-Patent project, where members of the scientific community are invited to assist in a patent examiner's review of an application.

Noveck said the idea is make use of citizen input across government and open a dialogue. "What we've typically seen is a lot of data being provisioned top down, but not in the other direction," she said.

For more on open government:
- see this internetnews.com article