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  3. From antiquity to modern times, the nation has always been a product of information management. The ability to impose taxes, pro

From antiquity to modern times, the nation has always been a product of information management. The ability to impose taxes, pro

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问题     From antiquity to modern times, the nation has always been a product of information management. The ability to impose taxes, proclaim laws, count citizens and raise an army lies at the heart of statehood. Yet something new is being planned. These days democratic openness means more than that citizens can vote at regular intervals in free and fair elections. They also expect to have access to government data.
    The state has long been the biggest generator, collector and user of data. It keeps records on every birth, marriage and death, compiles figures on all aspects of the economy and keeps statistics on licenses, laws and the weather. Yet until recently all these data have been locked tight Even when publicly accessible they were hard to find, and collecting lots of printed information is notoriously difficult.
    But now citizens and non-governmental organizations the world over are pressing to get access to public data at the national, state and municipal level—and sometimes government officials enthusiastically support them. "Government information is a form of infrastructure, no less important to our modern life than our roads, electrical network or water systems," says Carl Malamud, the boss of a group called Pub-lic.Resource.Org that puts government data online.
    America is in the lead on data access. On his first full day in office Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum ordering the heads of federal agencies to make available as much information as possible, urging them to act "with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails".
    Mr. Obama’s directive caused a whirl of activity. It is now possible to obtain figures on job-related deaths that name employers, and to get annual data on migration free. Some information that was previously available but hard to get at now comes in a computer-readable format. It is all on a public website, data.gov. And more information is being released all the time. Within 48 hours of data on flight delays being made public, a website had sprung up to diffuse them.
    Providing access to data "creates a culture of accountability", says Vivek Kundra, the federal government’s CIO. One of the first things he did after taking office was to create an online "dashboard" detailing the government’s own $70 billion technology spending. Now that the information is freely available, Congress and the public can ask questions or offer suggestions. The model will be applied to other areas, perhaps including health-care data, says Mr Kundra—provided that looming privacy issues can be resolved.
    All this has made a big difference. "There is a cultural change in what people expect from government, fuelled by the experience of shopping on the internet and having real-time access to financial information," says John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes open government. The economic crisis has speeded up that change, particularly in state and city governments.
    Chris Vein, San Francisco’s CIO, insists that providing more information can make government more efficient. California’s generous "sunshine laws" provide the necessary legal backing. Among the first users of the newly available data was a site called "San Francisco Crimespotting" that layers historical crime figures on top of map information. People now often come to public meetings armed with crime maps to demand police patrols in their particular area.
   
选项
答案B
解析 文中第四、第五段均出现Barack Obama，第四段指出他签署一份总统备忘录，命令联邦各机构的首脑公开尽量多的信息(make available as much information as possible)，第五段则提到了奥巴马的命令引起了一系列的行动(caused a whirl of activity)，B中的triggered off a wave of与cause a whirl of activity对应，opening information in federal agencies则与第五段的内容对应，故确定B为答案。
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