December 2, 2011 in drupal, gov 2.0, Memphis, OpenPublic by Luke Fretwell
(photo by duluoz cats)
This is old news, and I’ve been meaning to post sooner, but I absolutely love Memphis, so I can’t help myself.
Memphis announced it will develop its new website using the open source platform Drupal and OpenPublic. Mediacurrent, Linx Consulting and Phase2 Technology will collaborate on the project.
December 2, 2011 in Gov 2.0 Video, open data, Open Knowledge Foundation, Rufus Pollock by Luke Fretwell
Open Knowledge Foundation co-founder Rufus Pollock discusses his ideas on scaling an open data ecosystem.
Excerpt:
In developing this open data ecosystem there are three key things are needed: material, tools and people. This is a key point: open information without tools and communities to utilise it is not enough, after all, openness isn’t an end itself – open material has no value if it isn’t used. We need therefore to have widely available the capabilities for utilising open material, for processing, analysing and sharing it, especially on a large scale. Relevant tools need to be freely and openly available and the related infrastructure — after all tools need somewhere to run, and data needs somewhere to be stored — should be capable of effective deployment by distributed communities.
Video:
December 2, 2011 in England, gov 2.0, United Kingdom by Luke Fretwell
The British government’s Cabinet Office has published an Open Source Procurement Toolkit as part of its ongoing information and communications strategy.
From the site:
The purpose of this toolkit is to ensure that there is a level playing field for open source and proprietary software and that some of the myths associated with open source are dispelled.
Links:
December 2, 2011 in 311, Commentary, Crowdsourcing, Featured, gov 2.0, Mike Bloomberg, New York City, open data, Open311 by Luke Fretwell
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has a blog post on how cities are collaborating to better leverage data analytics and maximize taxpayer return on investment. The post cites examples from major American cities and how they’ve leveraged data, especially 311 logs, to realize efficiencies.
Excerpt:
Data-driven analytics is the systematic use of information to find patterns of interest. For cities, this means looking inwards at the detailed data that city agencies continually collect – citizen complaints, licenses and permits, transactions, violations – and identifying new areas of high risk and high cost.
Cities can then respond to these findings by prioritizing the high impact areas appropriately. In the past, individual agencies have been limited in their ability to conduct large-scale analytics by mandate, scope, and organizational structure. City agencies across the country, which each already have a prescribed list of duties they must fulfill to keep the city running smoothly, often do not share data with one another, nor are they equipped analyze it. In an era of shrinking budgets, however, many cities, including New York, have made new efforts to solve this problem by creating teams existing specifically for the purpose of data investigation that can cross agency boundaries, with promising results.
My recommendation to Bloomberg and other mayors would be to open the analytics to the public so that everyone has access and can contribute solutions. Perhaps a lesser concern, keeping this type of information private gives incumbents insider information when assessing what issues voters are most concerned about.
For those unfamiliar with the “Moneyball” premise and have’t read the book or seen the movie, here’s a two-minute overview:
Full post: Expanding the Use of Data Analytics in City Governments
December 2, 2011 in gov 2.0, Quotable by Luke Fretwell
Dilbert creator Scott Adams has a great editorial in The Wall Street Journal where he provides serious commentary on government and how civic-focused design would help modernize and better meet citizen expectations.
Quotables:
There’s a reason changing our system of government is slow going. I like to think of the government as a big, complicated machine. We citizens are the users. What we’ve always lacked is a well-designed user interface. That’s not a surprise when you consider the era in which our system was invented. Back then, the user interface for your mule involved a wooden club and language that would offend a pirate.
Perhaps what we need is a fourth branch of government, smallish and economical, operating independently, with a mission to build and maintain a friendly user interface for citizens to manage their government.
Imagine showing Jefferson the Internet. I think he’d immediately launch a start-up, design three apps and propose a new form of government that leverages social networks, all before lunch.
Full story: What If Government Were More Like an iPod?
by deaves
November 30, 2011 in Buzzdata, hackathon, odhd, open data, open food, Top Stories by deaves
A number of things have started to really come together for this Saturday, Dec 3rd. I've noticed a number of new cities being tweeted about (hello Kuala Lumpur & Oakland!) and others adding themselves to the wiki. Indeed, we seem to be above 40 cities. It is hard to know how many people will be showing up in each given city, but in Vancouver I know that we already over 20 registered, while in Ottawa they are well above 40. If other cities have similar numbers it's a great testament to the size of the community out there interested in playing with open government data.
A few thoughts to share with people as we get ready for the big day.
by Lauren Reid
November 30, 2011 in Commentary by Lauren Reid
Code for America Fellow Michelle Koeth wrote a great blog on her fellowship experience and about how she came to spend her fellowship with us here at Civic Commons.
As I was packing up my work notes, thumb drives, and books a few weekends ago to fly back home, and consequently being flooded with memories of this year, I also began thinking – who is going to read a blog post that I write about my closing thoughts of my fellowship. I’m not a notable internet technology personality, or journalist or entrepreneur. But, I am an everyday American who wanted to do something for their country by using my technical skills. Maybe there’s someone else like me who might read this. Because above all, I want to communicate that the times are changing, and at least through technology, I understand now how average Americans can get more involved in their government.
I was an American who felt isolated of the government world. I paid taxes from various jobs in the private sector; I voted; I went to law school with government loans, and became a member of the Illinois, and D.C. bar, and at least from that I understood the judicial system. But how cities worked, the struggles they face, the people that work in them and their stories, and their vision of how to improve their organizations – that was all completely foreign to me.
My perceptions of government, truth be known, were generally negative. Before Code for America, I’d often feel very bitter taking the metro to work on a Federal holiday, to work another long day to get in my billable hours at the law firm. Everyday, I’d hear sensational headlines about wasted tax dollars, disaffected citizens, and slain troops. On days I drove to work, I’d often sit in traffic for hours as some government motorcade made a mess out of downtown D.C. And I felt powerless to change any of it, until I heard about Code for America.
Read Michelle’s full blog at Code for America.
November 30, 2011 in Commentary by Michelle-Koeth
As I was packing up my work notes, thumb drives, and books a few weekends ago to fly back home, and consequently being flooded with memories of this year, I also began thinking – who is going to read a blog post that I write about my closing thoughts of my fellowship. I’m not a notable internet technology personality, or journalist or entrepreneur. But, I am an everyday American who wanted to do something for their country by using my technical skills. Maybe there’s someone else like me who might read this. Because above all, I want to communicate that the times are changing, and at least through technology, I understand now how average Americans can get more involved in their government.
I was an American who felt isolated of the government world. I paid taxes from various jobs in the private sector; I voted; I went to law school with government loans, and became a member of the Illinois, and D.C. bar, and at least from that I understood the judicial system. But how cities worked, the struggles they face, the people that work in them and their stories, and their vision of how to improve their organizations – that was all completely foreign to me.
My perceptions of government, truth be known, were generally negative. Before Code for America, I’d often feel very bitter taking the metro to work on a Federal holiday, to work another long day to get in my billable hours at the law firm. Everyday, I’d hear sensational headlines about wasted tax dollars, disaffected citizens, and slain troops. On days I drove to work, I’d often sit in traffic for hours as some government motorcade made a mess out of downtown D.C. And I felt powerless to change any of it, until I heard about Code for America.
During the month of January during my fellowship I was seemingly airdropped into this civic technology buzzword nightmare. But, I took lots of notes, and listened as hard as I could. “Platform,” “Wiki,” “API,” “open data,” “citizen engagement,” and “transparency.” And I heard about all these books that civic minded people read and TED talks and conferences people had been to.
Then, in February, I talked to government people – well not right away. That was my first taste of politics. What was once viewed as a worthy partnership by the former city administration was now being scrutinized by the new administration as a venture that might have to be cut. So, then I felt again, like I was the outsider.
It struck me later on in the month of February as I was sitting at my desk in Big Window Labs, our gracious host that month, that there was something poetic about the view out the “little window” in the back. In the Petworth neighborhood, barred windows are still the décor de jure, but peering between them, I saw all these vibrant different colored row homes – diverse but all put together in the same place, just trying to get by in this rough neighborhood. And there I was right with them – maybe we didn’t have “official” support, but we had community.
Discovering this community was the greatest thrill during the month of February. We started talking to federal people, people in New York, non-profit people, people in academia, entrepreneurial people. We heard stories that made sense of the low-hanging fruit open data citizen engagement transparency theories we heard in January. We heard passion and concern and appreciation for our efforts to research how government software and web applications could be reused to save money. I gained a new perspective on my former belief of being an outsider – citizens are never really “outsiders” to their governments; rather, sometimes government needs its citizens to endeavor independently, in the private sector, to help bring about change.
And so, Civic Commons, the main project I worked on, came to draw many independent citizens into its fold. We have a public discuss list that anyone can join. We attracted volunteers to participate in researching various topics for our Wiki. We have a Wiki that is publicly editable. Further, we match government organizations in need of software with software that meets their needs, and vendors which can provide support services. Civic Commons is a platform for facilitating the engagement of civic techies offering software or vendor support services with governments that desperately need technical innovation at low cost.
I found out from working on a side project, SnapFresh, that not only do governments need technical innovation at low cost, but even the smallest contribution is greatly appreciated. Just the words of thanks and amazement from the San Francisco government folks we’ve worked with for SnapFresh has been a powerful motivator for me. I’m not an outsider anymore; my technical skills are having a meaningful impact on government, and I’ve found an exciting way to participate.
Speaking of San Francisco – it is a fabulous place to live and work, and I’m so glad I had this opportunity as part of being a Code for America fellow. The culture in the bay area is one of lowering barriers to participation, tolerance and diversity. I will miss this much in the more rigid, formal and classist D.C., but I know now where to find the like-minded civic techie egalitarians here. They are at the codeathons, meetups, and business incubators – open to everyone.
And it just so happens the International Open Data Hackathon D.C. is this weekend. The list of attendees includes many of the great people I met in February. Hope to see you there!
by simonphipps
November 29, 2011 in freedom, license, microsoft, procurement, proprietary software, software procurement, Top Stories by simonphipps
The recent release of the Open Source Procurement Toolkit by the Cabinet Office has been interesting and encouraging, even if it did stir in me a certain scepticism that things will be different this time round. Under both Labour and Conservative administrations, the Cabinet Office has been tasked with increasing the adoption of open source by government departments, and each time a fine statement has been made that has resulted in very little change.
by jhibbets
November 28, 2011 in citizens, CityCamp, CityCampHNL, open government, participation, Top Stories by jhibbets
The City of Honolulu is calling all citizens to join the open government movement on December 3 and to prove the value of government data as a platform. They hope to entice citizens to shape the future of their city by identifying open government opportunities, discussing technology, and formulating solutions. Civic groups, designers, "govies," techies, developers, and more are encouraged to participate. The organizers of CityCamp Honolulu are excited to host this open government unconference in preparation for a 2012 Code for America project.
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