Category Archives: open gov

New Transparency Report from ICMA

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This is a cross-post from the Gov 2.0 Watch blog of our partners at the Davenport Institute. The new transparency report it covers could be a useful tool for our many open government-oriented members. You can read the post below or find the original here.

DavenportInst-logoGranicus recently released a report, outlining a comprehensive approach for gaining citizen input, prioritizing issues, and developing strategic approaches to solving problems. The “Transparency 2.0” vision is about more than simply posting government data online:

While open data comprised much of what online transparency used to be, today, government agencies have expanded openness to include public records, legislative data, decision-making workflow, and citizen ideation and feedback.

This paper outlines the principles of Transparency 2.0, the fundamentals and best practices for creating the most advanced and comprehensive online open government that over a thousand state, federal, and local government agencies are now using to reduce information requests, create engagement, and improve efficiency.

The report includes specific suggestions for effective open government online, such as posting a calendar of city council meetings and indexed meeting videos for citizens’ benefit, and examples of successful “Citizensourcing” initiatives in cities like Austin, TX.

To download the report from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) website, click here.

Government Crowdstorming with the Public

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What ever you call it, crowdstorming, ideation, or online idea generation, it’s my observation that this technique is the second most often used online method for governments to engage the public, after social media (like Facebook and Twitter). Government hosted crowdstorming is usually focused on generating ideas, and sorting them by public preference via votes.

The latest uses of these tools move away from asking the public to contribute many, many ideas for the government to sort through and perhaps act on. Ideation is now commonly used for internal engagement where government employees can make suggestions for improving the workplace and work products. Ideation is also being used in challenge competitions where government agencies use prizes to stimulate innovation to advance their core missions.

Why So Popular?

Nonetheless, it’s a useful tool to gain public input in early stages of policy development or program design. Why is it so popular? Well, here’s a few thoughts:

  • Easy to participate at any level of commitment. You can vote on an idea, comment or submit an idea yourself
  • Transparent without the risk of needing to engage with everything you hear. Good moderation recognizes participation, encourages participants to define their ideas and why they are important, and ignores ranters/ragers/trolls.
  • Shared ownership with the community. The community decides what’s most popular. The convener decides what they are going to do with those ideas (e.g. host an ideaslam for the top 10, use a public list of criteria to select 3 out of the top 10 to receive funding, etc.)
  • Proven. It’s easier to convince your leadership or colleagues to take a risk by engaging the public online when others have done it before you.

IBM Crowdsourcing Gov Cover

Resources

Thinking about doing it yourself? Here’s a few great resources from IBM’s Center for the Business of Government:

Top Five Considerations

Shaun Abrahmson, author of the book Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving, recently shared with the Huffingon Post his top five things to think about in setting up a project:

1. A great question – Solve a real problem, make it easy to communicate and share, and make it clear to potential participants

2. Rewards – How will you reward the best – sometimes tricky mix of good, attention, money, experience and stuff (games)

3. Recruiting – Your outcomes are only as good as your ability to reach and motivate loads of people who might be able to solve your problem

4. Choosing the best – You need to be clear on this so you can deliver fairly on your promises

5. Delivery – If you want to be able to work with crowds again, you need to be able to not just deliver rewards, but put the ideas/plans/prototypes into action (very often this is where crowdstorming fails)

Tools

There are lots of tools you can use for online crowdstorming including: IdeaScale, UserVoice, Spigit, Delib Dialogue App, Bubble Ideas, Salesforce Ideas, Mindmixer, Thoughtstream, OpenIdeo and more.

Examples

Here’s a small list of government-led ideation projects asking the public for their ideas. Know of others? Please leave them in the comments.

Government of BC Education Plan. 2012

USA Federal Communications Commission. 2010

UK Coalition Government’s Your Freedom Project, which was the world’s biggest ever political crowdsourcing project, gathering 10,000′s ideas from over 40,000 people, and with over 500,000 visits to the site
and the lessons learned from Delib, their engagement shop

City of Vancouver, Talk Green To Us. 2011
(not supported anymore so the layout is weird but the content is the same)

The following three were hosted by National Academy of Public Administration, which is a Congressionally chartered, non-profit, non-partisan institution

Open Government Dialogue on behalf of the Obama Administration. 2009
Lots was learned from this one, the highest profile test at that time

The National Dialogue On Health Information Technology and Privacy on behalf of the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget
Disclosure: I worked on this
Video overview

The National Dialogue on Green and Healthy Homes on behalf of National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and the Department of Housing and Urban Development

Manor Labs, Texas

Improve San Francisco, 2010

Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygene. 2012
and a description from the vendor, Spigit

City of Seattle. Share YOUR ideas for a better Seattle. 2010

Government of Ireland, Your Country, Your Call. 2010

Knight Foundation Maps Civic Businesses & Investments, Seeks Feedback

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Knight-Foundation-logoOur interest was piqued recently by a report released by the Knight Foundation presenting the first mapping of “civic tech” businesses and investments here in the United States. We know that many NCDD members work in or are interested in the high-tech end of public engagement, so we wanted to share some snippets from a great article about the report that we found on the tech blog, GigaOm (you can find the original article here), and to let you know that you have a chance to give your feedback on the report.

So what is “civic tech”, you might ask? Well, it’s not so hard to understand:

Jon Sotsky, the foundation’s director, described civic tech as “technology that’s spurring civic engagement, improving cities and making government more effective.” The field includes a range of private and public organizations, from groups the Knight Foundation and its data analytics and visualization partner Quid designate as “P2P local sharing” (Airbnb) to “community organizing” (Change.org) to “data access and transparency” (Open Data Institute).

And as many of us know, civic tech has been on the rise in recent years, taking on different shapes and being used in many different ways. It is a growing sector, which is why the Knight Foundation set out to map it in the first place:

You might not have heard of “civic tech,” but chances are it has affected your community and its influence will only increase over time. According to a Knight Foundation report released today — the first to track civic tech businesses and investments — the sector has raised $430 million in investments in the past two years and civic tech company launches are increasing 24 percent annually.

The report generated quite a bit of interesting data, and that’s why it came along with a nifty visualization tool:

Users can explore civic tech through a bubble treemap data visualization, sorting by themes, communities and companies. Investments are color-coded as either private investments or public grants and the size of the bubbles depends on the size of investments. As you explore each section, you can see the investment types and amounts as well as several other data points, all of which can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.

Visualizations of this type can be crowded by the number of nodes they include, but the Knight Foundation does a good job showing the structure of the civic tech field as a whole. Indeed, the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit geared at benefiting media and the arts, is using the information to make its own investment decisions. The intention is that everyone can get a better view of the field, including new startups trying to find their way in the space.

We agree that it is important for all of us to gain a better understanding of this emerging field, so we highly encourage you to check out the Knight Foundation’s report and the visualization tool. But we especially wanted NCDD members to know that the Knight Foundation is looking for feedback on civic tech initiatives or funders that they may have missed in their report:

As with any sector that is measured for the first time, Sotsky admits it is incomplete, which is why they’ve included feedback links for people to add missing civic tech businesses and investments. The intention of the list is to “get a conversation started” so that next year’s civic tech data directory will be more robust.

So if you are connected with a civic tech initiative, funder, or group that you don’t see in the report, you’re invited to email Knight Foundation director Jon Sotsky at sotsky@knightfoundation.org with suggestions of what may have been missing from this year’s report. We hope that next year’s report will be bigger, better, and more informed by the NCDD community of practitioners!

Original GigaOm post: www.gigaom.com/2013/12/04/knight-foundations-civic-tech-data-visualization-project-reveals-surge-of-startup-activity.

New Open Data Policy Passes in Oakland, CA

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This interesting piece of news is cross-posted from the Gov 2.0 Watch blog run by the Davenport Institute (an NCDD organizational member). The open data movement continues to grow with this new policy in Oakland, CA created with public participation. The original post is here.

DavenportInst-logoOakland Local and the Personal Democracy Forum reported last week on the Oakland City Council’s unanimous passage of legislation adopting an Open Data Policy last Tuesday. The Local reports:

The Open Data Policy itself was drafted in a unique, open, and collaborative manner. Over the summer, [councilmember] Schaaf reached out to the Urban Strategies Council, an organization working to eliminate poverty through education, opportunity, safety, and justice. Urban Strategies organized a public roundtable and an online Google Hangout, and invited experts and interested parties from around the country to join and participate in developing the Open Data Policy.

Miranda Neubauer, writing in Techpresident at the Personal Democracy Forum, provides further details on the legislation and how it builds on ongoing efforts to make Oakland city data available for the benefit of both policy analysts and the public.

You can read more from the Local here and more from Techpresident here.

Reflections on Technology from Davenport

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This post comes via the Gov 2.0 Watch blog, which is a project the Davenport Institute (an NCDD organizational member). You can read the post below or find the original here. We think a lot about using technology to enhance democracy here at NCDD, and we wanted to share this post that reminds that technology can be used for good and for ill. It’s a tool, not a panacea.

DavenportInst-logo

Technology and Democracy

While technology offers many interesting possibilities for strengthening democracy, it is important not to get so caught up in the promise that we forget technology is a tool rather than a solution. Comparing and contrasting surveillance practices in China and the U.S., Kentaro Toyama argues in The Atlantic that technology only reinforces “underlying political forces” already present in a society, which may or may not be democratic:

What both Chinese censorship and American surveillance show is that there is nothing inherently democratizing about digital networks, at least not in the political sense. Far-reaching communication tools only make it easier to impose constraints on the freedom of expression or the right to privacy. Never before have Chinese censors had it so easy in identifying subversive voices, and never before has the NSA been able to eavesdrop on the private communications of so many people.

Toyama raises interesting questions about the relationship between communications technology, democracy, and political freedoms:

Many of us take advantage of online government services, and electronic voting machines can streamline elections. So, the digital can support democracy. But, the reason why the Internet seems “democratizing” in America is exactly because America is a democracy. We have free speech online because we have free speech offline, not the other way around…What does this mean for anyone working to spread or strengthen democracy? It means that focusing on new technological tools is far less important than focusing on the underlying politics.

You can read the full article here.

Two years ago, Toyama wrote about technology’s role in widespread social changes, with reference to uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen that sparked what came to be known as the Arab Spring. You can read this earlier article here.

Contributor: Benjamin Peterson, Pepperdine School of Public Policy, MPP Candidate ’15

Ideation Nation Contest

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We wanted to share the post below from our partners at the Davenport Institute’s Gov 2.0 Watch blog about an exciting chance to win $5,000 in the Ideation Nation Contest. Find out more, and good luck in the contest!

DavenportInst-logoMindMixer and Code for America are hosting a nationwide contest for ideas of how to improve the ways citizens and governments work together:

MindMixer and Code for America are teaming up for a month-long, nation-wide call for ideas. From September 24 through October 31, we’re asking Americans to share their informed ideas about how to improve the ways citizens and governments work together.

This is a chance for citizens to be a part of something bigger — an opportunity to share thoughtful community-building ideas that could be a catalyst for creating better communities. While most people are not experts in economics or policy, they are truly the firsthand experts about the communities they live in, with different perspectives from policy makers and government leaders.

You can read more about how to participate in the contest here, and follow ideas here.

Making Municipal Laws More Accessible

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We were quite impressed with the updated version of an innovative tool that our friends at the OpenGov Foundation have been working on that is called BaltimoreCode.org.  The website is designed to make the laws that govern Baltimore not only open and transparent, but open for comment, criticism, or input from everyday citizens.

Today, BaltimoreCode.org doesn’t just give you a Google-level law search engine. It doesn’t just give you a modern, user-friendly experience. Now, you can speak out and comment directly on the laws of Baltimore City.

That’s right. When you discover a law that isn’t working well for Baltimoreans, or that is a massive headache for you, you can quickly and easily identify it right there on the same page.

With municipal, state, and federal laws and their interactions being more complex than ever, this nifty tool could provide a great jumping off point for broader accountability, transparency, and participation in our laws.

You can read the original post about the new update on OpenGov Foundation’s blog here, or go straight to the www.BaltimoreCode.org to find out more.

Is Twitter Really the New Town Hall?

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DavenportInst-logoOur interest was piqued by two recent posts from the Gov 2.0 Watch blog (one of the blogs of the Davenport Institute, an NCDD org member). They have been posting recently about the ways social media can and is changing the way government interacts with the public, and we wanted to share two posts that provoke real considerations about how we should move forward with integrating social media into civic dialogue and deliberation.

First, Gov 2.0 Watch shared the post below on Lessons from Spain to be learned from the unprecedented use of Twitter in the Spanish city of Jun:

Mayor Jose Antonio Rodrigues, of the spanish town of Jun, has fully embraced twitter — and may have some lessons for other cities:

Because of this unprecedented Twitter integration into city governance, we have seen some great stories of what a “Twitter town square” can look like:

  • The mayor gathers city council agenda items via Twitter (@AyuntamientoJun) and displays a live, unfiltered Twitter feed during each public meeting.
  • Every town councilor has an individual Twitter handle; citizens have a direct line of communication with Jun’s leadership.
  • Residents can Tweet about issues of concern to the mayor, who replies publicly on Twitter about how these issues will be addressed, along with how and when the issue was resolved. For example, after exposed wires were reported, they were fitted with a proper cover in about 24 hours.
  • Jun encourages citizens of all ages to learn to use Twitter. Even older residents are active in civic life and engaged with others on Twitter.

You can read more here.

And that post was followed up by another that points to recent thought on the growth and evolution of social town halls from Harvard:

Stephen Goldsmith of the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School takes a look at how social media is evolving when it comes to public engagement with government:

Social media is the new town hall, where government leaders join residents in the constant digital conversation that occurs on Twitter and other sites. However, in addition to straightforward communication, social media offers much more in transforming how government works and listens. The use of social media is now evolving through four stages.

You can read about these stages here.

As we continue to see social media become a bigger part of our governance, dialogue, and deliberation, it will be crucial for our field to continue to explore, critique, and experiment with the ins and outs of its integration.

Do the above posts from Davenport raise questions for you or inspire reflections on social media and our work? Is Twitter the new town hall, or is it not? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section, or tweet them to our Twitter handle, @NCDD!

You can find the original Gov 2.0 Watch blog post on Spain here, and the original post on social town halls is here.

New Report on E-Petitions and Engagement

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We are happy to share a great summary of the new report on government-sponsored e-petitions from long-time NCDD member AmericaSpeaks.  The paper compares e-petition platforms from the US, UK, and Australia, and it’s a useful guide for thinking through the ins and outs of the many different e-petition platforms aimed at helping public engagement specialists make better use of this emerging technology.

You can read the full article below, or find the original post on the AmericaSpeaks blog here.

AmericaSpeaks_Logo

Exploring E-Petitions

By Elana Goldstein

AmericaSpeaks doesn’t often have the opportunity to be involved with projects like this, so it was exciting for the organization to take a step back and look at citizen participation from a new angle. We see e-petitions as a new means for governments to encourage increased citizen interaction and involvement in the policy making process. Over the past two years, AmericaSpeaks has been working with funds from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to explore issues related to open government. The grant culminated at the beginning of the summer with the release of “Government Sponsored E-Petitions: A Guide for Implementation and Development,” a paper focused on electronic petitioning and local government.

The paper serves as a guide for public managers who are interested in e-petition design and implementation. The guide breaks down the key decision areas that a public manager may face throughout the implementation process. In addition, the guide includes three case studies, each of which examines a different governmental entity’s approach to e-petition implementation. The first case study looks at e-petitioning in the United States with the Obama Administration’s “We the People” e-petition platform. The second case discusses state level implementation in Queensland, Australia, with an emphasis on using e-petitioning as a way to overcome geographic barriers to citizen participation. The final case study examines implementation on the local level with the e-petition platform in Bristol, England.

While e-petition implementation is highly dependent on the local context, several issues emerged as best practices throughout the case studies. For example, the use of a trial period in the early stages of an e-petition process gives the government time to work out glitches in the platform, as well as work to get elected officials and the public bought in to the benefits of the system. Similarly, we recommend that all e-petition systems utilize a time response guarantee. So, if a petition gathers enough signatures it is guaranteed a response within a specific time frame. While the amount of time will vary across localities and platforms, the guarantee will provide a sense of accountability for citizen petitioners and create a petition response structure that treats all petitions equally.

As more communities implement and innovate around e-petitions, our notions of best practices will change. In the long history of petitions and governance, e-petitions, we must remember, are still in their infancy. However, it is safe to say that the spread of e-petitions is a positive development for the practice of democratic participation. For citizens, the continued use of e-petition systems can lead to a greater capacity for civic participation, a greater ability to get things on the government agenda, and greater expectations for political participation outside of the voting booth. Citizen participation and increased government accountability through e-petition processes has genuine potential to strengthen linkages between elected officials and the participatory public.

We hope that you take the time to read through the guide and share it with your elected officials. Enjoy!

Find the original article here: www.americaspeaks.org/blog/exploring-e-petitions. Find the full report here: www.americaspeaks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/EPetitionPaperFinal.pdf.