Can Technology ‘Transform’ Cities and the Lives of the Poor?

Eight Theses on the Civic Technology Movement

In recent years, an exciting movement has been building in cities across the U.S. and around the world. Public officials, nonprofits, activists, and companies are experimenting with new ways to use new digital technologies to improve urban life by expanding access to data, upgrading government systems, and developing new apps. These loosely coordinated efforts have been dubbed by some a “civic technology” movement.

Recently the nonprofit OpenPlans and foundation collaborative Living Cities published a “field scan” of how the use of digital technologies and social media “has the potential to transform cities and the lives of their low income residents.” The report is based on interviews with 25 people and has a self-professed goal of sparking a broader dialog about the present and future direction of this movement. This blog post is a response to the report, and is intended to be critical and constructive.

What is the ‘civic technology’ field that is surveyed? It includes several components:

• Public officials working towards technical innovation in government, such as Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (where I worked in 2010).
• The creation of city data portals, and associated events such as application programming competitions and third party apps they encourage.
• The rise of nonprofits, such as Code For America, a group that pairs programmers with cities to produce useful technology.
• The development of private initiatives that work within this “space” such as websites that re-use government data, integrate with service delivery systems, and collaborate with public agencies to create new technologies.
• An emphasis on open technology standards, open source software, and interoperability as key values that should influence civic technology.

Assessing such a large and diverse set of activities is no small feat, and this report is a laudable effort to identify some of the key issues. The report also takes a particular interest in how these developments are (or could) impact the lives of low-income residents. My reactions below are somewhat impressionistic and presented as a list for discussion. Because of my background, I emphasize issues around government agencies, which I believe play a crucial central role in the civic technology discussion.

1. Technology Will Not Necessarily Help the Poor

While it may be true technologies could be used (and maybe are in some cases) to help the poor, technology does not exist separate from society. To the extent its design and use is shaped by dominant economic and political forces, technology won’t necessarily be transformative of existing relations. In the scholarly literature there is a debate between those who view technology as an independent force, imposing its will on society (epitomized in the title of the book “What Technology Wants“), and those who view technology as merely the servant to existing interests (much of mainstream social science). I take a moderate approach advocated by some scholars in the general field of “science and technology studies” (STS). Technology does matter because it can influence our individual choices, available knowledge, and collective action. Information systems always contain policies and values, and therefore their design is an opportunity to push in one direction or another. However, using technology for “good” requires deciding on our goals and pushing technology to pursue them, sometimes against substantial opposing forces.

2. The Poor Are Moving to Suburbia

The report largely assumes the poor live in central cities, and the report informants include participants from large cities including New York, Chicago, Boston and Newark. While historically these cities contained large poor populations, increasingly the ongoing revitalization of core cities mean that now the majority of the metropolitan poor live in suburban areas. How these areas will handle these changes is a major social and policy issue, one being tackled by one of my doctoral classmates at MIT, Christa Lee-Chuvala. This doesn’t mean inner-city poverty is obsolete, only suggests we may need to shift to regional perspectives or be attuned to different contexts. Big cities are typically more sophisticated at providing services and have more resources at their disposal than suburban or rural communities, impacting the types of technologies that might help in each place.

3. Cities Don’t Necessarily Want to Help the Poor … Or Might Not Agree on What to Do

There is also an assumption in the report that helping the poor is an unambiguous public goal. I’m not so sure. One doesn’t have to push very far to see where a consensus on this point might exist breaks down. First, even liberal cities aren’t exempt from political claims about who government should help and what constitutes a fair distribution. Even scholarly research on what interventions “work” to address poverty is remarkably varied. A great article by Teitz and Chapple that reviewed some of the scholarly theories about why inner-city poverty exists and found that while some have stronger evidence than others, the issue is sufficiently complex there may be several valid perspectives, meaning “fixing’ it is a tricky proposition. Foundations like those involved in this report are eager to push aggressively on issues of poverty and equity since they are usually only accountable to a board of directors. But cities operate in the real world of democratic accountability. While I believe professionals and leaders have a responsibility to lead, they must work within a broader civic landscape to get things done.

4. Changing Technology in Government is Hard Because it Requires Changing Government

Everybody knows there are some things money can’t buy, like love of happiness. It turns out another is often organizational change. The New York Times last week ran an article about an Air Force computer system that was cancelled after $1 billion had already been spent on it. $1 billion! For a presentation to earlier this year, I found this list of high-profile “IT project failures” costing companies billions of dollars. To be fair, the civic technology report does note to “ensure that civic tech solutions address real problems” technologists should use incremental and agile development methods. This is sensible advice but it was created in private sector contexts, where there can be tremendous impetus for organizational change and the market will impose strict discipline on firms. But governments are largely monopolies, and the larger issue isn’t lost funds (although that is important), but the ability to make changes at all, as seen in the Air Force example.

These large-scale “failures” occur establishing organizational technology doesn’t merely involve purchasing a tool, but instead requires developing a complex sociotechnical system. Implementing or changing technology therefore requires organizational changes (of roles, processes, values, etc), something that is so difficult it has sparked a mini-industry of scholars, consultants, and methods. Technologists often assume organizations with readily replace existing technology with new tools because they are clearly superior — faster, cheaper, easier to use, etc. While this is sometimes true, the inherent conservatism of organizations present an invisible barrier that must be overcome. And resistance to change may not be a bad thing, given the history of technical fads and unjustified hype. The known system that works adequately may be a better choice than the new one associated with unknown risks. As an example of this, I remember technologists advocating governments use mongoDB for open data portals several years ago, arguing it is technically superior than relational databases. Although it might be clearly superior along some dimensions (open source, more flexible, faster, etc), these are not dispositive in an organizational settings. Also important is interoperability with other systems, staff capacity and skills, and perhaps even the skills of citizens. The lesson to draw is that technology cannot be evaluated without considering the specific context in which it will be used, or implemented successfully without considering the necessary organizational changes.

5. Civic Technology is Hard Because Governments are Diverse … and Don’t Just Fill Potholes

Implementing civic tech means deciding on what goals it should help achieve. The report doesn’t dwell on the precise nature of government, and for good reason: governments are involved in a a bewildering variety of activities. When civic technology advocates do talk about governmental functions, they often focus on service delivery. Providing public services is an important and highly visible function, but governments do much more: establishing and enforcing regulations, administering grant programs, planning events, running facilities, orchestrating economic development, etc. These functions evolve in unique local contexts, and therefore what they do and their exact legal powers vary widely. (See Frug’s City Bound for a discussion of municipal legal powers). The diverse nature of governments has baffled scholars for years, and the best theory on the subject I have found is the one John Dewey’s sketched out in his classic The Public and Its Problems. In his view, government is by definition an ill-defined institution under continual change, as the democratic public deliberates about what problems exist and how they should be resolved.

More narrow views focusing on inputs and outputs, popular in some branches of public administration and popular discussion, can often lead to dead ends. For example, the high profile See Click Fix famously focuses on filling potholes and other discrete service requests. What is the broader public goal this achieves? What if the government just refilled potholes over and over, instead of determining a more durable or better pavement? Would pothole money be better spent a pavement management system that could avoid potholes, or should it be spent on other things, like public transportation? Given constrained resources, what services should government provide, exactly? It’s tempting to avoid these issues and their associated debates about the role of government. But any argument for change in the public sphere, even in the name of mere efficiency or services, is inherently political.

Recommendations

In light of these difficulties, what should we be doing? I will only suggest some ideas here.

6. Find Allies for New Partnerships

Amid the tremendous hype of civic technology, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that they constitute just a small interest group contending for resources and power in cities. Plenty of others have equally laudable goals, and therefore this community must consider critiques seriously and seek out allies. Partnering with domain-specific allies could lend much-needed legitimacy, expert knowledge, and resources. These could include groups working in fields as diverse as vacant property, public safety, public health, or education. Although collaborations can flop, where they work the result can be greater than the sum of its parts.

7. Involve More Scholars and Community-Based Organizations in the Civic Technology Discussion

As a first step, continuing a self-reflective discussion is a constructive step. However this must involve a broader set of people, and include more scholars and representatives from community-based organizations. I couldn’t help but notice only only academic was interviewed for the report (U. of Albany’s Theresa Pardo, Judith Kurland only recently moved to a university after a long career in government). Most informants were city officials and technologists. City officials, especially elected officials and their aides, have a powerful interest in seeming innovative and effective, but are loath to tell you want they can’t achieve or what seemingly unsurmountable obstacles they face. Technology advocates also have specific perspective, and are often wedded to particular approaches or technologies and lack detailed knowledge of what cities need. I recognize there’s a supply problem as well involved in reaching out to these groups. A vanishingly small group of academics take any interest in the field, for a variety of reasons, and plenty of public officials don’t “get” new technology and so will require education and engagement. One encouraging development was the consultation of Kathy Pettit for the report, a leader of the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP). This group of community-based practitioners has been working with data and technology in poor urban neighborhoods since the 1990s, and the network could provide rich experiences from this experience.

8. Focus on Building Long-Term Capacity and Infrastructure

Second, I think there should be a focus on building government capacity and infrastructure in the long term. This means engaging more deeply with existing IT staff, and focusing on efforts to institutionalize changes. The change strategy in many cities in this area has been to get some “quick wins” with unambiguous positive effects. However, these efforts are vulnerable to being swept away with changing administrations or shifting priorities. More lasting reforms have been the result of small groups working within government, often with limited resources, and not from “hack day” events or short-term fellowships, however important these can be as part of a larger strategy. Focusing on capacity will also require deeper engagement with the existing “government technology” ecosystem, understanding the existing tools in the marketplace and nature of the public purchasing process. Recent interest in focusing on the Request for Proposals (RFP) process is an exciting step in this direction.

Conclusions

Civic technology efforts represent a spirit of innovation and social hope, but one that should be combined with humility and a long-term perspective. Many fields can contribute insights to smooth the way and anticipate pitfalls. In many cases, there is no one “best” way forward. Despite Obama’s recent victory, there is no identifiable government reform movement in the United States, and existing institutional structures and bureaucracies are often viewed as hopelessly ossified. (The last visible effort in this area, Reinventing Government, was during the Clinton administration). For good or ill, today’s technology reformers are the vanguard of public sector reform in the U.S. In his prescient 1927 work The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey foresaw how modern technologies would “create means which alter the modes of associated behavior which radically change the quality, character, and place of impact of their individual consequences.” If social media has done anything, it is powerfully transformed our “associative behavior,” as Dewey predicted. Urging we avoid “short-cuts of direct action” Dewey argued the state is and should be always under debate, advising that “formation of states must be an experimental process … Only through constant watchfulness and criticism of public officials by citizens can a state be maintained in integrity and usefulness.” For these reasons, the civic technology field bears an importance beyond its important but modest achievements so far, since the field embodies the potential for a better democratic society that harnesses technological change as it is transformed by it.

Can We Implement O’Reilly’s ‘Government as a Platform’?

One of the most visible supporters of technical innovation in government recently has been Tim O’Reilly. Perhaps best known for popularizing the term “Web 2.0,” O’Reilly’s media company publishes popular software manuals and organizes industry-leading conferences for Internet entrepreneurs. In the past few years, he’s increasingly turned his attention to applying innovative internet technology to government, organizing in 2009 the inaugural Gov 2.0 Summit and Expo in Washington, D.C., events which bringing together high-ranking government officials and technology gurus.

O’Reilly’s agenda includes nothing less than the complete transformation of government. The internet has unleashed tremendous creativity through Web 2.0 websites, he reasons, so why can’t similar results be organized for government? The argument is presented as a chapter in an edited volume published by O’Reilly Media last may titled Open Government. The chapter, titled “Government as a Platform,” is also available online, and summarizes the argument he’s made in many blog posts and lectures:

Web 2.0 was not a new version of the World Wide Web; it was a renaissance after the dark ages of the dotcom bust, a rediscovery of the power hidden in the original design of the World Wide Web. Similarly, Government 2.0 is not a new kind of government; it is government stripped down to its core, rediscovered and reimagined as if for the first time.

And in that reimagining, this is the idea that becomes clear: government is, at bottom, a mechanism for collective action. We band together, make laws, pay taxes, and build the institutions of government to manage problems that are too large for us individually and whose solution is in our common interest.

Government 2.0, then, is the use of technology—especially the collaborative technologies at the heart of Web 2.0—to better solve collective problems at a city, state, national, and international level.

For too long government has been nothing more than a vending machine, O’Reilly argues, dispensing services to citizens in exchange for taxes. When we didn’t like what it produced, we resorted to shaking the machine — political protest. What we should be doing, O’Reilly argues, is creating a government which enables collective action, and captures the energy and innovation of the marketplace. In short, government should be a “platform of greatness,” coordinating and empowering individuals to serve the public interest.

The concept has caught on in some circles, embraced by groups like New York City’s Open Planning Project, a nonprofit dedicated to open source mapping software, open data, and democratizing the planning process, who included O’Reilly in a recent film about the value of publishing transit data. O’Reilly showed this film during his opening remarks at this year’s Gov 2.0 Summit, which concluded earlier this month. However, the opening began with a sober tone. After the enthusiasm of the first event, achieving Government 2.0 is “harder than it appears,” he conceded. However, O’Reilly said he still believes “Gov 2.0 answers the debate we’ve been having whether government is too big or too small … and creates the possibility of doing less and getting more.”

Indeed, technical innovations are slowly filtering into government. With open standards and the growth of sophisticated free and open-source technology, more and more proprietary and difficult-to-use vendor products are finally feeling healthy competition. Government data has the potential for improving journalism, access to services, and the evaluation of policy.

However, if we are to follow the metaphor to its logical conclusion, to truly reinvent government along different lines, what are the obstacles might we face? How might the lessons of Wikipedia, Facebook, and Youtube be applied to the ancient art of government? Unpacking these reasons may help explain why the path of government reform is a difficult one.

1. What’s a “Platform” Anyway?
In his thoughtful recent article “The Politics of ‘Platforms’” Tarleton Gillespie argues web companies use the word platform in a variety of ways. To regulators, they’re merely neutral platforms not responsible for the views expressed by participants and exempt from regulation. To users, it’s a privildged platform subject to detailed terms of service and censorship of offensive content. To other media companies, they’re lucrative platforms for profit. He concludes, “in other words, [these examples] represent an attempt to establish the very criteria by which these technologies will be judged, built directly into the terms by which we know them.”

In addition, all the private “platforms,” have some kind of internal governance who set the rules for participants. Whether groups of editors on Wikipedia or a corporate board, none institutionlize a type of governance anywhere near the complexity of real government. In fact, most are basically benevolent dictators with CEO’s held accountable by market forces. And if they can establish a monopoly, they’re only restrained by goodwill (such as “don’t be evil”) and any applicable laws. This issue brings us to the second obstacle.

2. The Federalist System
From outside of government, it’s easy to assume government has the power to do whatever it wishes so long as the elected officials agree and can obtain sufficient funds. Not true. Public power is carefully and deliberately divided between a bewildering array of states, agencies, municipalities, districts, quasi-public entities. As an example of this, some of the best ways to curb harmful externalities (like carbon dioxide emissions) are through taxes. In Massachusetts, cities cannot create new taxes without the approval of the state legislature. Period. The federal government often seeks to reform education. The only problem? Schools are run by local school boards. Federal education policy does have a variety of carrots and sticks at its disposal, but only local school districts control every aspect of schooling, or implement radically innovative new programs. This brings us to the next obstacle: who’s in charge.

3. Politicians
It’s easy to think Federal agencies are out there advancing, say, transportation or health and human services, in a general way. To the contrary, they operate under specific legislative guidelines . At the local level, although more policy entrepreneurship is possible, it always occurs under the watchful eye of lawyers and generally subject to legislative intervention. In fact, in theory elected or appointed officials run the whole operation of government. Implementing Government 2.0 therefore must involve the hard work of crafting detailed proposals, lobbying, and promotion used by any interest group. Which leads to the most incorrigible force of resistance of all.

4. We the People
O’Reilly is confident his vision of Government 2.0 transcends ideology. I’m not so sure. Any proposal for how government should operate is inherently ideological. His is no different. It includes a celebration of the market, belief in the power of individual creativity, and a desire to get government out of the business of providing direct services. In these ways it can be said to resemble neoliberalism quite closely, although perhaps with an assumption collective action outside of the market is necessary. This ideology may seem appealing to technologists, but a host of Americans may think otherwise. Leftists may prefer the old vending machine (where we can ensure the quality of public services), and conservatives may want to continue to shrink government. Even if it costs less, they might argue, we shouldn’t be tackling some problems through government at all.

The goal of this post is not to deflate the momentum of Government 2.0 advocates, but temper their enthusiasm with some realism. Publishing open data about transit service does seem somehow new for government. Yet we should never lose sight of what’s happening: a marginal increase in convenience for citizens, and some modest profits for software developers. Organizing a distributed, crowdsourced alternative to the subway? If it were even possible, this would require the cooperation of multiple government agencies, breaking union contracts, re-writing state law, and convincing everyday citizens an alternative to the existing one-agency system is desirable.

What is Government 2.0?

With last year’s Gov 2.0 Summit and the explosion of social networking service GovLoop, “government 2.0″ has become a buzzword in technology and government circles. What does government 2.0 refer to? And what exactly was the government 1.0 that we’re improving on? This article attempts to define the term and unearth some of the hidden assumptions and implications that result from applying concepts developed in Silicon Valley technology startups to the complex and age-old problem of governance.

The term government 2.0 is a deliberate reference to the term “web 2.0,” coined by publisher Tim O’Reilly to refer to interactive, social websites like Wikipedia and Facebook, which have revolutionized how people use the web. Before delving into the meaning of government 2.0, we should consider government 1.0, the government analogue to web 1.0. Although less common now, the term most often used for this initial approach to technology in government is e-government.

The Center for Technology in Government defined e-government as having three components: e-management, e-services, and e-democracy. The first two have been largely realized. Governments have adopted, to varying degrees of sophistication, internal information technology systems such as networks, databases, and intranets. As we will see, government 2.0 practices often rely on these underlying systems. Governments have long provided e-services to constituents through websites, email, or APIs, including tax payments, service requests, and digital applications and paperwork. The last component, e-democracy, has been more elusive. In the web 1.0 world, this has most often meant emailing elected officials or signing petitions on topics. These activities have grown, although in the U.S. context exist mainly outside of government websites or structures.

At a lecture hosted by the Kennedy School Government 2.0 Professional Interest Council this fall, Nicco Mele suggested we adopt Tim O’Reilly’s web 2.0 principles as a starting point for government 2.0. My essay builds on his interesting lecture.

1. Government as Platform

O’Reilly’s first principle is “the web as platform,” adjusted for our purposes to be “government as platform.” The most obvious examples of this are where government agencies provide data or host competitions to encourage creative ideas that serve the public interest. The “apps” competitions in Washington, D.C. and New York and sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, are a start to this trend. In these competitions, government provides the data, and an ecosystem of third party developers and tools helps unleash the value for the public, creating new tools, resources, and analyses.

Another example where government acts as platform is the phenomenon of participatory budgeting, pioneered by cities in Brazil and now has spread to a number of cities around the world. This approach puts budgetary decision-making, or some part of it, directly in the hands of citizens, bypassing existing representative models of decision-making. The technical dimensions of this are only now being explored, and in the Brazilian case above deliberation and voting online complemented conventional public meetings.

When it comes to service delivery, it is less clear what “government as platform” means. It may echo a broader political agenda that has sought to re-define the role of government through systematic privatization of formerly government functions, such as education or public services. After all, when governments provide educational or housing vouchers, aren’t they acting as the intermediary, or a platform? The political implications of shifting government from a service provider role to a facilitating role deserves consideration. This issue is connected to a host of issues surrounding contracting and public private partnerships. Governments may want to retain some types of service delivery if the good cannot be contracted for, or the public wants to enforce certain service standards.

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence

The second principle is “harnessing collective intelligence.” Obama’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government identified collaboration as a policy goal for the federal government. In fact, Obama’s Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government Beth Noveck experimented with collaboration tools to create an open government policy last summer. In other areas there are limited successes of citizen-government collaboration. The Peer to Patent program pools expert opinion to speed the patent process. The Next Stop Design project in Salt Lake City, Utah used crowdsourcing to select the design for new bus shelters. One of the people involved in the project, Daren Brabham, is writing a PhD dissertation on the application of crowdsourcing to public problems. In Melbourne, the consulting firm Collabforge ran a wiki as a component of a conventional planning process to generate the new city plan.

Fundamentally, this trend will face several types of powerful resistance.

First, it can run counter to traditional concepts of representative democracy, where elected officials work “down” through an expert bureaucracy to create and implement policy. Archon Fung has proposed “empowered participation” can be deployed as a governance method for specific issues, such as Chicago’s school committees or neighborhood policing committees. However, creating these structures depends on modifying existing forms of governance. Existing projects have avoided this in several ways. The apps competitions aren’t about creating policy, and the government hosts can always disavow responsibility. Idea-generation contests usually reserve final decisions to designated juries. Policy-creation projects retain the final decision-making power with conventional authorities. However, pushing this further into what Beth Noveck calls “wiki government” will require addressing this tension with existing practices.

Second, a host of public problems require technical expertise to analyze or solve. The question of how to integrate technical forms of knowledge with citizens is far from resolved. The cutting edge involves putting modeling tools in the hands of citizens, who use them as “decision support tools,” but this runs counter to existing models of professional practice and the very real need for significant expertise to complete complex analyses.

Lastly classified data and national security, a major governmental function, may never be opened to the public. Interestingly, Department of Defense has been interested in the collaborative potential of internal communication across their vast bureaucracy through wikis, for example launching a wiki to improve the Army Field Manual.

3. Open Data Standards

The third principle is the use of data standards. Expanding access to government data is a major trend, with initiatives underway at the federal, state, and local level to create data portals. The concept of linked data, emerging out of the Wikipedia project, seems poised to move into government datasets. In fact, greater linking and cross-comparison among the expanding amount of available government data will create a positive pressure to ensure cross-compatibility. Within Massachusetts state government, for example, town-level data has become a standard for comparison and analysis. With the federal government in setting metadata and other standards already, this may happen slowly but some signs are already in place. Using this to evaluate government may be misleading: the primary purpose of government isn’t to create data, although it is an important one. The technological viewpoint threatens to be reductionist, viewing the government as primarily engaged in collecting and hosting data. In reality, most money and effort in government is spent on delivering healthcare, education, national defense, grant programs, and regulatory actions, where data can play a supporting role (perhaps as indicators) but is not even always a mandatory input to governance.

In Boston, the author of a recent major report studying the city’s transit agency said in November he wouldn’t ride the busy Red Line due to serious maintenance issues that threaten to cause a train derailment. At roughly the same time, data enthusiasts were demanding real-time data about bus and train arrivals at the MassDOT developers conference. When our transit systems are in real danger of catastrophic failure, shouldn’t we spend all available funds preventing disaster for the existing riders, rather than inventing technology to make use more convenient? How can these important goals be balanced properly?

4. Customer Service

The last principle discussed by Nicco is customer service, based on O’Reilly’s “rich user experience.” An emphasis on customer services is undeniable at all levels of government. Cities have launched successful 311 systems for managing citizen requests, and governments have been subscribing to the “plain language” movement make government information more understandable and usable to citizens. However, just like “government as platform,” this principle too often reduces government to a consumer-producer relationship where the government provides services just like private firms might in the marketplace. Customer service is important, but so is engaging with citizens to generate ideas and implement solutions. In exchange for expecting service, citizens have the responsibility to understand the resource and legal limitations of government.

5. Incremental Policy

O’Reilly has several additional principles: end of the software release cycle, lightweight programming models, and software above the level of the single device. Of these, I think the principle for government is the advent of more iterative forms of policy making. The field of planning has developed theories of incrementalism or “muddling through,” to reflect the real-world pace of change. The web supports both short bursts of activity but also long-term archiving, and professionals are only now learning how to use the tools to develop sustained interest and engagement through ongoing conversations and communications.

Conclusion

What do we learn from this exercise? First, I’m not sure government 2.0 is yet a new type of government, instead a collection of promising trends. The adoption of new social and technical approaches of idea creation and governance don’t resolving age-old questions about what government should be doing, and how it should approach principles of equity and justice. In fact, what could emerge is a new, technically-enabled model of in the tradition of the “developmental state,” the concept that the state itself is engaged in economic and community development. This is perhaps the most important lesson of these trends: existing government processes should be examined and where they are not working be re-invented to take advantage of the ability of technology to expand the activity of governance beyond the institutions of government.

What Government Web Feeds Are Needed?

More and more governments are publishing data feeds, whether of news, alerts regarding public services, or even exposing administrative data. In the UK, the “Mash the State” project has the goal of encouraging every local unit of government publish a news RSS feed.

Inspired by the project, Steve Clift asked “what web feeds should government websites provide?” on the Democracies Online listserv.

Steve suggested:

1. What’s New – Comprehensive feed of all new pages/documents across
the site/agency posted/updated online.
2. Upcoming Public Meetings – Meetings coming up with links to
available meeting documents
3. Press Releases

I added a few more, from the perspective of urban planning more specifically:

- 311 service requests
- Geocoded feed with project proposals at various stages of the development review process (site plan review, zoning variance, etc)
- Feeds specific to the process of creating certain plans or policy documents (feed for comprehensive plan, or downtown revitalization plan, etc)
- Geocoded feeds of recently issued permits, by type (building or construction permits, parade or public space use permits, liquor licenses, etc)
- Real-time data on urban systems such as traffic or transit alerts.

Dan Knauss thought the question itself was off-base: “What is needed is a querying syntax like Apache’s Lucene with output options in a number of different XML schemas. Then you can pull whatever you want from a database in any format that’s provided.” He points to this project in Milwaukee that works off a dataset fed by government email lists, because they don’t offer RSS.

What data feeds do you think the government should publish?

White House Launches �Open Government Initiative�

On January 21st, President Barack Obama issued the first memorandum of his presidency on �Transparency and Open Government,� charging the Chief Technology Officer, Directory of the Office of Management and Budget, and Administrator of General Services to coordinate the creation of an Open Government Directive. The memo articulated a tripartite analysis of the topic, discussing transparency, or disclosing �information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use,� participation, or government giving �Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information,� and finally collaboration, or �actively engaging Americans in the work of their Government.� Someone pointed out at the Princeton Summit I recently attended the three form an interesting logical hierarchy, with transparency required for good participation, and collaboration the culmination of the process. (Of course it leaves off the level included on some other participation scales, citizen power)

Today, the three individuals charged with creating the Open Government Directive launched the Open Government Initiative to �experiment with mechanisms for effective citizen participation� while developing the government�s policy, dividing the task into three parts: brainstorm (now), discuss (starting June 3) and draft (starting June 15th). The process includes �From the Inbox,� a collection of contributed comments, and �Listening Sessions,� or notes or recordings of meetings. Already in the inbox is collection of interesting documents mostly from established interest groups like GWU National Security Archives, Harvard�s Kennedy School of Government, and AmericaSpeaks.

Also today the White House launched Data.gov, an effort to provide a central repository of government data, and the start of a forum on improving Regulations.gov.

Reviewing the suggestions from the Kennedy School�s Transparency Policy Project, this suggestion (PDF) for an experimental project caught my eye:

The Departments of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation could create a customizable platform to allow cities and towns to quickly deploy web sites that allow residents to report local problems (e.g. broken streetlights, abandoned vehicles, potholes, tunnel and bridge problems) in a geo-coded database and display system with mark up features. Cities and towns could deploy the platform on a voluntary, and perhaps incentivized, basis and integrate it with their 311 (non-emergency) incident reporting systems.

The project idea raises several issues. First, despite the fact the initiative is for the federal government as a whole, this suggest leaps all the way to the hyperlocal level. There seems to be something intrinsic about Internet technology that makes it particularly well suited for local initiatives, perhaps due to some of the factors I discuss here. Second, it raises the issue of to what extent government should attempt to create new technology. There actually already is a website that does more or less what the Harvard folks describe that I�ve been meaning to write about � SeeClickFix. In fact, here�s some potholes, broken streetlights, and other problems already reported on this private website:

Some have argued the government should focus on data sources nearly exclusively, but I�m more of a moderate on the issue. After all, the private sector may not develop technology that suits the unique characteristics of government. Lastly, this local suggestion implies the subtle ways the Obama Administration�s innovation in transparency, participation, and online engagement could trickle down to state and local government.

> White House Open Government Initiative
> Data.gov
> SeeClickFix

E-Government Software, Part Two

At the American Planning Association conference in Minneapolis last week, I was struck by the number of e-government software vendors who had rented booths. Although there’s hundreds of vendors selling government software on the web, I thought it might be useful to post a list of those present at the conference. I can’t locate any good sources of reviews for these tools – does anyone have experience with them? Are there open source alternatives?

Represented at APA:

• Accela – Business process automation, GIS, transactions, permitting.
• CRW – Permitting, code, licensing, GIS
• enerGov Solutions – Process automation, GIS, permitting
• GovPartner – Citizen request management, permitting and planning, facility reservations
• InfoVision Software – Permitting, records and content management
• Infor Public Sector – Permitting, planning, asset management, request management, more
• MSGovern – Permitting, tax and billing, reports, service request management
• Municipal Software – Property information, permitting, inspections, licensing, transactions
• PermitSoft – Permitting, planning, code enforcement, licensing
• Software Consulting Associates – Code enforcement, permitting, property assessment, utility billing, tax collection

Although not at the conference, there are at least a couple others that seem worth mentioning:

• CitizenServe – Permitting, code enforcement, planning, request tracking, business licensing
• Interlocking Software – Permitting, code enforcement, business licensing, animal licensing

I have previously mentioned these:

• Adobe LiveCycle – Document management, form management
• Limehouse Software – Plan creation and consultation, some mapping and CMS functionality
• Microsoft Citizen Service Platform – CMS, request management, GIS, intranet
• Village Manager – Free property, people, and business database

In addition to the lack of good reviews of all of these tools, I have a couple additional observations. First, I am struck by the wide range of functionality. Although the vendors have tried to package their products in logical ways, clearly almost all are customized to the unique functions of local governments, which vary widely according to local law and practice. Second, although many claim to function as permit tracking systems, for all except LimeHouse Software the public participation and engagement is a secondary function, if they support it at all. As I have written previously, part of the reason this type of software has been slow to mature is that they must meet the unique needs of governments different from the private sector, among them transparency and civic collaboration. I think there remains a need for sophisticated software designed exclusively for civic engagement and collaboration in planning, ideally linked to administrative databases.

I should note that as part of a larger report on best practices in expedited permitting, the State of Massachusetts compiled a document on “Automated Permit Tracking Software: A Guide for Massachusetts Municipalities” (PDF), if readers are familiar with similar resources they are invited to post them below.

Highlights From Princeton Planning and the Internet Summit

I recently returned from a conference on “City Planning, Civic Engagement and the Internet” held in Princeton, New Jersey co-sponsored by Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Center for Information Technology Policy. The conference was planned largely by Christian Peralta, the former editor of Planetizen, who did a great job assembling a fascinating group and making sure everything ran like clockwork. For the benefit of those who couldn’t attend I thought I would write a short description of some of the highlights..

Best Practices in Local Government

An employee of an independent government agency, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, I took particular interest in the representatives from local governments. Representing the City of Toronto’s Public Consultation Unit were Mike Logan and Robert Davis. Their unit has evolved since its creation in the late 1980s into the city government’s go-to resource for public involvement. I think this is a model that could be replicated elsewhere: one office maintains the expertise about all the approaches to involve the public, and works with the project sponsors to create and implement an appropriate and resource-efficient approaches. It also creates one central place at the city for citizens to approach with questions. They presented on some of their work to use Facebook to reach communities (it required special permission from the IT department), and discussed the unusual challenge of working in Toronto’s highly multicultural environment, which requires extensive translation. Public consultation coordinator Mike Logan even handed me a business card with the information imprinted in braille on it, which itself was a statement to their commitment to excellence in accessibility.

Another particularly noteworthy presenter was Mark Elliott, whose consulting firm Collabforge set up a wiki for a recent planning process in the City of Melbourne, Australia. As you might expect from someone who earned a PhD with a dissertation on “A Theoretical Framework for Mass Collaboration,” Mark impressed me with his thoughtful approach to integrating collaborative technologies to planning. In general I think advocates of wikis underestimate the technical complexity of the technology, as well as the limitations to a radically flattening technology. Mark’s work on FutureMelbourne was apparently successful and he’s definitely someone to watch.

Also attending was Seattle’s Chief Technology Officer, Bill Schrier, who blogs about technology and government at his blog Chief Seattle Geek. Mark Bosworth, a GIS expert from Portland, Oregon’s regional planning agency Metro gave a whimsical presentation on the history of GIS and highlighting some of their many customized web applications including a bicycle trip planner (of course), and a “build your own” transit system tool.

Private Sector Innovation

Several consultants attended, presenting on a wide range of topics. Edward Andersson, from the UK consulting firm Involve, gave a thoughtful presentation on the history of participation in the UK and their firm’s approach. The company’s website PeopleandParticipation.net is a rich resource on the topic. Rhiza Lab’s Josh Knauer and Jeff Christensen presented on their firm’s powerful online data and mapping tools. It was a wonder they made it since Josh explained they’ve been working nearly around the clock on their FluTracker website. Lastly Jocelyn Hittle and Jason Lally from PlaceMatters displayed some amazing touch and light-sensitive technology made using two Wii remotes and a lot of ingenuity.

View from the Academy

The academic speakers provided interesting perspective and a glimpse of their latest research. Ohio State’s Jennifer Evans Cowley presented on her research analyzing the use of social networking in urban planning, and has even created a Facebook group dedicated to the topic. Hunter College’s Laxmi Ramasubramanian presented on the theoretical context for public participation, and Iowa State’s Chris Seeger presented on his extensive background in participatory GIS.

Out of the Box

Of course, some of the presenters fit none of these categories. Adrian Holovaty, founder of the totally unique Everyblock.com, presented on his work harnessing the web’s geographic data to create a hyperlocal news source. Although I missed the presentation, Matthew Golas from PlanPhilly.com described that website’s civic mission to foster dialogue on planning in Philadelphia. Also presenting were John Geraci, from DIYCity, a project to imagine a new interactive “DIY” urbanism, and Nick Grossman from the invaluable Open Planning Project, the folks behind Streetsblog. (Aside: We need a Boston Streetsblog) The Sunlight Foundation’s John Wonderlich and Ali Felski are working hard in D.C. to improve government websites and access to data. (My friend Tom Lee is also with their lab).

For much more see the #ccisummit Twitter tag. The sessions were also recorded, and they will be eventually posted to the conference website. Attendees: what did I miss?