How Open are Massachusetts Municipal Data?

My first peer-reviewed journal article was published this month by the Journal of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), an open access journal published by a leading geographic information systems (GIS) professional organization. Titled “From Public Records to Open Government: Access to Massachusetts Municipal Geographic Data,” it reports the result of a public records request for GIS data I submitted to all 351 Massachusetts municipalities. Here is the abstract:

Increasingly, citizens are demanding access to raw data from governments to hold public officials accountable, look up facts, conduct analysis, or create innovative applications and services. Cities and towns create data using geographic information systems such as layers describing parcels, zoning, and infrastructure that are useful for a wide range of purposes. Through a public records request to all 351 Massachusetts municipalities, this paper investigates whether these data are accessible to citizens in practice. Some response was received by 78.6 percent of the municipalities. Two municipalities refused access to all electronic records. Many others charged fees ranging up to $453 or placed legal restrictions on the data through licensing that could chill or prohibit creative reuses of the information through emerging technologies. Other practical barriers limited public access to data, such as limited resources, government officials’ limited technical knowledge, and outsourcing to private vendors. A followup survey among municipalities that did not respond to the request was conducted to determine if they had GIS systems or data policies, and this information was collected for 80.3 percent of the municipalities. Finally, the paper discusses the legal, policy, and technical steps that can be taken by governments to move from a “public records” to an “open government” paradigm for transparency of government data. The policy recommendations for municipalities include publishing GIS data for free online and with minimal legal restrictions.

The paper started as a class project for the MIT class “Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier” I took in Fall 2010. This research is related to the work I did at the City of Boston, where in 2010 I developed an open government strategy proposing how the city could use technology to achieve transparency, participation, and collaboration goals.

Goodspeed, Robert. 2011. “From Public Records to Open Government: Access to Massachusetts Municipal Geographic Data” (PDF) Journal of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association 23 : 1, p. 21-32.

See also:
> What Government Data Should be Transparent?
> Public Sector Innovation: Learning from History (on local GIS technology adoption)

‘Cybernetics in City Hall’ and the Challenge of Real-Time Urban Management

Periodically I come across an old article that seems very relevant to the present, such as the article about public sector innovation I posted in January.

The ongoing expanded use — and declining cost — of sensors and computing technologies has sparked a renewed interest in using them to solve persistent urban problems. A similar wave of interest occurred during the early history of digital computing. In his influential 1950 book, Norbert Wiener popularized the term “cybernetics” to refer to the emerging science of communication and control of organized systems. If the city is an organized system, then cybernetics in city hall would involve creating information feedback loops to be used by the manager (or “actuator”) to minimize the effects of disturbances and maximize achievement of urban goals. Sound familiar? It should: IBM inked a multimillion dollar deal to open a real-time “public information management center” in Rio de Janeiro (right) as part of their smarter cities initiative, and Wired magazine is keeping up a drumbeat about the power of feedback loops.

In an astute article published in Science in 1970, E.S. Savas considered the challenges this approach might face in the real world of New York City government. I don’t doubt the importance of real-time control for management tasks like transportation system management and emergency response, but the article describes some important challenges such a system would face if applied more broadly. Savas described how the five elements of the cybernetic loop would play out in the city: (1) dynamics of urban government, (2) information system, (3) administration, (4) goal setting, and (5) disturbances.

1. Dynamics of city government: The election cycle faced by big city mayors would limit the range of solutions considered, resulting in smaller goals and visible acts, which “may be more symbolic than effective.” Government itself is very slow-moving and one solution — delegating power — may have unintended consequences.

2. Information system: Arguably today much more information is available than was in 1970 about what’s happening in the city. But another crucial input is as tricky as ever — gauging the will of the people.

3. Administration: Making a decision is one thing, but implementing it requires an administration with appropriate personnel and structure, a well-known weakness of big-city bureaucracies.

4. Structure of government: Not only are city governments organized in anachronistic ways, the article omits another key fact: the fragmentation of powers. In Boston, for example, in addition to municipal fragmentation itself, separate entities manage many utilities, the transit system, parks, etc.

4. Goal setting: Identifying a common set of goals may be impossible. The chief executive can use judgement, but it is for good reason that power is delegated to elaborate systems of commissions, boards, and advisers on many topics.

5. Disturbances: These are unpredictable, often external to the city, and often not visible to the public (who sets the goals) until it is too late to prevent their impact. (e.g., climate change)

There are, in general, two responses to most of these concerns. Savas himself took one approach: give up on city government and advocate for privatization of service delivery. Presumably the cold logic of the profit motive would sweep away administrative, regulatory, and decision-making quirks of city governments. The other approach is to attempt to reform the government. In fact, IBM staff have admitted the “challenges” that will face a contemporary agenda for cybernetics. I think the need for contemporary urban government reorganization and reform is acute in many cities, but interest in it seems limited.

Notably, neither of these approaches truly addresses the challenges posed by the short time-horizon of elected officials, difficulty setting goals or forming consensus, and unpredictable disturbances. These three point to the need for planning to solve urban problems: a multi-stakeholder process involving analysis, deliberation, and solution design that both forges a consensus about the definition of a public problem and crafts a desired solution. It seems to me that in the face of the enormity of the challenges we face we need both smart planning and an efficiency-driven smart cities movement willing to push for reform but respectful of democratic systems.

> E.S. Savas in Science magazine, 1970: “Cybernetics in City Hall“

New ‘Planning and Technology Today’ Out for APA Conference

The Spring issue of the newsletter of the the Technology Division of the American Planning Association, which I edit, was just published. The issue was timed to coincide with the American Planning Association conference here in Boston next week. The issue includes articles on the following topics:

• Technology-related sessions at the APA conference
• Social media and local food systems
• A new measure of housing affordability by Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology
• Urban planners and open data

Or, read the entire issue in PDF format.

The Problems With ‘Platforms’

It seems that every day the word ‘platform’ becomes more ingrained in the way we think about online tools to do good and address public problems. The ubiquity of the term may be due to its fundamental ambiguity, which it shares with other terms like ‘sustainability’ and ‘participation.’

In an incisive article on the subject last year, Tarleton Gillespie analyzed how the word “platform” was used by major players like Flickr, YouTube, and Google. (I mentioned his article previously but will summarize the thesis here.) In the article, he points out the contradictory ways the companies use the term as part of a rhetorical strategy to serve their interests. On the one hand, as platforms they argue for limits to legal liabilities for actions of their users. On the other, as a platform of opportunity for advertisers, they define and enforce restrictions on users’ speech and activities. He concludes “the discourse of the ‘platform’ works against us developing such precision, offering as it does a comforting sense of technical neutrality and progressive openness.”

However, as we consider how to apply innovating online technologies for community engagement or governance activities, talk of ‘platforms’ can be troubling from another point of view as well.

Discussions of sociotechnical systems argue humans are just as important as the technical artifacts. An extensive literature on usability and systems development has developed a nuanced understanding of any system as a composite of technical and social components. As a simple example, what an expert user can do with a laptop is much different than what a grandparent can do upon first receiving one. In a larger case one theorist argues “the remarkably low accident rates in commercial air transport, for example, reflect the success of vigilant organizations, legal apparatus, and social learning about accidents as much as the demonstrate the quality of aircraft design and maintenance.” Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating discussion of air safety in Outliers describes how improving air safety often entails new social rules, such as banning idle chatter in the cockpit during key times, not simply technical ones.

Just as it obscures the internal tensions between different interests, the term “platform” alienates us from this more contextual view of technology. We often jump to the position that solving the problem entails designing the platform, implying it is a neutral system equally usable by any visitor. In reality, according the theory proposed here, solving any problem involves modifying or creating both social and technical components. We are dimly aware of a first-mover advantage in a “space,” but much less aware of the process of creating a useful system. In fact, social construction theory argues technologies are mutually constructed between system designers and engineers and users. Internet “platforms” such as Facebook and Twitter are both powerful independent companies, and in a subtle dialog with their users about how their systems should evolve. The simplest examples are how Twitter has incorporated hashtags and @ tweets into their technical architecture, and Facebook has gone through a well-publicized dance about how to manage the news feed, privacy settings, and even whether you can delete your account.

Of course, this links directly to broader debates about the merits (and measurement) of investments in physical versus social infrastructures. Although it can never be fully resolved, the purpose of the post is to temper technical enthusiasm with a more nuanced view of the origin and evolution of a new category of sociotechnical systems: online platforms.

Announcement Planning & Technology Conference

I’m helping plan this conference at MIT in April. We opened registration and announced the call for papers today.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION & CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS AND PAPERS

PLANNINGTECH@DUSP 2011

Friday, April 8, 2011
11:30 AM – 6:00 PM
Location: MIT Building 9

DESCRIPTION

New technologies are transforming how we communicate, expanding access to data and information, and revolutionizing how we understand and navigate our cities. Join a diverse groups of practitioners, scholars, students, and citizens for a half-day conference on the impact of these changes on the field of urban planning. Held one day before the start of the American Planning Association’s National Conference (also in Boston), this will be an opportunity to meet innovators from around New England and the across the nation.

The event will include discussion of urban modeling, urban sensing for planning, planning support systems, meeting technology, social media and Web 2.0 tools, and gaming for participation.

REGISTRATION

Register using the following link. Registration is free:
http://planningtech11.eventbrite.com/

PRESENTATION INFORMATION

Participants have four options for presentations:
- Lightning Talks – presenters will have 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, advance automatically.
- Paper Session – Presentation of a paper, submitted two weeks before the conference. Should be no more than 5-10 pages.
- Presentation Session – Presentation without a formal paper, A/V materials optional.
- Idea Session – A facilitated conversation on a topic. Will be finalized on the day of the conference.

If you would like to present, submit the presenter name(s), presentation type, and proposed presentation title to rob.goodspeed at gmail.com by Friday, February 25. The timeline for presentations is below.

Friday, 2/25 – Title and Abstracts due for presenters
Monday, 2/28 – Accepted presenters notified
Monday, 3/28 – Papers and final presentation titles due
Friday, 4/8 – Conference day

For more information see the conference website:
http://web.mit.edu/rgoodspe/www/planningtech/
Or contact planningtech at mit.edu

Public Sector Innovation: Learning From History

At a conference attended in December on the “Future of the Crowdsourced City” a major topic of discussion was how city governments — or other city organizations — could embrace new technologies.

Although nearly 20 years old, I thought this article was remarkably relevant for debates today about how to foster technology-enabled innovation in local governments. Titled “Implementing GIS for Planning: Lessons from the History of Technological Innovation,” the article is written by noted planning scholar Judith Innes and a former student David Simpson, and was published in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 1993.

Observing that GIS had recently become widespread in government, the article poses the question how planners can adapt this technology to their unique needs. In order to answer the question, they argue planners should approach GIS as a socially constructed technology. Contrary to the view that all innovation is produced by an inventor and recognized by a market, this view stresses innovation resulting from an iterative, nonlinear process. Therefore innovation is “only integrated into practice through mutual adaptation between users’ practices and technology’s capabilities.” Following a study by Bikson about organizations adopting computer systems, they argue successful introduction of new technology requires several factors: organizational mission to implement the technology, training programs and rewards for employees who learn to use it, user participation in development.

Introducing technology alone may not be enough: what is needed is creating a culture of innovation? The article identifies five principles for innovation success from Rogers (1983):

• simplicity
• observability of benefits
• relative advantage
• ability to make small trials
• compatibility (with community’s culture)

Does your innovation meet these criteria? This paper concludes that although GIS violates the conditions more often than not, they are cautiously optimistic about the ability of planners to “develop strategies that will encourage transformations of planning practice in response to the opportunities that GIS offer.”

Without going into a full discussion, the prognosis was prescient. Although GIS has emerged as a discrete technology and profession, planners have influenced its development and have created new tools to fit their needs, such as web-based data viewers or specialized analysis tools. In a recent exchange, several scholars argued the field had lost some control over the technology, while others answered new Web 2.0 technologies may actually be much more suited for the collaborative nature of planning practice than older technologies were.

Although new technologies today are radically different than those who spawned these theories, following them seems reasonable advice for success. However they also caution against naive assumptions technology leads to organizational transformation. According to the the principle of compatibility, if an innovation is not compatible with the prevailing organizational culture, winning acceptance may require nothing less than cultural change.

JAPA: “Implementing GIS for Planning: Lessons from the History of Technological Innovation“

Public Sector Crowdsourcing: What’s Possible?

Lately I’ve been involved in a lot of conversations about crowdsourcing in the public sector. Although they’re sometimes confused, in general I think there are two types we can talk about: crowdsourcing policy (or ideas) and public goods (tangible work or services). This is a topic included in my Open Government Strategy for the City of Boston.

The best analysis of private sector crowdsourcing of ideas is this recent article in the Sloan Management Review. The researchers analyze three crowdsourcing projects: Linus, Wikipedia, Innocentive, and Threadless. By breaking down the organization of each case, they make clear these projects not a utopian creative free-for-all, but instead a carefully constructed set of rules and practices that combines forms of decision-making, creativity, and incentives in new ways to create new ideas. For example, Wikipedia relies on the decisions of editors for disputed articles, Threadless users vote for the best ideas, and on Innocentive businesses to pick winners. In each the rewards to the contributors differ, but exist even when they are non-monetary, often in the form of “love” or “glory.”

Two examples of policy crowdsourcing are Peer to Patent and Next Stop Design. Peer to Patent opens patent applications, with the permission of the applicant, to a pilot system which allows the public to contribute to the research on “prior art.” The idea is by allowing experts to contribute to this process, they can accelerate the work of the Patent Office in determining which ideas deserve patents. The project was founded by Beth Simone Noveck, a professor at New York Law School who leads the Obama administration’s open government initiative. The project is successful because it enables topic experts to conveniently contribute information that expedites the official process. However, it remains a voluntary pilot project and has not been taken to scale for the entire government.

The Next Stop Design project, launched by researcher Daren Brabham solicited designs for a Salt Lake City bus stop from around the world. Daren, now a professor at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote a PhD dissertation about public sector crowdsourcing. If you can access it, he lays out his approach in a recent article in Planning Theory. He argues that crowdsourcing can replace conventional approaches of citizen participation:

In essence, any urban planning project is predicated on a problem. Typically that problem is how best to accommodate changing populations with different infrastructure, all while considering the interests of residents, developers, business owners, and the environment. If a problem can be framed clearly, and if all the data pertaining to a problem can be made available, then that problem can be crowdsourced.

Since I’d argue most planning projects involve multiple, contested problems, I’m not sure crowdsourcing can replace a host of existing theory and approaches. However, where the problem contains a significant design element, and the boundaries are noncontroversial (such as a bus stop), it may be an excellent strategy.

Finally, what about crowdsourcing public goods themselves? In the words of Tim O’Reilly, can government be a “platform for greatness”? Last month I argued such thinking was silent to the realities of government: power is divided between agencies, it’s run by politicians, and most people may not agree this is the way to go to begin with. The problems seem more surmountable at a local level. Mitch Weiss, the Mayor of Boston’s Chief of Staff, raised the issue at a provocative talk at the Rappaport Institute titled “How “Peer-Produced” Government Can Help Fill Potholes, Save Cities, and Maybe Even Rescue Democracy.” I worked with him last summer, and I think their initiatives to release data and improve citizen’s ability to communicate with government has been very positive. However, I’m not sure the city will ever be coordinating peer-produced services.

Even if we can overcome the formidable institutional and political barriers, there are good reasons why governments may never be directly involved in facilitating the peer-production or crowdsourcing of public goods. I encountered a good explanation about why this summer at the iGov Research Institute. Bas Kotterink, a researcher with the Netherlands research organization TNO, proposed the following hypothesis in a presentation:

Governments are not geared for co-creation. Instead, they should facilitate and monitor user and company-led innovation of public tasks with a more proactive role in democracy (inclusion) and enforcement, protecting basic human values such as privacy and dignity.

He argued that since the rules of private and government action are so different, initiatives at either extreme are the most able to product public goods. Mixtures of the both – such as some e-participation initiatives – are doomed to fail. However, he stakes out an important role for government. They can ensure minimum standards for key services are protected by punishing offenders and enforcing regulations, or providing it themselves when market failures occur. They can promote data standards and access to public data (such as in apps competitions). They can define and protect standards of individual privacy. Although they may not directly produce certain public goods as in the past, governments will continue to play a critical role we are only beginning to understand.