Government Innovation

Open Government in Buenos Aires

The GovLab summit that was organized to launch of the GovLab initiative at the Robert F. Wagner, was a great opportunity to interact with a lot of interesting people, one could say that the most prominent names on the field came to that event.

I was lucky enough to participate in meetings with Tim Burners Lee (the founder of the Web), Aaron Cohen (renowned academic), Robert Kirkpatrick (tech journalist and  author of the Facebook Effect) and Nick Sinai who fills Beth Noveck’s shoes now as current Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the White House.

After finding all these incredible people, I was wondering if besides an honorable Minister for ICT of Rwanda, who was a notable attendant to the conference, I would find someone else from the developed world.

My motives to find someone from a similar geography weren’t just an attempt to speak Spanish. I have consistently in this space advocated for innovation for the poor. As insightful as it was to listen to all the big names that I listed before, I always find a disconnect with the discussions in the tech/government field and the problems of populations with limited access to technology.

Then I met Rudi Bormann (@DonRudi) the Director of the Open Government initiative in Buenos Aires. He was kind enough to send me explain their open government initiative. Following I will briefly outline it.

The initiative of Buenos Aires, one that is recognized among peers as a successful innovative one, Is framed under three principles: Transparency, Participation and Collaboration. This principles aim to achieve three objectives:

To Empower citizens, as it is important to have citizens engaged on the and vigilant on the exercise of government.

 To Improve Public Services, as service delivery is the first tool for a government to gain legitimacy; providing services in a more efficient and effective way will engage citizens and generate trust in government.

Creating an Innovative city, to use the city and its data as a platform for innovation and of knowledge generation.

Running under this platform the city of Buenos Aires, has gained recognition and has generated confidence of citizens with its government.

Recently Rudi’s team organized the BA Hackathon. I was pleasantly surprised to see the projects that came out of that day’s work. The apps that came out of that Hackathon really target vulnerable populations. One about reproductive health, one to help people affected by vision disability to read musical scores, and one that allowed you to identify locate public libraries with access to internet.

It was great to find apps of this nature and aver all innovation for the other end. For the one 50 % that has no access to technology and that is excluded of its benefits.

One good example of Tech for development

By Nicolas Galarza

A friend of mine, aware of my interest on the digital divide and the access of vulnerable population to internet, shared with my this fantastic story. What started as a center to promote technology for adults and to increase their level of employability turned in to an innovation hub for teenagers that just built a touch screen computer with their bare-hands.

The story goes as follows. Located in Pittsburg, the Hilltop Computer Center, funded by a grant of the federal government, provided basic services of computers, wi-fi and printing. Its original activities included workshops on the Microsoft office suite for adults.

After 6 months, the project manager realized that in spite of the original intention of the center, the audience was of a different demography. Most of the users of the center were youngsters within the ages of 8 and 24. This demanded a change of focus on the activities promoted by the center to foster the potential of the audience.

The manager pursued this change and obtained results that should be an eye-opener to big corporations into refocusing its efforts of open wi-fi in affluent areas. (see my related post here). Providing internet access to vulnerable populations proved to have great impact on the community.

According to a Pittsburg based online portal, who interviewed Nic Jaramillo, the manager of the center. With a grant from the private sector, old computer parts and will and dedication of a group of people, a team  built a touch computer kiosk.  Something that Jaramillo calls an impressive piece of Technology. Who would dare to disagree?

The kiosk is now an attraction itself and the creators want to turn it into a iterating attraction that should tour around the city as a testimony of the potential and success of a place like HCC.

This is an irrefutable testimony of how democratizing access to technology can be a great asset, not just for capacity building but as a milestone for revitalizing a community. The center just turned into a symbol of the neighborhood and is attracting the eyes of outsiders that want to figure out how a modest computer center turned into a science center for teenagers.

The potential of tech to give opportunities to people and to improve the environments just proves itself every time it has a chance. This just makes me wonder, what would this kids be doing if they hadn’t found a visionary manager of a modest computer center? Would I, a Colombian living in New York City, or my friend Matt from Arkansas, have heard of a neighborhood in Pittsburg? The odds are pretty low.

This should serve as a testimony of how vulnerable populations benefit from technology. Kuddos to Hilltop.

Applications effect on Government Agencies to delivering services: “CDC Turns to Apps to Create Disease Detectives”

Do you have what it takes to be a disease detective? 

“New outbreaks happen every day and CDC’s disease detectives are on the front lines, working 24/7 to save lives and protect people. When a new outbreak happens, disease detectives are sent in to figure out how outbreaks are stared, before they can spread.” 

“New outbreaks happen every day and CDC’s disease detectives are on the front lines, working 24/7 to save lives and protect people. When a new outbreak happens, disease detectives are sent in to figure out how outbreaks are stared, before they can spread.”

 

On March 19, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) joined the increasing network of government applications and created an app that will further educate and help engage the public. Solve the Outbreak is a “free” application that will allow the public to become “disease detectives”. Its purpose is to give people more power to decide the best approaches handle an illness. The CDC in return hopes this will prevent diseases from spreading by forcing people to become more aware of their situation. Also this app is a way for people to engage people on health topics and contribute to real-world disease surveillance and response.

 

This is purely education application to build out the framework for future health apps. 

 

It functions by first providing clues in the form of data charts. Next, users are told how many people are sick and have died. Then, questions are asked about what they should do next, like an interview, more lab results or shut down a town, and last if they get it all solved they need to figure out what steps to take to prevent another outbreak.

 

During a recent interview, Alex Cassanova the Innovations Team Lead at the CDC explained how social devices are growing and the challenges that lay for the CDC. "Mobile devices are in an area where people want answers to health topics. This app creation is a new task for the CDC and although the future seems promising, our challenge is to take all the information and scale it down to fit into the framework designed for the app." said Cassanova. 

 

- C. Outlaw MPA Candidate  

Buycott

Buycott

By Nicolás Galarza

During the last semester I was taking the class of political uses for social media with Internet guru Clay Shirky. (@Cshirky on twitter). Under one of our discussions we reviewed the case of the organization Food Democracy Now, a food advocacy organization that advocates for a fairer food system for farmers, the environment and people.

In spite the Organization being pretty active, and leading interesting campaigns such as, supporting GMO labeling, advocating against the so called Monsanto Protection Act, and asking Hersey’s to stop using GMO cacao, we concluded that the company only uses media in a very limited way. To an extend, what they do is bringing to the web the traditional modus operandi of grass roots movements from the 60’s and 70’s, signing petitions, making public demonstrations in front of companies and the congress and so forth.

We concluded our discussion with a set of recommendations for the organization that included improving the use of the social media channels, organizing flash mobs and creating an international coalition with likeminded organizations. Those sole initiatives would have mean a great improvement to the way the raise awareness and engage their audience.

After that discussion I kept thinking about how organizations of this nature could have a more efficient outreach and create awareness in a more effective way as arguably anyone with their right mind would support the initiatives they promote.

I have repeatedly talked in this column about the dire need to have pro equity policies in a world that every day is more unequal. And I have also talked about the exclusionary effect that technology has on poor and vulnerable populations. Well, I just found an app that helps us deal with these issues.

Know Buycott, an app that allows you to track the corporate family tree of the product you are about to buy, indicating if it was manufactured by powerful and influential conglomerates like Monsanto or Koch Industries. See more here

The app also allows you to create causes helping you identify if a company lobbied against labeling GMO or if it has opposed or supported LGBT rights. The company calls for responsible consumerism, inviting you to “Organize your daily consumer spending so that it reflects your principles.

This app is a remarkable initiative to help consumers be more cautious with how your daily purchases might end up supporting initiatives that you don’t share. I consider the app a game changer. Giving costumers a tool to finally identify the companies that have kidnaped participatory democracy through its lobbying campaigns is something that hadn’t been done before. Is quite innovative and particularly simple. This will hurt these companies where they are hurt the most, their revenue sources.

Is always good to find tech innovations to empower people, increase accountability of companies and questions manufacturers ethics. Buycott is a good example of it, let’s hope to see more of this in the future.

BIG Data = Digital Strategy = Increase Crime Solution

For one moment let’s not focus on the bombings but more on the result of the event that occurred in Boston last month. One thing that was brought to my attention was the amount of time it took to identify and catch the suspects. The use of technology has aided government and crime prevention for many years and it is no different in this case. Through multiple media outlets, the suspects were identified by high-tech video software that was submitted to the public in less than 24 hours. Big Data provided visual images of the suspects that spread across the globe in a fraction of a second. People were now aware of the suspect’s appearance (height, facial features, and complexion. In return, reframed how the public conceptually identified and viewed what caused the explosions.

This is an amazing feat, given the amount of people present at the scene. For software to pinpoint the suspects, transmit the signal to the entire population and produce images gave the world something to work with. More so it provided a sense of hope that the suspects would be caught and charged with such a vicious crime. The images were shown throughout the world and became the leading topic for about a week. Even the younger brother’s Dzhokhar Tsarnaev twitter followers increase more than tenfold. As of today it sits at more than 98,000 followers.

 

Also, according to abcnews.com when questioned about the bombings Dzhokhar told agents the entire process and planning was done over the “internet”. Baffling huh… They used an Al-Quda online manual to make one of the bombs from a pressure cooker.

 

Another astonishing point is how one of the suspects was apprehended at a location more than 20 miles away from the scene. Police and other local officials were able to tract and identify Dzhokhar Tsarnaev through what is called 'flir,' or forward looking infrared," devices said former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, also a CNN contributor. "The human body is warmer than the air around him, so it stood out. This way we were able to not only identify the suspect but make certain he was alive after we arrested him”. The use of technology and big data knows no boundaries but in this age we must be aware of those willing to use this wonderful tool.

The amazing story behind Boston's efforts extends beyond big data. It encapsulates data, mobile, citizen engagement and so much more. In this case, social networks such as twitter and Facebook were combined with federal instruments to capture Dzhokhar. When it's all said and done, I expect this event to be a shining example of a digital strategy.

-Curtis Outlaw MPA Canadidate 

The Power of “Storytelling”

By Hortensia Pérez Seldner, MPA Candidate 2014

A few weeks ago I attended a short, but interesting, workshop about PersuasiveStorytelling. According to Professor Richard Sherwin , Director of the Legal Persuasion Program at NY Law School, stories help us recollect patterns and make associations about ideas and actions. The four main objectives of a story are teh following:

1. Simplify the Complex
2.  Exploit the Iconic
3. Emulate the Generic
4. Respect the Medium

During his lecture he showed us some very interesting examples of visual persuasion in the court

rooms. Some of them with rudimentary technology, but still very well designed to show one side of the story. In all the cases, images focused on affections (feelings) and ownership (familiarity with the situation).

For example, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing , the attorney used a video of a conference that was taking place in a building in front of the targeted building, and they added a clock as an emotional intensifier. While watching the video I was only focused on the clock’s tick tock, waiting for the bomb to explode.

Another overwhelming example was the case of Rodney King , who was viciously beaten by several police officers. An observer took a video of the situation and if you watch the video it is perfectly clear that the officers did not act correctly. However, the defense used the same video, but showing it frame by frame to illustrate the fact that the police officers only beat King when he was trying to get up, thus, disobeying their orders. The defense won.

This last example makes me wonder about the power of visual persuasion. In every field, images and additional storytelling tools are useful and necessary; but, especially in public service, we have to be especially careful not to change the truth. It is essential we avoid the manipulation of the data. 

 

Images from: http://abravo-myfirstblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/visual-rhetoric.html

 

What the New York City MTA Can Learn from the DC Metro & the Chicago Transit Authority

After completing a comprehensive comparative analysis of the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to the Washington DC Metro and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) here are two important and succinct recommendations for the MTA:

1. The MTA should implement a performance metrics dashboard that has similar characteristics to the DC metro scorecard, which looks like this:   

I recommend that the MTA develop a similar interface with its current performance goals and indicators. However, rather than creating a scorecard, I propose that the MTA create a dashboard that is accessible via a separate, but connected URL, for example: www.MTADashboard.info and that will eventually be available as an application for Smartphones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. The MTA should eliminate the current performance key it is using and create an interactive subway map that features the color indicators key, similar to the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) system. The CTA publishes performance metric charts in which all information in green is meeting or on-time exceeding target, information in yellow is within 10% of target, information in red is missing target by more than 10% and finally information in grey that does not have a target. I propose adopting a color indication system for the MTA, but instead of reporting it via a chart, do so in an interactive map as demonstrated below. Each line will be shown in a specific color that will indicate if it is meeting or (1) green = exceeding the target of 90% on-time, (2) yellow = is within 15% of target or (3) red = is missing the target by more than 15%.

-Ellen McKay, NYU MPA Candidate 

Sharing the Cost of Connecting

We all share the internet at work, at public Wi-Fi hot spots, at cafes, on trains, but yet in order to have access to the internet at home, we have to pay in individual access fees. In some cases this makes sense because proximity to the closest neighbor could be quite far, but I live in a relatively large apartment building in the middle of New York City and we still don’t share access to the internet. In my building there are 14 stories with 9 units per floor – a total of 125 apartments and I would guess that 90% all of the units pay a monthly rate to have internet access at home.
 
Since we share internet access in so many other places, why can’t individual households come together and share access to the internet? There is probably no better place in the U.S. to pilot this idea than in apartment buildings in Manhattan because of the density of population, dependency on the internet and comparative affluence of Manhattan residents.

I realize there will likely be some concerns about bandwidth and speed of the internet, but I am confident that if Starbucks can provides thousands of users access to their internet concurrently, the same technology can be harnessed to create apartment-internet-sharing. That sharing would occur among units in proximity to one another, for example, bundling apartments on the same floor.

Still not convinced? Look at the economics of this proposition: it costs approximately $60 per month for a one bedroom unit to have a Wi-Fi connection or about $720 per year, which means that each floor in my building pays a cable provider nearly $6,500 per year; whereas, if the internet were shared among residents the total annual cost would be approximately $120 per unit.

Sharing access to the internet is not an overly complex idea, but one that requires some organizing, creativity and leadership– all characteristics I trust you can find on any given apartment floor in Manhattan. 

-Ellen McKay, NYU MPA Candidate 

Ga-mi-fi-ca-tion.......

Gamification is a buzz word – a concept in the tech world today. What exactly is it? Simply put, gamification is applying gaming principles and game mechanics to non-gaming contexts in order to engage users to solve problems. The idea is that employing game design, principles, and mechanics will help increase return on investment, overall engagement and retention. Or as the definition above states: “gamification: integrating game dynamics into your site, service, community, content or campaign, in order to drive participation.”

Because gamification capitalizes on people’s desire for competition, funders and employers, including the Government are all beginning to realize that the use of incentives is a powerful tool.

While gamification is a tech concept, the theories and principles behind it do not not exist only online or in highly technical domains. For example, the Federal Government is increasingly using prizes and challenges as tools for simulating innovation. According to The Office of Science and Technology policy at The White House, the advantages of using prizes and challenges is that they cut costs because the government only rewards someone for their innovation if it is successful. Another benefit is that having a challenge can engage talent from a wider pool of scholars and innovators.

While the use of prizes and challenges in the Federal Government has been mainly limited to science and technology agencies –there has been a lot of encouragement of social and policy agencies to employ it. 

To increase user-ship the Federal Government has devoted resources to mitigate the legal uncertainty about who has what authority. In 2010 Congress passed the American Competes Act granting broad prize authority to all federal Agencies. The first 3 months after the Act was passed challenge.gov received “57 challenges from 27 agencies across the Executive Branch, generating novel solutions for childhood obesity, advanced vehicle technologies, financing for small businesses, Type One Diabetes, and many other national priorities.”

I am not a tech person, but I think the concept of gamification is incredibly timely and examples like how the Federal Government is using it illustrate the wide reach gamification can have. However, if these concepts are still perplexing and far-reaching, here is a quick explanation of the benefits of gamification:

People like playing games -- Popular games inspire loyalty -- People are competitive and are motivated by reward and achievement systems -- Employing game design or creating a competitive challenge can increase engagement, retention and total return on investment.

-Ellen McKay, NYU MPA Candidate 

Serial Thinking vs. Parallel Thinking

In the course of each of our professions, we have invariably come across ridiculous processes, procedures, or workflows that we are obliged to follow. To object would mean that your expense reimbursements, travel requests, or vacation blocking would get denied. In bigger situations, it would mean that managers couldn't hire, promote, or fire people. I was fortunate to have worked at Microsoft where there was a big emphasis on "self-service delivery" of HR functions, but even Microsoft was far from perfect in terms of their procedures and methodologies. At issue is an organization's ability to effectively modernize its Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities. Many organizations still have not recognized the efficiency and effectiveness improvements that can be had from shifting from a 20^th century serial processes to 21^st century parallel processes. In government, BPM continues to be an area that needs improvement.

What is Business Process Management?

Not wanting my blog post to sound like a vendor pitch, I'll rip Wikipedia's definition of BPM:

"Business process management (BPM) has been referred to as a "holistic management" approach [1] to aligning an organization's business processes with the wants and needs of clients [or constituents]. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to improve processes continuously. It can therefore be described as a 'process optimization process.'"

What this really means is that your boss's silly approvals process that's been intact since the days of the telegraph can be changed and improved upon as easy as socializing on Facebook. Click a few buttons, select some drop-down options, check a box and BOOM….new process implemented across the enterprise. The best part is that most people involved in the process wouldn't even know a change had been done, unless it actually simplified your workload. Knowing a little about NYU's internal procedures and systems, a solid BPM methodology would mean that student groups, faculty, and staff don't have to wait SIX WEEKS to get expenses reimbursed! (Yes six weeks, plus paper forms and receipt scanning…its sad). It is worth explaining that most of these legacy processes are legacy remnants of the 1950's paper-pushing methodology. It doesn't really have to be this way though.

Serial vs. Parallel Processing

The above Microsoft MSDN diagram describes the basics of workflow types. At NYU, I've been told that approvals go through four levels of approvals before reimbursements are approved for issuance. As an enterprise architect, this tells me a lot of about the work culture that NYU fosters, and it isn't a positive one that is built on trust and effectiveness. In a serial process, every layer you add between the initiator of a request and the grantor is almost pure overhead. The beauty of a well-built parallel process is the ability to implement business logic or rules that ensure no one person acts as a blocker. For example, in a parallel system, an architect could define that expense reimbursements under $5000 could be approved if one-half of the "approvers" in the chain approve the request. Conversely, if expenses go over $5000, you can require a two-thirds ratio plus an explicit finance department clearance. Things really get fun with a hybrid model, but I digress.

Parallelizing Government

As much as people complain about government, if one was to seriously examine how the best programs and institutions function, people would be amazed. If anything, government has mastered the science of serializing processes. The Federal Government is so good in fact that overhead for some agencies (see Social Security Administration Expenses) are below one percent! The traditional Medicare program allocates only 1 percent of total spending to overhead compared with 6 percent when the privatized portion of Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage, is included, according to a study in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Now I'm being a little disingenuous stating that these programs are examples of serial processes. In fact I would not be surprised if many parallel processes have been implemented, but like the example in the previous section, the meat is in the actual business logic. In the 20^th century, the processes were optimized around efficiency. In the 21^st century, the processes must be optimized for efficiency, transparency, AND intentions so that people on the receiving end of requests don't have to decipher pages of documentation to determine what needs to be done. It should be as intuitive as an iPhone notification from your bank. The promise of Open Data and machine-readable data is that it will force all federal agencies to shift from the paper-based process to a true digital-first process. While the transition will undoubtedly be tough for the bureaucrats, they all will be the first beneficiaries in the transition, with the ultimate beneficiary being the taxpayers. Public policy architects have the opportunity to drive dramatic change by instituting the full capabilities of modern BPM methodologies directly into new policy initiatives. Hopefully, with a little ingenuity, we can cut that 1% in half while improving services.

Written By

Viral Tarpara