Local Gov 3.0

Big Data vs. Open Data: Competing Vision of the Future of the Government

As the news this week shows the unsettling boundaries between the government, media, and business, it is important to distinguish the competing vision of the future of the government. 

 

One camp trumps the value of “big data” where the predictive analytics is now rigorously applied in the governance. This brings efficiency to resource allocation as demonstrated by New York City's response during Hurricane Sandy. Yet, this movement looks beyond intergovernmental data. As our daily lives become more digitized, governments began to look at publicly disclosed data of individual citizen on Twitter to understand their needs.  In order not to single out individual with the infringement of privacy, the government resort to grouping them into a mass. And the analysis on this mass can result in a top down approach designing governmental solutions with the assumption where they know what citizens want more than themselves. This approach promises a better and more efficient government service. In the process, we may loose the participatory channel. 

 

The competing vision of “open data” invites more decision makers into the decision making process. As the government releases its large data sets, civic groups have opportunities to process the information on their own, provide insights, and present actionable solutions. Great works have been done both in the federal and municipal level and this movement will certainly go hand in hand with good governance policy of transparency and accountability. This movement, however, has its limitations in where these data sets need intermediaries to be processed for the general public. This “data literacy gap” prevents the ordinary citizens from participating in the decision making in an ongoing situation. Furthermore, in the representative democracy, bringing in more scrutiny and decision makers in the process can result in slowing down the process. 

 

Moving forward, how can we espouses both visions where the government is both more efficient and inviting to its citizens? 

 

The first step can be open data movement to expand beyond releasing data to making the data understandable to the ordinary citizens. In collaboration with civic groups, governments should provide a space where any citizen can easily access any information they need and unclassified data about their communities. This will provide citizens with information they need and feel passionate about. That shift from data to information can be the building block of community engagement. 

 

The second step for the big data movement is to be transparent about its data gathering. We have witnesses fallouts from companies like Facebook and Instagram with privacy issues. All these issues can be preempted in the government setting, if it is clear about the scope of government gathering of private information. 

 

Lastly, the most important feature would be the choice of opting out. Many tech companies already employs these features where the choice is given to the consumer balancing between privacy and efficient services. This choice will not only safeguard against unwanted government data gathering, but also a benchmark for measuring the successfulness of the program. 

 

If the service made life truly convenient, people will sign up. 

Project Idea: Community Data Drive

As NYC government moves toward data driven decision making model, what are the ways that citizens can be a part of it? Here I envision a Community Data Drive. 

 

GOAL 

To create a model of Community Data Drive (like Blood Drive)

STEPS

1. Pick an issue that generates strong interest to the community

2. Partner with existing nonprofit/city agency/ community group

1. Rally the community to submit their data. 
2. Create actionable data base and analysis
3. Make a presentation; share it to major and social media out let; make an simple and concrete policy proposal to the city

 

Here are some key issues to consider: 

1. There has to be a strong emotional reason to create the end product. 

• Pick a topic that can evoke strong interest and participation from the public

2. Data itself has no value; the citizens need to feel the purpose in the drive. 

• Ask community members to donate specific data for a cause

3. Data should be easy to share. 

• Come up with easy way that community members can submit their data         

4. Set the beginning and end time for the campaign to generate momentum.

• Set a timeline to keep the momentum of the campaign

5. Make sure set up ways to analyze the data and make recommendations

• Result in validating finding or actionable recommendation

 

Here is an example: 

 

Kid’s Play Space 

In New York City, there are not enough parks and spaces where children can play safely from traffic. I recall seeing children using trashcan as basketball hoop at next to the steps of a brownstone building. I propose a month long city-wide campaign where citizens locate where kids are 1) currently playing and 2) can play, and share ideas on 3) the new play space can be. The campaign will end with a high profile event featuring selected ideas and propose to the Mayor and Commissioners.  Community groups and parents are partaking in the idea generation and decision making in transforming their neighborhood for their children and safety. 

Project Idea: Quantified NYC

As the municipal city considers adopting more data-driven management, one way to fully integrate data is to create a quantified city. Here is a roll out plan.  

• GOAL: To quantity an entire city for a single issue (energy use, noise, air quality, etc.)
• Pick an issue where data can save tax dollars or increase significant public good
• Pick a neighborhood 
• Create a model for collecting data from existing data stream/commercial activity/daily habit/ digital activity (Involuntary Data)
• Launch a Community Data Drive Campaign (Voluntary Data)
• Create a centralized data center with uniformed data structure
• Use data analysis for policy and service recommendations
• Cost Benefit analysis on Quantifying a neighborhood
• Make a policy case for Quantifying the entire city
• Receive funding and scale 

 

Here is an example: 

Noise Capture Campaign/Sensors 

Noise is a significant issue both for living condition and public safety in the city. I propose placing noise sensors that are specifically designed for capturing certain loud frequencies like trash trucks or gun shots. This will begin with a month long Community Data Drive campaign where citizen report various noises (trash truck to gun shot) with a single push of button on their app or text message. The campaign will allow the city to deploy noise sensors in strategic manner to better response to incidents of loud noise and reduce them. 

Innovation Fellows, Turn Over Rate, and Sustainability

 

As The Presidential Innovation Fellows have launched successful projects in the federal agency, major cities like San Francisco is also launching a Fellowship program to work on a tech solution related project within the municipal government. These fellowship opportunities are different from traditional municipal fellowship programs that focus on getting talented young graduates to be future leaders in the government. The Innovation Fellowship focus on a short term (6 to 12 months) project based model for mid career professionals to participate in this program. 

 

While these short project span can draw talented mid career specialists, there is a question high turn over rate and the continuity of the project. It can mean the projects need to rely heavily on the existing leadership within the agencies that hosts these projects. One way to ensure the continual support is to vet in the beginning if the project will be directly providing substantial cost saving to the agency. If the cost benefit analysis clearly indicates so, high turn over rate won’t matter too much as the agency will continue to invest despite its initial outside funding from foundations may disappear in a long run. 

If the cost saving aspect can be demostrated, these tech innovation projects can aquire upfront financing through new financial mechanisms like social impact bonds. 

V-Day -- Global (not community) Organizing

 V-day, a philathropic organization, organized One Billion Rising on Feburary 14, 2013. Its goal was to gather one billion women and those who love them to “walk out, dance, rise up, and demand an end to violence against women. It also commemorated the 15th anniversary of the founding of V-Day. One billion rising is a sign of universal protest, collective strength, and solidarity across borders. While OBR is sponsored by V-day, it was not a V-day event per say. It was a separate, single day of protest hosted around the world by local activists.  OBR encouraged local organizers to stage dance / protest events to raise awareness and fund raise locally to raise awareness for women’s rights.  Onebillionrising.org has sign-up information and a “tool kit” for organizers to market and stage their events. 

V-Day is an example of the power of the Internet and the ability to collaborate online around an idea. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world gathered in support of a single issue. It is similar to the Arab Spring protests and many of the popular movements of the past few years.

 V-day was founded by Vagina Monologues playwright and activist, Eve Ensler, and a group of women in New York City in 1998.  The “V-Board” is comprised of several noteworthy, female celebrities that includes among others, Jane Fonda, Selma Hayek, and Charlize Theron.  The “V-Staff” runs the organization and is led by founder and artistic director, Eve Ensler.  V-day distributes funds to grassroots, national and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls.  The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina. 

V-Day hosts thousands of events in over 167 countries focusing on grassroots activism, public education activities, and support services for survivors.  Many of the 5,800 events sponsored by V-day involve local productions of Vagina Monologues or other artistic performances, large-scale benefits, and films that center on women’s advocacy.  V-Day raised funds also go towards the construction of women’s shelters and rape crisis centers.  V-Day has raised over $90 million since 1998.

It is truly an example of global organizing, the tenets of community organizing executed on a global scale! In 2001, V-Day was named one of Worth Magazine's "100 Best Charities," in 2006 one of Marie Claire Magazine's Top Ten Charities, and in 2010 was named as one of the Top-Rated organizations on GreatNonprofits.  In 2012, over 5,800 V-Day benefit events took place, all produced by volunteer activists.  For an in-depth look at what V-Day is and what they do, view their annual report.   For more information visit http://www.vday.org/home or http://onebillionrising.org/

MIT Media Lab - Tech Innovation Since 1985

Several times this semester the MIT Media Lab has been mentioned for the awesome work they are doing. The following was compiled mostly from the MIT Media Lab website, but highlights many of the goals and accomplishments of a leader in the technology and government space.

The MIT Media Lab seeks to apply unorthodox re­search approaches for envisioning the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life.  Unconstrained by traditional disciplines, Lab designers, engineers, artists, and scientists work atelier-style, conducting more than 350 projects that range from neuroengineering, to how children learn, to a stackable, electric car for tomorrow’s city. Lab researchers foster a unique culture of learning by doing, developing tech­nologies that empower people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new possibilities for themselves and their communities. 

• Year founded: 1985
• Graduate concentration: Media Arts and Sciences 
• Number of graduate students (2011-2012): 141 (61 master's, 80 PhD) 
• Number of faculty and principal investigators: 28
• Number of sponsors: 80+
• Annual operating budget: approx. $35 million

The Lab is supported by close to 80 members, including some of the world’s leading corporations. Busi­nesses represented range from electronics to entertainment, furniture to health care, and greeting cards to telecommunications.

Research is conducted by 26 different research groups in a highly collaborative and anti-disciplinary envi­ronment. Many of the technologies and applications conceived at the Lab are tested and refined through experiments at MIT and in the field, in cooperation with individual member organizations.

Unlike other laboratories at MIT, the Media Lab comprises both a degree-granting Program in Media Arts and Sciences and a research program. More than 40 faculty members, senior research staff, and visiting scholars lead the Lab’s research program, working with 30 research affiliates and more than 50 visiting scientists and postdoctoral researchers. Close to 80 other staff members support the Lab’s research, facilities, and administration.

In addition to the 382 graduate students, more than 20 graduate students from other MIT departments carry out research and more than 200 undergraduates come to work at the Lab each year through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).

The Center for Civic Media is one of the Media Lab’s 26 different research groups.  It is a joint program with MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation, which creates and deploys technical and social tools that fill the information needs of communities.  Civic Media seeks to answer how to create technical and social systems to allow communities to share, understand, and act on civic information. 

From the Civic Media webpage:

“Communities need information to make decisions and take action: to provide aid to neighbors in need, to purchase an environmentally sustainable product and shun a wasteful one, to choose leaders on local and global scales. Communities are also rich repositories of information and knowledge, and often develop their own innovative tools and practices for information sharing. Existing systems to inform communities are changing rapidly, and new ecosystems are emerging where old distinctions like writer/audience and journalist/amateur have collapsed… Together, we work to understand these new ecosystems and to build tools and systems that help communities collect and share information and connect that information to action. We work closely with communities to understand their needs and strengths, and to develop useful tools together using collaborative design principles. We particularly focus on tools that can help amplify the voices of communities often excluded from the digital public sphere and connect them with new audiences, as well as on systems that help us understand media ecologies, augment civic participation, and foster digital inclusion.”

Projects in progress at Civic Media include:

Between the Bars 
- a blogging platform prisoners                        

Codesign Toolkit 
- a project to involve end users in design processes

Controversy Mapper 
- a platform to understand why things are in the media

Data Therapy 



- a tool for community coalitions to do data presentation

Grassroots Mobile Infrastructure 
- a mobile electricity meter for poor countries

LazyTruth - 


a Gmail gadget that surfaces verified truths from emails

Mapping Banned Books 
- a tool to map where and why books are banned

Mapping the Globe 
- interactive visualizations of Boston Globe coverage

Media Cloud 
- 


a platform for studying media ecosystems                       

Media Meter 
- a module to track individual news consumption

New Day New Standard 
- an interactive hotline that informs about worker rights

NewsJack 
- a media remixing tool built from Mozilla's Hackasaurus.

NGO 2.0 
-  project teaches media to NGOs in underdeveloped regions of China

PageOneX 
- a tool to visualize the evolution of stories on newspaper front pages.

Social Mirror 
- makes social network research cheaper, faster, and reliable.

T.I.C.K.L.E. 
- 


The Toy Interface Construction Kit Learning Environment

VoIP Drupal 
- expands voice and Internet-telephony to Drupal sites           

Vojo.co 
- is a hosted mobile blogging platform to share web content

VozMob 
- Drupal customized as a mobile blogging platform.                        

What's Up 
- 


tools to help small geographic community to communicate

Whose Voices? Twitter Citation in the Media 
- tracks who's getting quoted across topics

Hopefully, one day, the GovLab at NYU will boast so many projects in process. It will require a shift in how NYU Wagner operates, with students being more versed in coding, designing, video/media, and other technology skills. Partnerships are already in the works with NYU Poly and other computer scientists in the NYU community. Beth Noveck talks frequently in class about cross-disciplinary problem-solvers. Combining policy students who understand tech with computer scientists who understand policy could unlock a limitless potential to solve tomorrow's public problems.

GovLab Experiment – Visualization of Medical Information in the NHS

The Governance Lab at New York University hosted The Experiment on April 18 and 19. During the event I participated as a student worker; live-blogging, tweeting, scribing, and providing logistical support for over 150 leaders in the technology, government, and technology-government intersection spaces. The Experiment was divided along three questions that centered on, “If we only knew…”

1. How to find the people who know the most about a topic
2. How to produce data visualizations that motivate citizens to solve problems
3. How to define problems and ask questions to engage meaningfully with citizens
4. How to elicit what people in communities care about the most
5. How to create smarter cities from the bottom up
6. How to make government data more accessible and valuable for businesses and the public

During the event, one of the co-founders of GovLab, Aaron Cohen, came to a group of student workers in the “Command Center,” a tongue-in-cheek name for the blogging/twitter conference room, and said, “Sir Tim Berners-Lee is in a break-out session on a markerboard, someone has got to go check that out.” “Sir Tim” is the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, so you can understand everyone’s excitement when Aaron said that. I immediately rushed to the room, and sure enough Sir Tim was in the middle of an intellectual flurry about making the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) more responsive to its citizenry. Sir Tim might not be the first person that comes to mind when people think about the NHS or healthcare, but the whole purpose of The Experiment is to bring together thinkers and designers from different fields to collaborate in identifying new solutions to age old problems. So there I was, amongst tech entrepreneurs, healthcare specialists, public policymakers, and, oh yeah, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the 20^th Century.

The breakout session was nothing short of amazing. They discussed making the NHS patient database more like an interactive, tabulated mint.com for personal health. Patients can log-in to a personal homepage and view their medical history, browse through tabs, and explore the meaning of medical history events or issues they face through links to webMD or other medical databases. The consensus in the group was that medical research has been completed and data collected for best practices to be established, but too often a doctor describing a patient’s health is boiled down to the top-line bullets like cholesterol, blood pressure, body mass, etc. A patient should be able to research and understand the issues they face. If someone can input their data and a website like mint.com can create visualizations and recommendations for the future, then a similar program could do that for personal health. A powerful example was a participant’s mother having bone cancer and his family’s struggle to understand that in relation to her progress. Of course, the American in the group described how rare his trips to the doctor are, usually avoiding the doctor altogether, and how his understanding of the top-line information is limited at best. Conversely, the proposed NHS database would consolidate patient history and allow a real-time interaction with medical professionals on personal health. Such a database could see the inputing of health data and the creation of dietary or exercise recommendations tailored to the individual.

Healthcare is top-down, expert led field. Tim Kelsey, National Director for Patients and Information in the UK National Health Service, said the NHS has all the medical data for what is good health. Using technology to link the NHS user with that data could increase patient understanding and promote positive action. If patients were able to understand their health history and potential future problems, they could take better care of themselves and reduce costs within the wider NHS system. An entire system of self-conducted, diagnostic tests could be run at home and input into your profile and compared to demographic information across the NHS database.

Another idea was having a tabulated medical record, similar to an iPad app or interactive webpage. The main feature would be that it could be flipped from patient view (layman’s) to doctor view (expert) for easily referenced background data on a patient. The ability to flip the data saves on redundant pages/tabs, and can be a useful service tool for doctor’s to communicate jargon with patients. Similarly, a doctor’s medical record and charts could be converted into something a patient can easily understand and utilize, while also being accessible for doctors on something like an iPad. Another proposal was the addition of slide-able icons, similar to album covers in iTunes, to browse through categories of health. Hundreds of features of websites, apps, and other tech solutions come to mind in creating the future NHS database.

In the end, The Experiment and the data visualization break-out session were both inspiring and frustrating. It opened windows into the solutions of the future, while highlighting the challenges and roadblocks preventing us from getting there. Considering the multiple health epidemics facing Americans and our healthcare system, it is inspiring to think that efficiency can be achieved through technology. It is also clear that meaningful change often requires more than technology. Healthcare reform in the U.S. will still requires reforms through policy legislation and funding, not just technological breakthroughs. The possibilities are endless though when experts in public policy and technology collaborate to solve public problems. Consider that this session, with all of its creative ideas proposed and problems identified, was only one of seven broader Experiment sessions and even more break-out sessions. GovLab has the potential to generate and sustain this kind of innovation through academic curriculum, research, and collaboration moments like Experiment. Stay tuned for more from this exciting organization, as NYU Wagner students collaborate with the NHS next year to generate healthcare innovations! 

DIY Mapping Goes Mainstream

Love maps? Want to learn how to map on your own?

Check out this DIY aerial mapmaking kit from The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science that enables anyone with $95, a camera, and some helium to become a citizen cartographer. Recently, a cache of more than 100 maps have added into Google Earth - find all of them indexed in this Google Earth KML file.

The project empowers people to document events (oil spills, Occupy protests) that official mapmakers might overlook. The project also tends to produce bird's-eye images that are sharper and more beautiful than airplanes and satellites can capture. [via Atlantic Cities]

-Christina Rogawski, Local Gov 3.0 Team Member

 

First Steps for Civic Analytics

Code for America shares tips from Nicholas O’Brien, chief of staff for Mike Flowers’ Office of Policy and Strategic Planning in City of New York, on how to get started with Civic Analytics:

Iterate quickly

Quick delivery on early projects helps generate buy-in from other departments and stakeholders. “Do it quick, test, and iterate” to show small but tangible results initially, and build the support that will allow you to take on bigger initiatives.

Start with open data

Chances are your city already publishes some data online, so start with what’s already available. Then, the successes of your analytics program can create more momentum for open data within your city.

Use tools that are readily available

You don’t need to invest in lots of expensive and complicated technology to pilot an analytics initiative. For data visualization, O’Brien recommends Tableau Public, a free online tool. For mapping, you can do a lot with the free version of BatchGeo and Google Maps.

Build your skillset with free online courses

Organizations like Coursera and EdX offer online courses and training on data science, statistics, and programming that are accessible, high-quality, and most importantly, free.

Visualize data through maps

From a marketing and community engagement perspective, maps are an ideal way to get your analytics initiative off the ground and build interest in an a way that’s accessible to a non-technical audience.

Take a page out of NYC’s playbook

One of the first initiatives in New York had to do with matching locations between different datasets, since each agency has a different way to collect and identify data — the buildings department uses the building ID number, the police department uses cartesian coordinates, etc. The locations are relatively easy to match, since they don’t move around and it’s still a single location. Once they had matched locations, the team was able to run analysis that targeted illegally converted apartments — leading to a five-fold return on the time building inspectors spent identifying and inspecting these illegal dwellings. This location-matching approach is replicable in other cities. From there, the possibilities for what you’ll find in that data are greatly amplified.

-Christina Rogawski, Local Gov 3.0 Team Member

GovLab Experiment: Building "We the City"

 

Last week, The GovLab held its Experiment, "Making Engagement Work," which brought together researchers, designers, technologists, and  academic, government, civil society and business leaders to explore how government can reinvent itself to be more engaging and collaborative with its citizens.

Session 5, titled "Building 'We the City'" focused on creating smarter cities from the bottom-up. Michael Flowers, Chief Analytics Officer from the City of New York, lead a discussion on how to create a platform and action plan to engage citizens as active participants in making their own cities “smarter.”

 

Check out the Live Blog to see the discusison details. Common themes/questions were:

• How can we hear everyone without creating so much noise that you don’t hear anyone? How can local governments make sense of the information citizens give via Twitter, Fourquare, or other social apps?
• What are the drivers for participation? There is so little trust in government because there is no feedback loop. Many feel as though their basic services requests are unmet, and/or they don't receive closure on requests, so why should they try to collaborate with government?
• Local governments should consider "fingerprinting" social networks: help citizens access government data and connect with others according to issues they care about. Governments should be facilitators of relationship-building.
• How do we address privacy concerns in sharing data with government? Perhaps we can frame the issue as volunteering for a social good. Instead of a blood drive, hold a "Data Drive."
• How does gamification fit in? Can local governments create "to-do lists" and challenges on social platforms that reward citizens whose behavior aids governments?
•  Local governments need to focus more on a “solution app” than a “problem app” by asking citizens what they want done, and collaborate together (rather than asking citizens to help government with what it wants, which is not a 2-way conversation.) Example: Change By Us.

While many of these questions obviously still need further exploration and research, it was exciting to see some of the top minds in the field come together and directly address these issues. We're looking forward to see if Mr. Flowers will be able to incorporate some of these ideas into the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning.  

-Christina Rogawski, Local Gov 3.0 Team Member