Collection

Entrepreneurs Shape Free Data Into Money

Curated on January 9, 2014October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Angus Loten in the Wall Street Journal: “More cities are putting information on everything from street-cleaning schedules to police-response times and restaurant inspection reports in the public domain, in the hope that people will find a way to make money off the data.
Supporters of such programs often see them as a local economic stimulus plan, allowing software developers and entrepreneurs in cities ranging from San Francisco to South Bend, Ind., to New York, to build new businesses based on the information they get from government websites.
When Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive directive last month to launch the city’s open-data program, he cited entrepreneurs and businesses as important beneficiaries. Open-data promotes innovation and “gives companies, individuals, and nonprofit organizations the opportunity to leverage one of government’s greatest assets: public information,” according to the Dec. 18 directive.
A poster child for the movement might be 34-year-old Matt Ehrlichman of Seattle, who last year built an online business in part using Seattle work permits, professional licenses and other home-construction information gathered up by the city’s Department of Planning and Development.
While his website is free, his business, called Porch.com, has more than 80 employees and charges a $35 monthly fee to industry professionals who want to boost the visibility of their projects on the site.
The site gathers raw public data—such as addresses for homes under renovation, what they are doing, who is doing the work and how much they are charging—and combines it with photos and other information from industry professionals and homeowners. It then creates a searchable database for users to compare ideas and costs for projects near their own neighborhood.
…Ian Kalin, director of open-data services at Socrata, a Seattle-based software firm that makes the back-end applications for many of these government open-data sites, says he’s worked with hundreds of companies that were formed around open data.
Among them is Climate Corp., a San Francisco-based firm that collects weather and yield-forecasting data to help farmers decide when and where to plant crops. Launched in 2006, the firm was acquired in October by Monsanto Co. MON -2.90% , the seed-company giant, for $930 million.
Overall, the rate of new business formation declined nationally between 2006 and 2010. But according to the latest data from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, an entrepreneurship advocacy group in Kansas City, Mo., the rate of new business formation in Seattle in 2011 rose 9.41% in 2011, compared with the national average of 3.9%.
Other cities where new business formation was ahead of the national average include Chicago, Austin, Texas, Baltimore, and South Bend, Ind.—all cities that also have open-data programs. Still, how effective the ventures are in creating jobs is difficult to gauge.
One wrinkle: privacy concerns about the potential for information—such as property tax and foreclosure data—to be misused.
Some privacy advocates fear that government data that include names, addresses and other sensitive information could be used by fraudsters to target victims.”

The Emergence Of The Connected City

Curated on January 9, 2014October 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Glen Martin at Forbes: “If the modern city is a symbol for randomness — even chaos — the city of the near future is shaping up along opposite metaphorical lines. The urban environment is evolving rapidly, and a model is emerging that is more efficient, more functional, more — connected, in a word.
This will affect how we work, commute, and spend our leisure time. It may well influence how we relate to one another, and how we think about the world. Certainly, our lives will be augmented: better public transportation systems, quicker responses from police and fire services, more efficient energy consumption. But there could also be dystopian impacts: dwindling privacy and imperiled personal data. We could even lose some of the ferment that makes large cities such compelling places to live; chaos is stressful, but it can also be stimulating.
It will come as no surprise that converging digital technologies are driving cities toward connectedness. When conjoined, ISM band transmitters, sensors, and smart phone apps form networks that can make cities pretty darn smart — and maybe more hygienic. This latter possibility, at least, is proposed by Samrat Saha of the DCI Marketing Group in Milwaukee. Saha suggests “crowdsourcing” municipal trash pick-up via BLE modules, proximity sensors and custom mobile device apps.
“My idea is a bit tongue in cheek, but I think it shows how we can gain real efficiencies in urban settings by gathering information and relaying it via the Cloud,” Saha says. “First, you deploy sensors in garbage cans. Each can provides a rough estimate of its fill level and communicates that to a BLE 112 Module.”
As pedestrians who have downloaded custom “garbage can” apps on their BLE-capable iPhone or Android devices pass by, continues Saha, the information is collected from the module and relayed to a Cloud-hosted service for action — garbage pick-up for brimming cans, in other words. The process will also allow planners to optimize trash can placement, redeploying receptacles from areas where need is minimal to more garbage-rich environs….
Garbage can connectivity has larger implications than just, well, garbage. Brett Goldstein, the former Chief Data and Information Officer for the City of Chicago and a current lecturer at the University of Chicago, says city officials found clear patterns between damaged or missing garbage cans and rat problems.
“We found areas that showed an abnormal increase in missing or broken receptacles started getting rat outbreaks around seven days later,” Goldstein said. “That’s very valuable information. If you have sensors on enough garbage cans, you could get a temporal leading edge, allowing a response before there’s a problem. In urban planning, you want to emphasize prevention, not reaction.”
Such Cloud-based app-centric systems aren’t suited only for trash receptacles, of course. Companies such as Johnson Controls are now marketing apps for smart buildings — the base component for smart cities. (Johnson’s Metasys management system, for example, feeds data to its app-based Paoptix Platform to maximize energy efficiency in buildings.) In short, instrumented cities already are emerging. Smart nodes — including augmented buildings, utilities and public service systems — are establishing connections with one another, like axon-linked neurons.
But Goldstein, who was best known in Chicago for putting tremendous quantities of the city’s data online for public access, emphasizes instrumented cities are still in their infancy, and that their successful development will depend on how well we “parent” them.
“I hesitate to refer to ‘Big Data,’ because I think it’s a terribly overused term,” Goldstein said. “But the fact remains that we can now capture huge amounts of urban data. So, to me, the biggest challenge is transitioning the fields — merging public policy with computer science into functional networks.”…”

Walgreens Taps Crowdsourcing to Deliver Cold Medicine to Shut-Ins

Curated on January 9, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Mashable: “Walgreens is reaching out to consumers who are so walloped with a cold or flu that a trip to the corner drugstore seems an insurmountable obstacle.
The national drug chain is partnering with TaskRabbit, the online mobile marketplace, to allow deliveries of over-the-counter cold medicine in any of the 19 cities in which TaskRabbit is available. Such deliveries can be made via TaskRabbit’s iOS app or on its website. Standard TaskRabbit rates apply including a 20% service charge and a runner’s fee. So if a runner’s fee is $10, you would pay an additional $12 plus the cost of your cold medicine, to get the delivery.
The partnership, arranged by OMD’s Ignition Factory, runs this week through Feb. 18, typically the weeks in which cold and flu complaints have the sharpest increases. During that time, the Walgreens option will appear in TaskRabbit’s iOS app’s Task Wheel and on the website. Though TaskRabbit has partnered with other national brands, including Pepsi, this is its first with a retailer.
However, the deal is more of a pr exercise than anything else: Consumers have had the ability arrange a TaskRabbit to shop and buy cold medicine at Walgreens prior to the agreement. The chain is hoping to raise awareness about this option, though.
“We just wanted to make it as easy as possible,” says Wilson Standish, project manager at Ignition Factory. “When you’re sick, you don’t even want to get out of bed.”

Design in public and social innovation

Curated on January 9, 2014November 1, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Geoff Mulgan (Nesta): “What’s going right and what’s going wrong? Is design a key to more efficient and effective public services, or a costly luxury, good for conferences and consultants but not for the public?
This paper looks at the elements of the design method; the strengths of current models; some of their weaknesses and the common criticisms made of them; and what might be the way forward.

The future of law and legislation?

Curated on January 9, 2014October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

prior probability: “Mike Gatto, a legislator in California, recently set up the world’s first Wiki-bill in order to enable private citizens to act as cyber-legislators and help draft an actual law. According to Assemblyman Gatto:

Government has a responsibility to listen to the people and to enable everyone to be an active part of the legislative process. That’s why I’ve created this space for you to draft real legislation. Just like a Wikipedia entry, you can see what the current draft is, and propose minor or major edits. The marketplace of ideas will decide the final draft. We’re starting with a limited topic: probate. Almost everyone will face the prospect of working through the details of a deceased loved one’s finances and estate at some point during their life. I want to hear your ideas for how to make this process less burdensome.”

Crowdsourcing Social Problems

Curated on January 9, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by William D. Eggers in Reason: “reCAPTCHA and Duolingo both represent a distinctly 21st-century form of distributed problem solving. These Internet-enabled approaches tend to be faster, far less expensive, and far more resilient than the heavyweight industrial-age methods of solving big social problems that we’ve grown accustomed to over the past century. They typically involve highly diverse resources-volunteer time, crowdfunding, the capabilities of multinational corporations, entrepreneurial capital, philanthropic funding-aligned around common objectives such as reducing congestion, providing safe drinking water, or promoting healthy living. Crowdsourcing offers not just a better way of doing things, but a radical challenge to the bureaucratic status quo.
Here are several ways public, private, and nonprofit organizations can use lightweight, distributed approaches to solve societal problems faster and cheaper than the existing sclerotic models.
Chunk the Problem
The genius of reCAPTCHA and Duolingo is that they divide labor into small increments, performed for free, often by people who are unaware of the project they’re helping to complete. This strategy has wide public-policy applications, even in dealing with potholes….
Meanwhile, Finland’s DigitalKoot project enlisted volunteers to digitize their own libraries by playing a computer game that challenged them to transcribe scans of antique manuscripts.
Governments can set up a microtasking platform, not just for citizen engagement but as a way to harness the knowledge and skills of public employees across multiple departments and agencies. If microtasking can work to connect people outside the “four walls” of an organization, think of its potential as a platform to connect people and conduct work inside an organization-even an organization as bureaucratic as government.
…
Decentralize Service to the Self
A young woman slices her finger on a knife. As she compresses the bleeding with gauze, she needs to know if her wound warrants stitches. So she calls up Blue Cross’ 24-hour nurse hotline, where patients call to learn if they should see a doctor. The nurse asks her to describe the depth of the cut. He explains she should compress it with gauze and skip the ER. In aggregate, savings like this amount to millions of dollars of avoided emergency room visits.
Since 2003, Blue Cross has been shifting the work of basic triage and risk mitigation to customers. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) implemented a similar program, NHS Direct, in 1998. NHS estimates that the innovation has saved it Â£44 million a year….
Gamify Drudgery
Finland’s national library houses an enormous archive of antique texts, which officials hoped to scan and digitize into ordinary, searchable text documents. Rather than simply hire people for the tedium of correcting garbled OCR scans, the library invited the public to play a game. An online program called DigitalKoot lets people transcribe scanned words, and by typing accurately, usher a series of cartoon moles safely across a bridge….
Build a Two-Sided Market
Road infrastructure costs government five cents per driver per mile, according to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. “That’s a dollar the government paid for the paving of that road and the maintaining of that infrastructureâ€¦just for you, not the other 3,000 people that travelled that same segment of highway in that same hour that you did,” says Sean O’Sullivan, founder of Carma, a ridesharing application.
Ridesharing companies such as Carma, Lyft, and Zimride are attempting to recruit private cars for the public transit network, by letting riders pay a small fee to carpool. A passenger waits at a designated stop, and the app alerts drivers, who can scan a profile of their potential rider. It’s a prime example of a potent new business model…
Remove the Middleman
John McNair dropped out of high school at age 16. By his thirties, he became an entrepreneur, producing and selling handmade guitars, but carpentry alone wouldn’t grow his business. So the founder of Red Dog Guitars enrolled in a $20 class on Skillshare.com, taught by the illustrator John Contino, to learn to brand his work with hand lettered product labels. Soon, a fellow businessman was asking McNair for labels to market guitar pickups.
Traditionally, the U.S. government might invest in retraining someone like John. Instead, peer-to-peer technology has allowed a community of designers to help John develop his skills. Peer-to-peer strategies enable citizens to meet each other’s needs, cheaply. Peer-to-peer solutions can help fix problems, deliver services, and supplement traditional approaches.
Peer-to-peer can lessen our dependence on big finance. Kickstarter lets companies skip the energy of convincing a banker that their product is viable. They just need to convince customers…”

Engaging Citizens in Co-Creation in Public Services

Curated on January 9, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New report by Professors Nambisan and Nambisan for the IBM Center for the Business of Government: “The term “co-creation” refers to the development of new public services by citizens in partnership with governments. The authors present four roles that citizens co-creators often assume: explorer, ideator, designer, and diffuser.

Explorers identify/discover and define emerging and existing problems.
Ideators conceptualize novel solutions to well-defined problems.
Designers design and/or develop implementable solutions to well-defined problems.
Diffusers directly support or facilitate the adoption and diffusion of public service innovations and solutions among well-defined target populations.

Report authors Drs. Satish and Priya Nambisan of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee provide detailed examples of citizens playing each of these roles. They note that numerous forces contribute to the trend of citizens participating in government activities, “a shift from that of a passive service beneficiary to that of an active, informed partner or co-creator in public service innovation and problem-solving.“
The help government leaders craft successful co-creation programs, the report outlines four strategies to encourage citizen co-creation:

Fit the approach to the innovation context
Manage citizen expectations
Link the internal organization with the external partners
Embed citizen engagement in the broader context”

What Jelly Means

Curated on January 8, 2014August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Steven Johnson: “A few months ago, I found this strange white mold growing in my garden in California. I’m a novice gardener, and to make matters worse, a novice Californian, so I had no idea what these small white cells might portend for my flowers.
This is one of those odd blank spots — I used the call them Googleholes in the early days of the service — where the usual Delphic source of all knowledge comes up relatively useless. The Google algorithm doesn’t know what those white spots are, the way it knows more computational questions, like “what is the top-ranked page for “white mold?” or “what is the capital of Illinois?” What I want, in this situation, is the distinction we usually draw between information and wisdom. I don’t just want to know what the white spots are; I want to know if I should be worried about them, or if they’re just a normal thing during late summer in Northern California gardens.
Now, I’m sure I know a dozen people who would be able to answer this question, but the problem is I don’t really know which people they are. But someone in my extended social network has likely experienced these white spots on their plants, or better yet, gotten rid of them. (Or, for all I know, ate them — I’m trying not to be judgmental.) There are tools out there that would help me run the social search required to find that person. I can just bulk email my entire address book with images of the mold and ask for help. I could go on Quora, or a gardening site.
But the thing is, it’s a type of question that I find myself wanting to ask a lot, and there’s something inefficient about trying to figure the exact right tool to use to ask it each time, particularly when we have seen the value of consolidating so many of our queries into a single, predictable search field at Google.
This is why I am so excited about the new app, Jelly, which launched today. …
Jelly, if you haven’t heard, is the brainchild of Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s co-founders. The service launches today with apps on iOS and Android. (Biz himself has a blog post and video, which you should check out.) I’ve known Biz since the early days of Twitter, and I’m excited to be an adviser and small investor in a company that shares so many of the values around networks and collective intelligence that I’ve been writing about since Emergence.
The thing that’s most surprising about Jelly is how fun it is to answer questions. There’s something strangely satisfying in flipping through the cards, reading questions, scanning the pictures, and looking for a place to be helpful. It’s the same broad gesture of reading, say, a Twitter feed, and pleasantly addictive in the same way, but the intent is so different. Scanning a twitter feed while waiting for the train has the feel of “Here we are now, entertain us.” Scanning Jelly is more like: “I’m here. How can I help?”

Open Government Strategy Continues with US Currency Production API

Curated on January 7, 2014August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Eric Carter in the ProgrammableWeb: “Last year, the Executive branch of the US government made huge strides in opening up government controlled data to the developer community. Projects such as the Open Data Policy and the Machine Readable Executive Order have led the US government to develop an API strategy. Today, ProgrammableWeb takes a look at another open government API: the Annual Production Figures of United States Currency API.

The US Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) provides the dataset available through the Production Figures API. The data available consists of the number of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 notes printed each year from 1980 to 2012. With this straightforward, seemingly basic set of data available, the question becomes: “Why is this data useful“? To answer this, one should consider the purpose of the Executive Order:

“Openness in government strengthens our democracy, promotes the delivery of efficient and effective services to the public, and contributes to economic growth. As one vital benefit of open government, making information resources easy to find, accessible, and usable can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific discovery that improves Americans’ lives and contributes significantly to job creation.”

The API uses HTTP and can return requests in XML, JSON, or CSV data formats. As stated, the API retrieves the number of bills of a designated currency for the desired year. For more information and code samples, visit the API docs.”