Let’s get geeks into government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gillian Tett in the Financial Times: “Fifteen years ago, Brett Goldstein seemed to be just another tech entrepreneur. He was working as IT director of OpenTable, then a start-up website for restaurant bookings. The company was thriving – and subsequently did a very successful initial public offering. Life looked very sweet for Goldstein. But when the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001, Goldstein had a moment of epiphany. “I spent seven years working in a startup but, directly after 9/11, I knew I didn’t want my whole story to be about how I helped people make restaurant reservations. I wanted to work in public service, to give something back,” he recalls – not just by throwing cash into a charity tin, but by doing public service. So he swerved: in 2006, he attended the Chicago police academy and then worked for a year as a cop in one of the city’s toughest neighbourhoods. Later he pulled the disparate parts of his life together and used his number-crunching skills to build the first predictive data system for the Chicago police (and one of the first in any western police force), to indicate where crime was likely to break out.

This was such a success that Goldstein was asked by Rahm Emanuel, the city’s mayor, to create predictive data systems for the wider Chicago government. The fruits of this effort – which include a website known as “WindyGrid” – went live a couple of years ago, to considerable acclaim inside the techie scene.

This tale might seem unremarkable. We are all used to hearing politicians, business leaders and management consultants declare that the computing revolution is transforming our lives. And as my colleague Tim Harford pointed out in these pages last week, the idea of using big data is now wildly fashionable in the business and academic worlds….

In America when top bankers become rich, they often want to “give back” by having a second career in public service: just think of all those Wall Street financiers who have popped up at the US Treasury in recent years. But hoodie-wearing geeks do not usually do the same. Sure, there are some former techie business leaders who are indirectly helping government. Steve Case, a co-founder of AOL, has supported White House projects to boost entrepreneurship and combat joblessness. Tech entrepreneurs also make huge donations to philanthropy. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has given funds to Newark education. And the whizz-kids have also occasionally been summoned by the White House in times of crisis. When there was a disastrous launch of the government’s healthcare website late last year, the Obama administration enlisted the help of some of the techies who had been involved with the president’s election campaign.

But what you do not see is many tech entrepreneurs doing what Goldstein did: deciding to spend a few years in public service, as a government employee. There aren’t many Zuckerberg types striding along the corridors of federal or local government.
. . .
It is not difficult to work out why. To most young entrepreneurs, the idea of working in a state bureaucracy sounds like utter hell. But if there was ever a time when it might make sense for more techies to give back by doing stints of public service, that moment is now. The civilian public sector badly needs savvier tech skills (just look at the disaster of that healthcare website for evidence of this). And as the sector’s founders become wealthier and more powerful, they need to show that they remain connected to society as a whole. It would be smart political sense.
So I applaud what Goldstein has done. I also welcome that he is now trying to persuade his peers to do the same, and that places such as the University of Chicago (where he teaches) and New York University are trying to get more young techies to think about working for government in between doing those dazzling IPOs. “It is important to see more tech entrepreneurs in public service. I am always encouraging people I know to do a ‘stint in government”. I tell them that giving back cannot just be about giving money; we need people from the tech world to actually work in government, “ Goldstein says.

But what is really needed is for more technology CEOs and leaders to get involved by actively talking about the value of public service – or even encouraging their employees to interrupt their private-sector careers with the occasional spell as a government employee (even if it is not in a sector quite as challenging as the police). Who knows? Maybe it could be Sheryl Sandberg’s next big campaigning mission. After all, if she does ever jump back to Washington, that could have a powerful demonstration effect for techie women and men. And shake DC a little too.”

Smart cities are here today — and getting smarter

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Computer World: “Smart cities aren’t a science fiction, far-off-in-the-future concept. They’re here today, with municipal governments already using technologies that include wireless networks, big data/analytics, mobile applications, Web portals, social media, sensors/tracking products and other tools.
These smart city efforts have lofty goals: Enhancing the quality of life for citizens, improving government processes and reducing energy consumption, among others. Indeed, cities are already seeing some tangible benefits.
But creating a smart city comes with daunting challenges, including the need to provide effective data security and privacy, and to ensure that myriad departments work in harmony.

The global urban population is expected to grow approximately 1.5% per year between 2025 and 2030, mostly in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization.

What makes a city smart? As with any buzz term, the definition varies. But in general, it refers to using information and communications technologies to deliver sustainable economic development and a higher quality of life, while engaging citizens and effectively managing natural resources.
Making cities smarter will become increasingly important. For the first time ever, the majority of the world’s population resides in a city, and this proportion continues to grow, according to the World Health Organization, the coordinating authority for health within the United Nations.
A hundred years ago, two out of every 10 people lived in an urban area, the organization says. As recently as 1990, less than 40% of the global population lived in a city — but by 2010 more than half of all people lived in an urban area. By 2050, the proportion of city dwellers is expected to rise to 70%.
As many city populations continue to grow, here’s what five U.S. cities are doing to help manage it all:

Scottsdale, Ariz.

The city of Scottsdale, Ariz., has several initiatives underway.
One is MyScottsdale, a mobile application the city deployed in the summer of 2013 that allows citizens to report cracked sidewalks, broken street lights and traffic lights, road and sewer issues, graffiti and other problems in the community….”

Open Data: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jason Shueh at Government Technology: “Though the debate about open data in government is an evolving one, it is indisputably here to stay — it can be heard in both houses of Congress, in state legislatures, and in city halls around the nation.
Already, 39 states and 46 localities provide data sets to data.gov, the federal government’s online open data repository. And 30 jurisdictions, including the federal government, have taken the additional step of institutionalizing their practices in formal open data policies.
Though the term “open data” is spoken of frequently — and has been since President Obama took office in 2009 — what it is and why it’s important isn’t always clear. That’s understandable, perhaps, given that open data lacks a unified definition.
“People tend to conflate it with big data,” said Emily Shaw, the national policy manager at the Sunlight Foundation, “and I think it’s useful to think about how it’s different from big data in the sense that open data is the idea that public information should be accessible to the public online.”
Shaw said the foundation, a Washington, D.C., non-profit advocacy group promoting open and transparent government, believes the term open data can be applied to a variety of information created or collected by public entities. Among the benefits of open data are improved measurement of policies, better government efficiency, deeper analytical insights, greater citizen participation, and a boost to local companies by way of products and services that use government data (think civic apps and software programs).
“The way I personally think of open data,” Shaw said, “is that it is a manifestation of the idea of open government.”

What Makes Data Open

For governments hoping to adopt open data in policy and in practice, simply making data available to the public isn’t enough to make that data useful. Open data, though straightforward in principle, requires a specific approach based on the agency or organization releasing it, the kind of data being released and, perhaps most importantly, its targeted audience.
According to the foundation’s California Open Data Handbook, published in collaboration with Stewards of Change Institute, a national group supporting innovation in human services, data must first be both “technically open” and “legally open.” The guide defines the terms in this way:
Technically open: [data] available in a machine-readable standard format, which means it can be retrieved and meaningfully processed by a computer application
Legally open: [data] explicitly licensed in a way that permits commercial and non-commercial use and re-use without restrictions.
Technically open means that data is easily accessible to its intended audience. If the intended users are developers and programmers, Shaw said, the data should be presented within an application programming interface (API); if it’s intended for researchers in academia, data might be structured in a bulk download; and if it’s aimed at the average citizen, data should be available without requiring software purchases.
….

4 Steps to Open Data

Creating open data isn’t without its complexities. There are many tasks that need to happen before an open data project ever begins. A full endorsement from leadership is paramount. Adding the project into the work flow is another. And allaying fears and misunderstandings is expected with any government project.
After the basic table stakes are placed, the handbook prescribes four steps: choosing a set of data, attaching an open license, making it available through a proper format and ensuring the data is discoverable.
1. Choose a Data Set
Choosing a data set can appear daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Shaw said ample resources are available from the foundation and others on how to get started with this — see our list of open data resources for more information. In the case of selecting a data set, or sets, she referred to the foundation’s recently updated guidelines that urge identifying data sets based on goals and the demand from citizen feedback.
2. Attach an Open License
Open licenses dispel ambiguity and encourage use. However, they need to be proactive, and this means users should not be forced to request the information in order to use it — a common symptom of data accessed through the Freedom of Information Act. Tips for reference can be found at Opendefinition.org, a site that has a list of examples and links to open licenses that meet the definition of open use.
3. Format the Data to Your Audience
As previously stated, Shaw recommends tailoring the format of data to the audience, with the ideal being that data is packaged in formats that can be digested by all users: developers, civic hackers, department staff, researchers and citizens. This could mean it’s put into APIs, spreadsheet docs, text and zip files, FTP servers and torrent networking systems (a way to download files from different sources). The file type and the system for download all depends on the audience.
“Part of learning about what formats government should offer data in is to engage with the prospective users,” Shaw said.
4. Make it Discoverable
If open data is strewn across multiple download links and wedged into various nooks and crannies of a website, it probably won’t be found. Shaw recommends a centralized hub that acts as a one-stop shop for all open data downloads. In many jurisdictions, these Web pages and websites have been called “portals;” they are the online repositories for a jurisdiction’s open data publishing.
“It is important for thinking about how people can become aware of what their governments hold. If the government doesn’t make it easy for people to know what kinds of data is publicly available on the website, it doesn’t matter what format it’s in,” Shaw said. She pointed to public participation — a recurring theme in open data development — to incorporate into the process to improve accessibility.
 
Examples of portals, can be found in numerous cities across the U.S., such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Sacramento, Calif.
Visit page 2 of our story for open data resources, and page 3 for open data file formats.

“Government Entrepreneur” is Not an Oxymoron

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Mitchell Weiss in Harvard Business Review Blog: “Entrepreneurship almost always involves pushing against the status quo to capture opportunities and create value. So it shouldn’t be surprising when a new business model, such as ridesharing, disrupts existing systems and causes friction between entrepreneurs and local government officials, right?
But imagine if the road that led to the Seattle City Council ridesharing hearings this month — with rulings that sharply curtail UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar’s operations there — had been a vastly different one.  Imagine that public leaders had conceived and built a platform to provide this new, shared model of transit.  Or at the very least, that instead of having a revolution of the current transit regime done to Seattle public leaders, it was done with them.  Amidst the acrimony, it seems hard to imagine that public leaders could envision and operate such a platform, or that private innovators could work with them more collaboratively on it — but it’s not impossible. What would it take? Answer: more public entrepreneurs.
The idea of ”public entrepreneurship” may sound to you like it belongs on a list of oxymorons right alongside “government intelligence.” But it doesn’t.  Public entrepreneurs around the world are improving our lives, inventing entirely new ways to serve the public.   They are using sensors to detect potholes; word pedometers to help students learn; harnessing behavioral economics to encourage organ donation; crowdsourcing patent review; and transforming Medellin, Colombia with cable cars. They are coding in civic hackathons and competing in the Bloomberg challenge.  They are partnering with an Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston or in Philadelphia, co-developing products in San Francisco’s Entrepreneurship-in-Residence program, or deploying some of the more than $430 million invested into civic-tech in the last two years.
There is, however, a big problem with public entrepreneurs: there just aren’t enough of them.  Without more public entrepreneurship, it’s hard to imagine meeting our public challenges or making the most of private innovation. One might argue that bungled healthcare website roll-outs or internet spying are evidence of too much activity on the part of public leaders, but I would argue that what they really show is too little entrepreneurial skill and judgment.
The solution to creating more public entrepreneurs is straightforward: train them. But, by and large, we don’t.  Consider Howard Stevenson’s definition of entrepreneurship: “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” We could teach that approach to people heading towards the public sector. But now consider the following list of terms: “acknowledgement of multiple constituencies,” “risk reduction,” “formal planning,” “coordination,” “efficiency measures,” “clearly defined responsibility,” and “organizational culture.” It reads like a list of the kinds of concepts we would want a new public official to know; like it might be drawn from an interview evaluation form or graduate school syllabus.  In fact, it’s from Stevenson’s list of pressures that pull managers away from entrepreneurship and towards administration.  Of course, that’s not all bad. We must have more great public administrators.  But with all our challenges and amidst all the dynamism, we are going to need more than analysts and strategists in the public sector, we need inventors and builders, too.
Public entrepreneurship is not simply innovation in the public sector (though it makes use of innovation), and it’s not just policy reform (though it can help drive reform).  Public entrepreneurs build something from nothing with resources — be they financial capital or human talent or new rules — they didn’t command. In Boston, I worked with many amazing public managers and a handful of outstanding public entrepreneurs.  Chris Osgood and Nigel Jacob brought the country’s first major-city mobile 311 app to life, and they are public entrepreneurs.   They created Citizens Connect in 2009 by bringing together iPhones on loan together with a local coder and the most under-tapped resource in the public sector: the public.  They transformed the way basic neighborhood issues are reported and responded to (20% of all constituent cases in Boston are reported over smartphones now), and their model is now accessible to 40 towns in Massachusetts and cities across the country.  The Mayor’s team in Boston that started-up the One Fund in the days after the Marathon bombings were public entrepreneurs.  We built the organization from PayPal and a Post Office Box, and it went on to channel $61 million from donors to victims and survivors in just 75 days. It still operates today….
It’s worth noting that public entrepreneurship, perhaps newly buzzworthy, is not actually new. Elinor Ostrom (44 years before her Nobel Prize) observed public entrepreneurs inventing new models in the 1960s. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, Peter Drucker wrote that it was entrepreneurship that would keep public service “flexible and self-renewing.” And almost two decades have passed since David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s “Reinventing Government” (the then handbook for public officials) carried the promising subtitle: “How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector”.  Public entrepreneurship, though not nearly as widespread as its private complement, or perhaps as fashionable as its “social” counterpart (focussed on non-profits and their ecosystem), has been around for a while and so have those who practiced it.
But still today, we mostly train future public leaders to be public administrators. We school them in performance management and leave them too inclined to run from risk instead of managing it. And we communicate often, explicitly or not, to private entrepreneurs that government officials are failures and dinosaurs.  It’s easy to see how that road led to Seattle this month, but hard see how it empowers public officials to take on the enormous challenges that still lie ahead of us, or how it enables the public to help them.”

Ten Innovations to Compete for Global Innovation Award

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Making All Voices Count: “The Global Innovation Competition was launched at the Open Government Partnership Summit in November, 2013 and set out to scout the globe for fresh ideas to enhance government accountability and boost citizen engagement. The call was worldwide and in response, nearly 200 innovative ideas were submitted. After a process of public voting and peer review, these have been reduced to ten.
Below, we highlight the innovations that will now compete for a prize of £65,000 plus six months mentorship at the Global Innovation Week March 31 – April 4, 2014 in Kenya.
The first seven emerged from a process of peer review and the following three were selected by the Global Innovation Jury.

An SMS gateway, connected to local hospitals and the web, to channel citizens’ requests for pregnancy services. At risk women, in need of information such as hospital locations and general advice, will receive relevant and targeted updates utilising both an SMS and a GIS-based system.  The aim is to reduce maternal mortality by targeting at risk women in poorer communities in Indonesia.

“One of the causes of high maternal mortality rate in Indonesia is late response in childbirth treatment and lack of pregnancy care information.”

This project, led by a civil servant, aims to engage citizens in Pakistan in service delivery governance. The project aims to enable and motivate citizens to collect, analyze and disseminate service delivery performance data in order to drive performance and help effective decision making.

“BSDU will serve as a model of better management aided by the citizens, for the citizens.”

A Geographic Information System that gives Indonesian citizens access to information regarding government funded projects. The idea is to enable and motivate citizens to compare a project’s information with its real-world implementation and to provide feedback on this. The ultimate aim is to fight corruption in the public sector by making it easier for citizens to monitor, and provide feedback on, government-funded projects.

“On-the-map information about government-funded projects, where citizens are able to submit their opinions, should became a global standard in budget transparency!”

A digital payment system in South Africa that rewards citizens who participate in activities such as waste separation and community gardening. Citizens are able to ‘spend’ rewards on airtime, pre-paid electricity and groceries. By rewarding social volunteers this project aims to boost citizen engagement, build trust and establish the link between government and citizen actors.

“GEM offers a direct channel for communication and rewards between governments and citizens.”

An app created by a team of software developers to provide Ghanaian citizens with information about the oil and gas industry, with the aim of raising awareness of the revenue generated and to spark debate about how this could be used to improve national development.

“The idea is to bring citizens, the oil and gas companies and the government all onto one platform.”

Ghana Petrol Watch seeks to deliver basic facts and figures associated with oil and gas exploration to the average Ghanaian. The solution employs mobile technology to deliver this information. The audience can voice their concerns as comments on the issue via replies to the SMS. These would then be published on the web portal for further exposure and publicity.

“The information on the petroleum industry is publicly available, but not readily accessible and often does not reach the grassroots community in an easily comprehensible manner.”

A common platform to be implemented in Khulna City, Bangladesh, where citizens and elected officials will interact on budget, expenditure and information.

“The concept of citizen engagement for the fulfillment of pre-election commitment is an innovation in establishing governance.”

The aim of this project is an increase in child engagement in governmental budgeting and policy formulation in Mwanza City, Tanzania. This project was selected as a wildcard by the Global Innovation Jury.

“In many projects I have seen, children are always the perceived beneficiaries, rarely do you see innovations where children are active participants in achieving a goal in their society. It was great to see children as active contributors to their own discourse.” – Jury Member, Shikoh Gitau.

A ‘watchdog’ newsletter in Kenya focusing on monitoring the actions of officials with the aim of educating, empowering and motivating citizens to hold their leaders to account. This project was selected as a wildcard by the Global Innovation Jury.

“We endeavor to bridge the information gap in northern Kenya by giving voice to the voiceless and also highlighting their challenges. The aim is an increase in the educational level of the people through information.”

Citizen Desk is an open-source tool that combines the ability of citizens to share eyewitness reports with the public need for verified information in real time. Citizen Desk lets citizen journalists file reports via SMS or social media, with no need for technical training. This project was selected as a wildcard by the Global Innovation Jury.

“It has become evident for some time now that good technical innovation must rest on a strong bedrock of social and political activity, on the ground, deeply in touch with local conditions, and sometimes in the face of power and privilege.” – Jury Member Bright Simons.”

Open Government: Building Trust and Civic Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gavin Newsom and Zachary Bookman in the Huffington Post: “Daily life has become inseparable from new technologies. Our phones and tablets let us shop from the couch, track how many miles we run, and keep in touch with friends across town and around the world – benefits barely possible a decade ago.
With respect to our communities, Uber and Lyft now shuttle us around town, reducing street traffic and parking problems. Adopt-a-Hydrant apps coordinate efforts to dig out hydrants after snowstorms, saving firefighters time when battling blazes. Change.org, helps millions petition for and effect social and political change.
Yet as a sector, government typically embraces technology well-behind the consumer curve. This leads to disheartening stories, like veterans waiting months or years for disability claims due to outdated technology or the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website. This is changing.
Cities and states are now the driving force in a national movement to harness technology to share a wealth of government information and data. Many forward thinking local governments now provide effective tools to the public to make sense of all this data.
This is the Open Government movement.
For too long, government information has been locked away in agencies, departments, and archaic IT systems. Senior administrators often have to request the data they need to do their jobs from system operators. Elected officials, in turn, often have to request data from these administrators. The public remains in the dark, and when data is released, it appears in the form of inaccessible or incomprehensible facts and figures.
Governments keep massive volumes of data, from 500 page budget documents to population statistics to neighborhood crime rates. Although raw data is a necessary component of Open Government, for it to empower citizens and officials the data must be transformed into meaningful and actionable insights. Governments must both publish information in “machine readable” format and give people the tools to understand and act on it.
New platforms can transform data from legacy systems into meaningful visualizations. Instant, web-based access to this information not only saves time and money, but also helps government make faster and better decisions. This allows them to serve their communities and builds trust with citizens.
Leading governments like Palo Alto have begun employing technology to leverage these benefits. Even the City of Bell, California, which made headlines in 2010 when senior administrators siphoned millions of dollars from the general fund, is now leveraging cloud technology to turn a new page in its history. The city has presented its financial information in an easily accessible, interactive platform at Bell.OpenGov.com. Citizens and officials alike can see vivid, user generated charts and graphs that show where money goes, what services are offered to residents, and how much those services cost.
In 2009, San Francisco became an early adopter of the open data movement when an executive order made open and machine-readable the default for our consolidated government. That simple order spurred an entirely new industry and the City of San Francisco has been adopting apps like the San Francisco Heat Vulnerability Index and Neighborhood Score ever since. The former identifies areas vulnerable to heat waves with the hope of better preparedness, while the latter provides an overall health and sustainability score, block-by-block for every neighborhood in the city. These new apps use local, state, federal, and private data sets to allow residents to see how their neighborhoods rank.
The California State Lands Commission, responsible for the stewardship of the state’s lands, waterways, and natural resources, is getting in on the Open Government movement too. The Commission now publishes five years of expense and revenue data at CAStateLands.opengov.com (which just launched today!). California residents can now see how the state generates nearly half a billion dollars in revenue from oil and gas contracts, mineral royalties, and leasing programs. The State can now communicate how it manages those resources, so that citizens understand how their government works for them.
The Open Government movement provides a framework for improved public administration and a path for more trust and engagement. Governments have been challenged to do better, and now they can.”

This War of Mine – The Ultimate Serious Game

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Escapist Magazine “…there are not many games about the effect of war. Paweł Miechowski thinks that needs to be changed, and he’s doing it with a little game called This War of Mine from the Polish outfit 11 Bit Studio.
“We’re in the moment where we want to talk about important things via games,” Miechowski said. “We are used to the fact that important topics are covered by music, novels, movies, while games mostly about fun. Laughing ‘ha ha ha’ fun.”
In fact, he believes games are well-suited for showing harsh truths and realities, not by ham-fistedly repeating political phrases or mantras, but by allowing you to draw your own conclusions from the circumstances. “Games are perfect for this because they are interactive. Novels or movies are not,” he said. “Games can take you through the experience through your hands, by your eyes. You are not a spectator. You are part of the experience.”
What is the experience of This War of Mine then? 11 Bit Studios was inspired by the firsthand accounts of people who tried to survive within a modern city that had no law, no order or infrastructure due to an ongoing war between militaries. “Everything we did in this game, we did after extensive research. Any mechanics in the game are just a translation of our knowledge of situations in recent history,” he said. “Yugoslavia, Syria, Serbia. Anywhere civilians survived within a besieged city after war. They were all pretty similar, struggling for water, hygiene items, food, simple tools to make something, wood to heat the house up.”
Miechowski showed me an early build of This War of Mine and that’s exactly what it is. Your only goal, which is emblazoned on the screen when you start the game, is to “Survive for 30 days.” You begin inside a 2D representation of a bombed-out building with several floors. You have a few allies with names like Boris or Yvette, each of whom have traits such as “good cook” or “strong, but slow.” Orders can be given to your team, such as to build a bed or to scavenge the piles of junk within your stronghold for any useful items. You usually start out with nothing, but over time you’ll accumulate all sorts of items and materials. The game is in real time, the hours slowly tick by, but once you assign tasks it can be useful to advance the timeline by clicking the “Start Night” button.”

Potholes and Big Data: Crowdsourcing Our Way to Better Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Phil Simon in Wired: “Big Data is transforming many industries and functions within organizations with relatively limited budgets.
Consider Thomas M. Menino, up until recently Boston’s longest-serving mayor. At some point in the past few years, Menino realized that it was no longer 1950. Perhaps he was hobnobbing with some techies from MIT at dinner one night. Whatever his motivation, he decided that there just had to be a better, more cost-effective way to maintain and fix the city’s roads. Maybe smartphones could help the city take a more proactive approach to road maintenance.
To that end, in July 2012, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics launched a new project called Street Bump, an app that allows drivers to automatically report the road hazards to the city as soon as they hear that unfortunate “thud,” with their smartphones doing all the work.
The app’s developers say their work has already sparked interest from other cities in the U.S., Europe, Africa and elsewhere that are imagining other ways to harness the technology.
Before they even start their trip, drivers using Street Bump fire up the app, then set their smartphones either on the dashboard or in a cup holder. The app takes care of the rest, using the phone’s accelerometer — a motion detector — to sense when a bump is hit. GPS records the location, and the phone transmits it to an AWS remote server.
But that’s not the end of the story. It turned out that the first version of the app reported far too many false positives (i.e., phantom potholes). This finding no doubt gave ammunition to the many naysayers who believe that technology will never be able to do what people can and that things are just fine as they are, thank you. Street Bump 1.0 “collected lots of data but couldn’t differentiate between potholes and other bumps.” After all, your smartphone or cell phone isn’t inert; it moves in the car naturally because the car is moving. And what about the scores of people whose phones “move” because they check their messages at a stoplight?
To their credit, Menino and his motley crew weren’t entirely discouraged by this initial setback. In their gut, they knew that they were on to something. The idea and potential of the Street Bump app were worth pursuing and refining, even if the first version was a bit lacking. Plus, they have plenty of examples from which to learn. It’s not like the iPad, iPod, and iPhone haven’t evolved considerably over time.
Enter InnoCentive, a Massachusetts-based firm specializing in open innovation and crowdsourcing. The City of Boston contracted InnoCentive to improve Street Bump and reduce the amount of tail chasing. The company accepted the challenge and essentially turned it into a contest, a process sometimes called gamification. InnoCentive offered a network of 400,000 experts a share of $25,000 in prize money donated by Liberty Mutual.
Almost immediately, the ideas to improve Street Bump poured in from unexpected places. This crowd had wisdom. Ultimately, the best suggestions came from:

  • A group of hackers in Somerville, Massachusetts, that promotes community education and research
  • The head of the mathematics department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, MI.
  • An anonymous software engineer

…Crowdsourcing roadside maintenance isn’t just cool. Increasingly, projects like Street Bump are resulting in substantial savings — and better government.”

The Use of ICT for Open Government in U. S. Municipalities Perceptions of Chief Administrative Officers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sukumar Ganapatiand Christopher G. Reddick in Public Performance & Management Review: “The extent to which U. S. municipal governments have adopted open e-government initiatives is examined through a survey and interviews with chief administrative officers (CAOs) along the three dimensions of open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration. A very high share of CAOs reported satisfaction with implementing open government overall. A majority indicated achievement along each of the open government dimensions. Whereas the CAOs had a significantly positive view of collaboration, their view on challenges was negatively significant for achievement and satisfaction with open government. The interviews indicated that the CAOs do not view open government as a fad and place it high on their respective agendas.”

Charities Try New Ways to Test Ideas Quickly and Polish Them Later

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ben Gose in the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “A year ago, a division of TechSoup Global began working on an app to allow donors to buy a hotel room for victims of domestic violence when no other shelter is available. Now that app is a finalist in a competition run by a foundation that combats human trafficking—and a win could mean a grant worth several hundred thousand dollars. The app’s evolution—adding a focus on sex slaves to the initial emphasis on domestic violence—was hardly accidental.
Caravan Studios, the TechSoup division that created the app, has embraced a new management approach popular in Silicon Valley known as “lean start-up.”
The principles, which are increasingly popular among nonprofits, emphasize experimentation over long-term planning and urge groups to get products and services out to clients as early as possible so the organizations can learn from feedback and make changes.
When the app, known as SafeNight, was still early in the design phase, Caravan posted details about the project on its website, including applications for grants that Caravan had not yet received. In lean-start-up lingo, Caravan put out a “minimal viable product” and hoped for feedback that would lead to a better app.
Caravan soon heard from antitrafficking organizations, which were interested in the same kind of service. Caravan eventually teamed up with the Polaris Project and the State of New Jersey, which were working on a similar app, to jointly create an app for the final round of the antitrafficking contest. Humanity United, the foundation sponsoring the contest, plans to award $1.8-million to as many as three winners later this month.
Marnie Webb, CEO of Caravan, which is building an array of apps designed to curb social problems, says lean-start-up principles help Caravan work faster and meet real needs.
“The central idea is that any product that we develop will get better if it lives as much of its life as possible outside of our office,” Ms. Webb says. “If we had kept SafeNight inside and polished it and polished it, it would have been super hard to bring on a partner because we would have invested too much.”….
Nonprofits developing new tech tools are among the biggest users of lean-start-up ideas.
Upwell, an ocean-conservation organization founded in 2011, scans the web for lively ocean-related discussions and then pushes to turn them into full-fledged movements through social-media campaigns.
Lean principles urge groups to steer clear of “vanity metrics,” such as site visits, that may sound impressive but don’t reveal much. Upwell tracks only one number—“social mentions”—the much smaller group of people who actually say something about an issue online.
After identifying a hot topic, Upwell tries to assemble a social-media strategy within 24 hours—what it calls a “minimum viable campaign.”
“We do the least amount of work to get something out the door that will get results and information,” says Rachel Dearborn, Upwell’s campaign director.
Campaigns that don’t catch on are quickly scrapped. But campaigns that do catch on get more time, energy, and money from Upwell.
After Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, a prominent writer on ocean issues and others began pushing the idea that revitalizing the oyster beds near New York City could help protect the shore from future storm surges. Upwell’s “I (Oyster) New York” campaign featured a catchy logo and led to an even bigger spike in attention.

‘Build-Measure-Learn’

Some organizations that could hardly be called start-ups are also using lean principles. GuideStar, the 20-year-old aggregator of financial information about charities, is using the lean approach to develop tools more quickly that meet the needs of its users.
The lean process promotes short “build-measure-learn” cycles, in which a group frequently updates a product or service based on what it hears from its customers.
GuideStar and the Nonprofit Finance Fund have developed a tool called Financial Scan that allows charities to see how they compare with similar groups on various financial measures, such as their mix of earned revenue and grant funds.
When it analyzed who was using the tool, GuideStar found heavy interest from both foundations and accounting firms, says Evan Paul, GuideStar’s senior director of products and marketing.
In the future, he says, GuideStar may create three versions of Financial Scan to meet the distinct interests of charities, foundations, and accountants.
“We want to get more specific about how people are using our data to make decisions so that we can help make those decisions better and faster,” Mr. Paul says….

Lean Start-Up: a Glossary of Terms for a Hot New Management Approach

Build-Measure-Learn

Instead of spending considerable time developing a product or service for a big rollout, organizations should consider using a continuous feedback loop: “build” a program or service, even if it is not fully fleshed out; “measure” how clients are affected; and “learn” by improving the program or going in a new direction. Repeat the cycle.

Minimum Viable Product

An early version of a product or service that may be lacking some features. This approach allows an organization to obtain feedback from clients and quickly determine the usefulness of a product or service and how to improve it.

Get Out of the Building

To determine whether a product or service is needed, talk to clients and share your ideas with them before investing heavily.

A/B Testing

Create two versions of a product or service, show them to different groups, and see which performs best.

Failing Fast

By quickly realizing that a product or service isn’t viable, organizations save time and money and gain valuable information for their next effort.

Pivot

Making a significant change in strategy when the early testing of a minimum viable product shows that the product or service isn’t working or isn’t needed.

Vanity Metrics

Measures that seem to provide a favorable picture but don’t accurately capture the impact of a product. An example might be a tally of website page views. A more meaningful measure—or an “actionable metric,” in the lean lexicon—might be the number of active users of an online service.
Sources: The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries; The Ultimate Dictionary of Lean for Social Good, a publication by Lean Impact”