Index: Trust in Institutions

Curated on Posted on by Shruti Sannon

The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on trust in institutions and was originally published in 2013.

Trust in Government

  • How many of the global public feel that their governments listen to them: 17%
  • How much of the global population trusts in institutions: almost half 
  • The number of Americans who trust institutions: less than half
  • How many people globally believe that business leaders and government officials will tell the truth when confronted with a difficult issue: Less than one-fifth
  • The average level of confidence amongst citizens in 25 OECD countries:
    • In national government: 40%, down from 45% in 2007
    • In financial institutions: 43%
    • In public services such as local police and healthcare: 72% and 71% respectively

Executive Government

  • How many Americans trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always or most of the time” in September 2013: 19%
  • Those who trust the “men and women … who either hold or are running for public office”: 46%
  • Number of Americans who express a great deal or fair amount of trust in:
    • Local government: 71%
    • State government: 62%
    • Federal government: 52%
  • How many Americans trust in the ability of “the American people” to make judgments about political issues facing the country:  61%, declining every year since 2009
  • Those who have trust and confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle international problems: 49%
  • Number of Americans who feel “angry” at the federal government: 3 in 10, all-time high since first surveyed in 1997

Congress

  • Percentage of Americans who say “the political system can work fine, it’s the members of Congress that are the problem” in October 2013: 58%
  • Following the government shutdown, number of Americans who stated that Congress would work better if nearly every member was replaced next year: nearly half
  • Those who think that even an entire overhaul of Congress would not make much difference: 4 in 10 
  • Those who think that “most members of Congress have good intentions, it’s the political system that is broken” in October 2013: 32%

Trust in Media

  • Global trust in media (traditional, social, hybrid, owned, online search): 57% and rising
  • The percentage of Americans who say they have “a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the mass media”: 44% – the lowest level since first surveyed in 1997
  • How many Americans see the mass media as too liberal: 46%
    • As too conservative: 13%
    • As “just about right”: 37%
  • The number of Americans who see the press as fulfilling the role of political watchdog and believe press criticism of political leaders keeps them from doing things that should not be done: 68%
  • The proportion of Americans who have “only a little/not at all” level of trust in Facebook to protect privacy and personal information: three in four
    • In Google: 68%
    • In their cell phone provider: 63%

Trust in Industry

  • Global trust in business: 58%
  • How much of the global public trusts financial institutions: 50%
  • Proportion of the global public who consider themselves informed about the banking scandals: more than half
  • Of those, how many Americans report they now trust banks less: almost half
  • Number of respondents globally who say they trust tech companies to do what’s right: 77%, most trusted industry
  • Number of consumers across eight markets who were “confident” or “somewhat confident” that the tech sector can provide long-term solutions to meet the world’s toughest challenges: 76%

Sources

Kansas City Measures Performance through Online Dashboard

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

GovTech: “To follow through on its commitment to provide more visibility into city performance, Kansas City, Mo., launched KCStat Dashboard on Oct. 22, an online tool that displays progress on city goals and objectives.
Developed by government data company Socrata, the dashboard is the city’s way of offering residents more information about government performance with real-time data, said Julie Steenson, a performance analyst for the city. Upon full implementation, the dashboard will display various statistics, from citizen satisfaction percentages to progress on maintenance and repair tasks.
“It’s been a real evolutionary project,” Steenson said. “We never had a way for the citizens or even the elected officials to see our data at a glance.”
Kansas City’s KCStat program began in December 2011 as a data collection effort that focused on service areas that drew a significant number of public complaints: street maintenance, water line maintenance, water billing, customer service, code enforcement and animal control.
In January, the city council updated its 24 major priorities (developed with public input) into six key areas — public infrastructure, economic development, public safety, healthy communities, neighborhood livability and governance — and sought a way to make their ambitions both measurable and publicly available.
Answering this call, Socrata offered the city a platform called GovStat, a program it announced in March as a way for government leaders to integrate data to decision-making while engaging citizens at the same time.
Key features of the platform, according to Socrata’s March product announcement, include an easy-to-use interface (without the need for user licenses), and real-time dashboards that can be shared through a simple drag-and-drop system.
Mayor Sly James praised the tool for its benefits related to transparency.
“The KCStat Dashboard is the city’s way of helping residents see how we’re doing at our job of serving them,” said James in a city release. “Our residents deserve nothing less than a city government based on data-driven results, and KCStat is a great tool for benchmarking our results.”

What's Different that Makes Open Data an Infrastructure?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Christopher Thomas: “It wasn’t too long ago that governments remained pretty guarded with their data. It really did not matter who the data steward was, as each discipline had its “reasons” for keeping data out of the hands of others…
The mapping and GIS industry was no stranger to the resistance to open data.  However the concerns were slightly different than the governments’ concerns.  Perhaps this was due to the time, effort, and money required to develop the data by staff.  Mapping and GIS fought a valiant battle that this data was not information subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but rather an asset subject to different rules of funding and cost recovery.
Recently, attitudes have been changing as mapping and GIS data are being looked at as more of an infrastructure, because governments now see the importance of including it as part of their daily operation. …
So what’s different today? Well, governments can avoid data dumps that leave important members of your team wondering how the data is being used.  Or better yet, wondering how many times your old data has been exchanged and used without new or updated data being considered. You later learn that someone has used your old data on a project that has come back to haunt you.  The major difference today is that there is an ability to extend this infrastructure as a web service.  If you publish current data on websites or portals, data can now be downloaded for use in various products or connected to apps. As Mark Head, chief data officer for the city of Philadelphia puts it, “web services are the ‘secret sauce’ to open data.” Governments can simply extend map and GIS data for adoption by business startups and civic hackers, for example, with the confidence that current data is being used.”

Open Government and Its Constraints

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog entry by Panthea Lee: “Open government” is everywhere. Search the term and you’ll find OpenGovernment.org, OpenTheGovernment.org, Open Government Initiative, Open Gov Hub and the Open Gov Foundation; you’ll find open government initiatives for New York City, Boston, Kansas, Virginia, Tennessee and the list goes on; you’ll find dedicated open government plans for the White House, State Department, USAID, Treasury, Justice Department, Commerce, Energy and just about every other major federal agency. Even the departments of Defense and Homeland Security are in on open government.
And that’s just in the United States.
There is Open Government Africa, Open Government in the EU and Open Government Data. The World Bank has an Open Government Data Toolkit and recently announced a three-year initiative to help developing countries leverage open data. And this week, over 1,000 delegates from over 60 countries are in London for the annual meeting of the Open Government Partnership, which has grown from 8 to 60 member states in just two years….
Many of us have no consensus or clarity on just what exactly “open government” is, what we hope to achieve from it or how to measure our progress. Too often, our initiatives are designed through the narrow lenses of our own biases and without a concrete understanding of those they are intended for — both those in and out of government.
If we hope to realize the promise of more open governments, let’s be clear about the barriers we face so that we may start to overcome them.
Barrier 1: “Open Gov” is…?
Open government is… not new, for starters….
Barrier 2: Open Gov is Not Inclusive
The central irony of open government is that it’s often not “open” at all….
Barrier 3: Open Gov Lacks Empathy
Open government practitioners love to speak of “the citizen” and “the government.” But who exactly are these people? Too often, we don’t really know. We are builders, makers and creators with insufficient understanding of whom we are building, making and creating for…On the flip side, who do we mean by “the government?” And why, gosh darn it, is it so slow to innovate? Simply put, “the government” is comprised of individual people working in environments that are not conducive to innovation….
For open government to realize its potential, we must overcome these barriers.”

The GovLab Academy: A Community and Platform for Learning and Teaching Governance Innovations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Today the Governance Lab (The GovLab) launches The GovLab Academy at the Open Government Partnership Annual Meeting in London.
Available at www.thegovlabacademy.org, the Academy is a free online community for those wanting to teach and learn how to solve public problems and improve lives using innovations in governance. A partnership between The GovLab  at New York University and MIT Media Lab’s Online Learning Initiative, the site launching today offers curated videos, podcasts, readings and activities designed to enable the purpose driven learner to deepen his or her practical knowledge at her own pace.
The GovLab Academy is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “The GovLab Academy addresses a growing need among policy makers at all levels – city, federal and global – to leverage advances in technology to govern differently,” says Carol Coletta, Vice President of Community and National Initiatives at the Knight Foundation.  “By connecting the latest technological innovations to a community of willing mentors, the Academy has the potential to catalyze more experimentation in a sector that badly needs it.”
Initial topics include using data to improve policymaking and cover the role of big data, urban analytics, smart disclosure and open data in governance. A second track focuses on online engagement and includes practical strategies for using crowdsourcing to solicit ideas, organize distributed work and gather data.  The site features both curated content drawn from a variety of sources and original interviews with innovators from government, civil society, the tech industry, the arts and academia talking about their work around the world implementing innovations in practice, what worked and what didn’t, to improve real people’s lives.
Beth Noveck, Founder and Director of The GovLab, describes its mission: “The Academy is an experiment in peer production where every teacher is a learner and every learner a teacher. Consistent with The GovLab’s commitment to measuring what works, we want to measure our success by the people contributing as well as consuming content. We invite everyone with ideas, stories, insights and practical wisdom to contribute to what we hope will be a thriving and diverse community for social change”.”

Crowdsourcing the sounds of cities’ quiet spots

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Finding a place in the city to collect your thoughts and enjoy some quietude is a rare thing. While startups such as Breather are set to open up private spaces for work and relaxation in several US cities, a new project called Stereopublic is hoping to map the ones already there, recruiting citizens to collect the sounds of those spaces.
Participants can download the free iOS app created by design studio Freerange Future, which enables them to become an ‘earwitness’. When they discover a tranquil spot in their city, they can use their GPS co-ordinates to record its exact location on the Stereopublic map, as well as record a 30-second sound clip and take a photo to give others a better idea of what it’s like. The team then works with sound experts to create quiet tours of each participating city, which currently includes Adelaide, London, LA, New York City, Singapore and 26 other global cities. The video below offers some more information about the project:

 

Boosting Innovation by Rethinking Government Procurement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sarah Rich in Government Technology: “Earlier this month, Philadelphia announced a new 12-week accelerator program called FastFWD that will soon select 10 entrepreneurs to develop innovative projects around public safety challenges. One end goal is that the city will award contracts to several of the projects developed during the program.
FastFWD comes on the heels of a newly launched innovation center by North Carolina that will let the state test technologies before purchasing them. Both initiatives are attempts to ease frustration with government procurement processes that tend to discourage innovation and limit flexibility.
The traditional government RFP process — with its long timelines, complex rules and tight guidelines around liability — tends to scare off some of the IT industry’s most innovative companies, said Dugan Petty, former Oregon CIO and procurement director…In addition, traditional RFPs can rob both vendors and customers of the ability to adjust projects as new needs are discovered. Jurisdictions may not fully understand their business requirements when an RFP is drawn up, Petty said, but contractors often can’t deviate from the scope of the RFP once the contract is awarded….
To help rethink some of these restrictions and find better ways to procure technology, North Carolina plans to test products before purchasing them in the state’s new innovation center… Philadelphia’s bid to improve procurement involves incubating startups through the city’s new accelerator program. Entrepreneurs and the city will work together upfront to identify community problems and then develop innovative solutions, according to Story Bellows, co-director of Mayor Michael Nutter’s Office of New Urban Mechanics…
Petty, who now serves as a senior fellow for e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government, says both North Carolina and Philadelphia are developing more effective procurement practices. “The key thing here is this is now a new approach that is helping to evolve procurement technology in a way that keeps up with what’s out there on the industry side,” Petty said. “I think a lot of people should be evaluating these incubator move-to-contract scenarios because they minimize the risk of the project.”

Smart Citizens

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

FutureEverything: “This publication aims to shift the debate on the future of cities towards the central place of citizens, and of decentralised, open urban infrastructures. It provides a global perspective on how cities can create the policies, structures and tools to engender a more innovative and participatory society. The publication contains a series of 23 short essays representing some of the key voices developing an emerging discourse around Smart Citizens.  Contributors include:

  • Dan Hill, Smart Citizens pioneer and CEO of communications research centre and transdisciplinary studio Fabrica on why Smart Citizens Make Smart Cities.
  • Anthony Townsend, urban planner, forecaster and author of Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia on the tensions between place-making and city-making on the role of mobile technologies in changing the way that people interact with their surroundings.
  • Paul Maltby, Director of the Government Innovation Group and of the Open Data and Transparency in the UK Cabinet Office on how government can support a smarter society.
  • Aditya Dev Sood, Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies, presents polarised hypothetical futures for India in 2025 that argues for the use of technology to bridge gaps in social inequality.
  • Adam Greenfield, New York City-based writer and urbanist, on Recuperating the Smart City.

Editors: Drew Hemment, Anthony Townsend
Download Here.“

Residents remix their neighborhood’s streets through platform

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “City residents may not have degrees in urban planning, but their everyday use of high streets, parks and main roads means they have some valuable input into what’s best for their local environment. A new website called Streetmix is helping to empower citizens, enabling them to become architects with an easy-to-use street-building platform.
Developed by Code for America, the site greets users with a colorful cartoon representation of a typical street, split into segments of varying widths. Designers can then swap and change each piece into road, cycle paths, pedestrian areas, bus stops, bike racks and other amenities, as well as alter their dimensions. Users can create their own perfect high street or use the exact measurements of their own neighborhood to come up with new propositions for planned construction work. Indeed, Streetmix has already found use among residents and organizations to demonstrate how to better use the local space available. Kansas City’s Bike Walk KC has utilized the platform to show how new bike lanes could figure in an upcoming study of traffic flow in the region, while New Zealand’s Transport Blog has presented several alternatives to current street layouts in Auckland.
Streetmix is an easy-to-use visualization tool that can help amateurs present their ideas to local authorities in a more coherent way, potentially increasing the chances of politicians hearing calls for change. Are there other ways to help laymen express complex ideas more eloquently?”
Spotted by Murtaza Patel, written by Springwise

7 Tactics for 21st-Century Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Abhi Nemani, co-director of Code for America: “Be it the burden placed on them by shrinking federal support, or the opportunity presented by modern technology, 21st-century cities are finding new ways to do things. For four years, Code for America has worked with dozens of cities, each finding creative ways to solve neighborhood problems, build local capacity and steward a national network. These aren’t one-offs. Cities are championing fundamental, institutional reforms to commit to an ongoing innovation agenda.
Here are a few of the ways how:

  1. …Create an office of new urban mechanics or appoint a chief innovation officer…
  2. …Appoint a chief data officer or create an office of performance management/enhancement…
  3. …Adopt the Gov.UK Design Principles, and require plain, human language on every interface….
  4. …Share open source technology with a sister city or change procurement rules to make it easier to redeploy civic tech….
  5. …Work with the local civic tech community and engage citizens for their feedback on city policy through events, tech and existing forums…
  6. …Create an open data policy and adopt open data specifications…
  7. …Attract tech talent into city leadership, and create training opportunities citywide to level up the tech literacy for city staff…”