Americas

More Power to the People: How Cities Are Letting Data Flow

Curated on February 10, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Stephen Taylor at People4SmarterCities: “Smart cities understand that engaging the public in decision-making is vital to enhancing services and ensuring accountability. Here are three ideas that show how cities are embracing new technologies and opening up data to spur civic participation and improve citizens’ lives.

City Texts Help Keep Food on the Table
In San Francisco, about a third of the 52,000 people that receive food stamps are disenrolled from the program because they miss certain deadlines, such as filing quarterly reports with the city’s Human Services Agency. To help keep recipients up to date on their status, the nonprofit organization Code for America worked with the city agency to create Promptly, an open-source software platform that sends alerts by text message when citizens need to take action to keep their benefits. Not only does it help ensure that low-income residents keep food on the table, it also helps the department run more efficiently as less staff time is spent on re-enrollments.
Fired Up in Los Angeles Over Open Data
For the Los Angeles Fire Department, its work is all about responding to citizens. Not only does it handle fire and medical calls, it’s also the first fire agency in the U.S. to gather and post data on its emergency-response times on the Internet through a program called FireStat. The data gives citizens the opportunity to review metrics such as the amount of time it takes for stations to process emergency calls, the time for firefighters to leave the station and the travel time to the incident for each of its 102 firehouses throughout the city. The goal of FireStat is to see where and how response times can be improved, while increasing management accountability….(More)”

Moovit Crowdsources Public Transit Data, So You'll Never Get Stuck Waiting For The Bus Again

Curated on February 7, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ariel Schwartz at Co.Exist: “There are few things more frustrating than rushing to the bus, only to find out that it’s delayed indefinitely. Or arriving at the subway stop to find hundreds of others waiting for the same delayed train, making your chances of entry onto the next car nearly impossible.
In cities with open data, localized transit apps with real-time transit updates can alleviate the problem, but those apps aren’t available everywhere—and in most cases, they don’t offer up information about service alerts, like bus stops relocated due to construction.
Moovit, an Israeli startup that recently raised $50 million for its app, which takes a lot of the headache out of navigating public transportation. Available in over 500 cities globally, Moovit uses a combination of official transit information and crowdsourced live updates to provide accurate information on a city’s public transportation city at any given moment.
Getting started with the app is fairly intuitive; just put in your starting location and destination and Moovit spits out the best way to get there. It also notifies you when you’re getting close to your stop—a bonus in cities with transportation systems that don’t always make that clear (ahem, San Francisco)….
The vision for Moovit goes beyond public transportation (just look at the company’s investor list, which includes BMW i Ventures). “We want to make this an omni-search for non-car owners, including bike, taxi, and carsharing services,” says Erez. Later this year, Moovit plans to make a number of announcements around integrating multiple means of transportation into the app. (More)“

Training the next generation of public leaders

Curated on February 5, 2015July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Thanks to the generous support of the Knight Foundation, this term the Governance Lab Academy – a training program designed to promote civic engagement and innovation – is launching a series of online coaching programs.
Geared to the teams and individuals inside and outside of government planning to undertake a new project or trying to figure out how to make an existing project even more effective and scalable, these programs are designed to help participants working in civic engagement and innovation develop effective projects from idea to implementation.
Convened by leading experts in their fields, coaching programs meet exclusively online once a week for four weeks or every other week for eight weeks. They include frequent and constructive feedback, customized and original learning materials, peer-to-peer support, mentoring by topic experts and individualized coaching from those with policy, technology, and domain expertise.
There is no charge to participants but each program is limited to 8-10 project teams or individuals.
You can see the current roster of programs below and check out the website for more information (including FAQs), to sign up and to suggest a new program.

Citizen Science on the Web, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Civic Tech for Local Legislatures and Legislators, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Freedom of Information and FOIA Project Coaching: Breaking Down the Walls and Opening Up Communications, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Citizen Engagement Projects, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Tech Procurement Projects: Making the Supply Chain Work, starting the week of March 16, 2015.
Leveraging Crowds in the Public Sector, starting the week of March 23, 2015.
Open Source Technology Practices For Civic Engagement Projects, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Humanitarian Innovation Project Collaborative, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Lab Design: Bringing Agility and Empiricism to Public Problems, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Open Data Data-Driven Decisions for All, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Data Analytics for Change, dates TBD.
Open Contracting Projects, dates TBD.

Faculty includes:

Brian Behlendorf, Managing Director at Mithril Capital Management and Co-Founder Apache
Alexandra Clare, Founder of Iraq Re:Coded
Brian Forde, Senior Former Advisor to the U.S. CTO, White House Office of Science Technology and Policy
Francois Grey, Coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, Geneva
Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership
Clay Johnson, CEO of The Department for Better Technology and Former Presidential Innovation Fellow
Benjamin Kallos, New York City Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations of the New York City Council
Karim Lakhani, Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School
Amen Ra Mashariki, Chief Analytics Officer of New York City
Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA
Miriam Nisbet, Former Director of the Office of Government Information Services
Beth Noveck, Founder and CEO of The GovLab
Tiago Peixoto, Open Government Specialist at The World Bank
Arnaud Sahuguet, Chief Technology Officer of The GovLab
Joeri van den Steenhoven, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of MaRS Solutions Lab
Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of The GovLab

U.S. Public Participation Playbook

Curated on February 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to effectively evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics.
Public participation—where citizens help shape and implement government programs—is a foundation of open, transparent, and engaging government services. From emergency management, town hall discussions and regulatory development to science and education, better engagement with those who use public services can measurably improve those services for everyone.
Developing a U.S. Public Participation Playbook is an open government priority included in both the first and second U.S. Open Government National Action Plans as part of the United States effort to increase public integrity in government programs. This resource reflects the commitment of the government and civic partners to measurably improve participation programs, and is designed using the same inclusive principles that it champions.

How is the playbook structured?

We needed to create a resource that combines best practices and suggested performance metrics for public servants to use to evaluate and build better services — to meet this need, based on discussions with federal managers and stakeholders, we identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category we identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider, resources and training. We then provide suggested performance metrics for each main category.
This is only the beginning, however, and we hope the plays will quickly expand and enrich. The U.S. Public Participation Playbook was not just designed for a more open government — it was designed collaboratively through a more open government…(More)”

Have a smartphone? This start-up will turn you into a lobbyist.

Curated on February 2, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

J.D. Harrison in the Washington Post: “…We needed a solution; some way to turn that passion into action right there in the moment.”
So she built one – but not on her own. In late 2012, Hartsock lured two entrepreneurs, Jeb Ory and Patrick Stoddart, away from tech start-ups they were already running to launch a new venture called Phone2Action. The company now provides an online and mobile platform that helps private companies, nonprofits and trade associations connect their customers and supporters with local and federal policymakers.
In short, the company’s clients – which include the Consumer Electronics Association, the American Heart Association, Ford and ridesharing company Lyft – pay a subscription for access to Phone2Action’s software tools, which allows them to build digital campaign pages featuring stories or information that illustrate the importance of, say, patent reform legislation (for CEA) or eased transportation regulations (for Lyft). On the side of the page, visitors can input their name, Zip code and e-mail address, and the site will automatically populate an e-mail, tweet and Facebook post (authored by, in this case, CEA or Lyft) expressing support and urging policymakers to vote in favor of the cause or legislation.
One more click, and those messages are automatically sent to the inboxes and social media feeds of the proper elected officials, based on the individual’s Zip code.
The idea, Ory said, is two-fold: One, to give individuals an easier way to connect with elected officials, and two, to give Phone2Action’s clients a more effective way to harness the lobbying power of their supporters. What made that possible, he explained, was really the proliferation of smartphones….While Phone2Action’s campaign model has proven viable, several hurdles still stand in the company’s way – not the least of which is the sense of powerlessness felt by many Americans when it comes to public policy and today’s legislative process…(More).”

The new scientific revolution: Reproducibility at last

Curated on January 29, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post:”…Reproducibility is a core scientific principle. A result that can’t be reproduced is not necessarily erroneous: Perhaps there were simply variables in the experiment that no one detected or accounted for. Still, science sets high standards for itself, and if experimental results can’t be reproduced, it’s hard to know what to make of them.
“The whole point of science, the way we know something, is not that I trust Isaac Newton because I think he was a great guy. The whole point is that I can do it myself,” said Brian Nosek, the founder of a start-up in Charlottesville, Va., called the Center for Open Science. “Show me the data, show me the process, show me the method, and then if I want to, I can reproduce it.”
The reproducibility issue is closely associated with a Greek researcher, John Ioannidis, who published a paper in 2005 with the startling title “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.”
Ioannidis, now at Stanford, has started a program to help researchers improve the reliability of their experiments. He said the surge of interest in reproducibility was in part a reflection of the explosive growth of science around the world. The Internet is a factor, too: It’s easier for researchers to see what everyone else is doing….
Errors can potentially emerge from a practice called “data dredging”: When an initial hypothesis doesn’t pan out, the researcher will scan the data for something that looks like a story. The researcher will see a bump in the data and think it’s significant, but the next researcher to come along won’t see it — because the bump was a statistical fluke….
So far about 7,000 people are using that service, and the center has received commitments for $14 million in grants, with partners that include the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, Nosek said.
Another COS initiative will help researchers register their experiments in advance, telling the world exactly what they plan to do, what questions they will ask. This would avoid the data-dredging maneuver in which researchers who are disappointed go on a deep dive for something publishable.
Nosek and other reformers talk about “publication bias.” Positive results get reported, negative results ignored. Someone reading a journal article may never know about all the similar experiments that came to naught….(More).”

Would You Share Private Data for the Good of City Planning?

Curated on January 28, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Henry Grabar at NextCity: “The proliferation of granular data on automobile movement, drawn from smartphones, cab companies, sensors and cameras, is sharpening our sense of how cars travel through cities. Panglossian seers believe the end of traffic jams is nigh.
This information will change cities beyond their roads. Real-time traffic data may lead to reworked intersections and new turning lanes, but understanding cars is in some ways a stand-in for understanding people. There’s traffic as traffic and traffic as proxy, notes Brett Goldstein, an urban science fellow at the University of Chicago who served as that city’s first data officer from 2011 to 2013. “We’d be really naive, in thinking about how we make cities better,” he says, “to only consider traffic for what it is.”
Even a small subset of a city’s car data goes a long way. Consider the raft of discrete findings that have emerged from the records of New York City taxis.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by Paolo Santi, showed that cab-sharing could reduce taxi mileage by 40 percent. Their counterparts at NYU, led by Claudio Silva, mapped activity around hubs like train stations and airports and during hurricanes.
“You start to build actual models of how people move, and where they move,” observes Silva, the head of disciplines at NYU’s Center for Science and Urban Progress (CUSP). “The uses of this data for non-traffic engineering are really substantial.”…
Many of these ideas are hypothetical, for the moment, because so-called “granular” data is so hard to come by. That’s one reason the release of New York’s taxi cab data spurred so many studies — it’s an oasis of information in a desert of undisclosed records. Corporate entreaties, like Uber’s pending data offering to Boston, don’t always meet researchers’ standards. “It’s going to be a lot of superficial data, and it’s not clear how usable it’ll be at this point,” explains Sarah Kaufman, the digital manager at NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation….
Yet Americans seem much more alarmed by the collection of location data than other privacy breaches.
How can data utopians convince the hoi polloi to share their comings and goings? One thought: Make them secure. Mike Flowers, the founder of New York City’s Office of Data Analytics and a fellow at NYU’s CUSP, told me it might be time to consider establishing a quasi-governmental body that people would trust to make their personal data anonymous before they are channeled into government projects. (New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission did not do a very good job at this, which led to Gawker publishing a dozen celebrity cab rides.)
Another idea is to frame open data as a beneficial trade-off. “When people provide information, they want to realize the benefit of the information,” Goldstein says.
Users tell the routing company Waze where they are and get a smoother commute in return. Progressive Insurance offers drivers a “Snapshot” tracker. If it likes the way you drive, the company will lower your rates. It’s not hard to imagine that, in the long run, drivers will be penalized for refusing such a device…. (More).”

Opening travel spending through civic intelligence, participation and co-creation

Curated on January 28, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Joel Salas Suárez at the Open Government Partnership Blog: “When we were appointed by the Senate as Commissioners of the Access to Information Institute in Mexico (IFAI), we identified two high profile issues that had negatively affected the Institute’s image: the acquisition of its new building and the lack of transparency on international travel expenditure of the former Commissioners.

IFAI has to lead by example, so my fellow commissioners and I decided to tackle these two problems with transparency actions to send a clear message to the Mexican society and the international community in our first hundred days in office. First we created the website sede.ifai.mx to publish all the information about the new building procurement (a 45.6 million USD lease). Secondly, we decided to start our first civic innovation project, a joint venture with civil society organizations, to find the best way to publish information related to travel spending by IFAI’s public servants.
Travel expenditure of IFAI is comparatively smaller. During 2013 it allotted to 186,760 USD, 0.5% of the Institute’s budget (38.2 million USD). However, this expenditure has historically been of public interest and it should be. According to the 2013 Mexican Government Expenditure Review (the latest available) the Federal Level (Executive, Legislative and Judicial Powers, and Autonomous organs) spent close to 633 million USD in official travel (Chapter 3000, concept 3700). Therefore, we decided to tackle the problem and design a platform that would allow us to effectively publish information related to the public money spent on travel by public officials and the results obtained during these trips.
In order to do this, we worked with civil society experts in public participation, accountability and technology, Codeando México, SocialTIC and IMCO. Together we launched a public challenge to create an open source web application to publish information on official travel spending.
The challenge #RetoViajesTransparentes was a very successful experience. Close to a hundred participants registered 14 projects that competed to develop an app that IFAI would officially use and to win a 3,500 USD prize. The jury selected 3 finalists, who presented their projects on a public Google Hangout. The winner app is named Viajes Claros and is being used to publish travel expenditure information of IFAI at viajesclaros.ifai.mx.
This challenge has allowed us to shift focus from the inputs of official travel (i.e. the money spent) to the outputs or results attained in each trip. Viajes Claros opens relevant information to understand and evaluate the activities performed by the public servants during their trips. It also allowed us to co-create with society an open source tool that can be replicated in Mexico and other countries….(More)”.

Citizen Science in America’s DNA

Curated on January 27, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Keynote by NOAA Chief Scientist, Dr. Richard Spinrad at the forum entitled, Tracking a Changing Climate: “Citizen science is part of America’s DNA. For centuries, citizens not trained in science have helped shaped our understanding of Earth.
Thomas Jefferson turned Lewis and Clark into citizen scientists when he asked them to explore the landscape, wildlife and weather during their journeys of the West.They investigated plants, animals and geography, and came back with maps, sketches and journals. These new data were some of the first pieces of environmental intelligence defining our young nation. President Jefferson instilled citizen science in my own agency’s DNA by creating the Survey of the Coast, a NOAA legacy agency focused on charting and protecting the entire coast of our Nation.
The National Weather Service’s Cooperative Observer Program, begun in 1890, is an outstanding example of citizen science. Last year, NOAA honored an observer who has provided weather observations every day for 80 years. Volunteer citizen scientists have transcribed more than 68,000 pages of Arctic ship logs, adding to the long-term climate record by populating a database with historic weather and sea ice observations. Also, citizen scientists are providing new estimates of cyclone intensity by interpreting satellite images.
There is tremendous value in the capability of citizen scientists to feed local data into their own communities’ forecasts. In September 2013, for example, formal observation systems and tracking instruments were washed out when extreme floods struck Colorado and New Mexico. By ensuring that real-time forecasts were still integrated into the National Weather Service Flood Warning System, the reports of about 200 citizen scientists contributed to what has been called the best mapped extreme rain event in Colorado history and possibly nationwide.
The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) Network played a pivotal role in this mapping. CoCoRaHS also shows how citizen science can help make data collection straightforward and inexpensive. To measure the impact and size of hail, for example, it uses a Styrofoam sheet covered with tin foil, creating a “hail pad” that has proven to be quite accurate.
The recognized value of citizen science is growing rapidly. NOAA has an app to crowdsource real-time precipitation data. If you feel a raindrop, or spot a snowflake, report it through NOAA’s mPING app. Precipitation reports have already topped 600,000, and the National Weather Service uses them to fine-tune forecasts…(More).”