Americas

How to build customer-focused government

Curated on November 30, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

GCN: “What: A report on improving government responsiveness, “A Customer-Centric Upgrade for California Government,” from the state’s Little Hoover Commission, an independent state agency charged with recommending ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of state programs…..The Commission believes state agencies can improve the public’s trust and confidence in government by that focusing on the customer. Delivering fast and convenient services when residents apply for benefits, pay utility bills, register their vehicles and view taxes and all from one personalized log-in account, could be a step towards becoming more customer focused.

Among the Commission’s recommendations:

Create a digital services team to recruit top technologists, engineers and designers into public service for the state.
Research customer experiences for continuous improvement and use the data to refine how agencies deliver services
Build multiple service pathways, including mail, email, telephone, fax, in person, online or on a mobile device.
Move beyond mobile apps with the goal of offering the most options for Californians to conveniently access government services whatever the platform they choose to use (including in-person and on paper).
Unlock the promise of government data to improve transparency and inform decision making.
Leverage data resources by ensuring information is available in formats that can be leveraged by others to get information to Californians where they already go to seek it.
Connect the state’s technology sector with state government leaders and welcome innovators to help address some of the state’s most pressing challenges.

Takeaway: The Commission believes engaging with the public in a way that makes sense in the 21^st century will improve each Californian’s interactions with government, which will in turn improve residents’ trust in the state and the efficiency of government processes. Read the full report here.”

Freedom of Information, Right to Access Information, Open Data: Who is at the Table?

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

Elizabeth Shepherd in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs: “Many national governments have adopted the idea of the ‘right to access information’ (RTI) or ‘freedom of information’ (FOI) as an essential element of the rights of citizens to freedom of opinion and expression, human rights, trust in public discourse and transparent, accountable and open government. Over 100 countries worldwide have introduced access to information legislation: 50+ in Europe; a dozen in Africa; 20 in the Americas and Caribbean; more than 15 in Asia and the Pacific; and two in the Middle East (Banisar, 2014). This article will provide an overview of access to information legislation and focus on the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 as a case example. It will discuss the impact of the UK FOI Act on public authorities, with particular attention to records management implications, drawing on research undertaken by University College London. In the final section, it will reflect on relationships between access to information and open government data. If governments are moving to more openness, what implications might this have for those charged with implementing FOI and RTI policies, including for records management professionals?…(More)”

Tech and Innovation to Re-engage Civic Life

Curated on November 26, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Hollie Russon Gilman at the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “Sometimes even the best-intentioned policymakers overlook the power of people. And even the best-intentioned discussions on social impact and leveraging big data for the social sector can obscure the power of every-day people in their communities.

But time and time again, I’ve seen the transformative power of civic engagement when initiatives are structured well. For example, the other year I witnessed a high school student walk into a school auditorium one evening during Boston’s first-ever youth-driven participatory budgeting project. Participatory budgeting gives residents a structured opportunity to work together to identify neighborhood priorities, work in tandem with government officials to draft viable projects, and prioritize projects to fund. Elected officials in turn pledge to implement these projects and are held accountable to their constituents. Initially intrigued by an experiment in democracy (and maybe the free pizza), this student remained engaged over several months, because she met new members of her community; got to interact with elected officials; and felt like she was working on a concrete objective that could have a tangible, positive impact on her neighborhood.

For many of the young participants, ages 12-25, being part of a participatory budgeting initiative is the first time they are involved in civic life. Many were excited that the City of Boston, in collaboration with the nonprofit Participatory Budgeting Project, empowered young people with the opportunity to allocate $1 million in public funds. Through participating, young people gain invaluable civic skills, and sometimes even a passion that can fuel other engagements in civic and communal life.

This is just one example of a broader civic and social innovation trend. Across the globe, people are working together with their communities to solve seemingly intractable problems, but as diverse as those efforts are, there are also commonalities. Well-structured civic engagement creates the space and provides the tools for people to exert agency over policies. When citizens have concrete objectives, access to necessary technology (whether it’s postcards, trucks, or open data portals), and an eye toward outcomes, social change happens.

Using Technology to Distribute Expertise

Technology is allowing citizens around the world to participate in solving local, national, and global problems. When it comes to large, public bureaucracies, expertise is largely top-down and concentrated. Leveraging technology creates opportunities for people to work together in new ways to solve public problems. One way is through civic crowdfunding platforms like Citizinvestor.com, which cities can use to develop public sector projects for citizen support; several cities in Rhode Island, Oregon, and Philadelphia have successfully pooled citizen resources to fund new public works. Another way is through citizen science. Old Weather, a crowdsourcing project from the National Archives and Zooniverse, enrolls people to transcribe old British ship logs to identify climate change patterns. Platforms like these allow anyone to devote a small amount of time or resources toward a broader public good. And because they have a degree of transparency, people can see the progress and impact of their efforts. ….(More)”

Big Data and Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life

Curated on November 25, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Edward L. Glaeser et al: “New, “big” data sources allow measurement of city characteristics and outcome variables higher frequencies and finer geographic scales than ever before. However, big data will not solve large urban social science questions on its own. Big data has the most value for the study of cities when it allows measurement of the previously opaque, or when it can be coupled with exogenous shocks to people or place. We describe a number of new urban data sources and illustrate how they can be used to improve the study and function of cities. We first show how Google Street View images can be used to predict income in New York City, suggesting that similar image data can be used to map wealth and poverty in previously unmeasured areas of the developing world. We then discuss how survey techniques can be improved to better measure willingness to pay for urban amenities. Finally, we explain how Internet data is being used to improve the quality of city services….(More)”

Using prizes to spur innovation and government savings

Curated on November 25, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New report by R-Street: “In myriad sectors of the U.S. economy, from military technology to medical care, the federal government serves as the single-largest spender. As such, many of the innovations, inventions and discoveries that could propel economic growth in the future also would have a direct and measurable impact on federal spending.

To offer an incentive to research and development that yields significant taxpayer savings, we propose an “innovation savings program” that would serve as an alternative to the traditional patent system. The program would reward teams or individuals who develop discoveries or technologies that produce federal budget savings. In effect, a portion of those savings would be set aside for the discoverers. To be eligible for these rewards, the researchers and inventors would not receive patents on their discoveries or processes.

This perpetual, self-funded federal prize system would be based, in part, on the successful False Claims Act and Medicare Recovery Audit programs. Payouts would be administered by an independent or executive agency, verified by the Government Accountability Office and overseen by Congress to ensure fair and effective implementation.

New technologies developed through this process would be available immediately for generic commercialization, free of royalty fees. This could encourage innovation in sectors where patents and traditional research spending have lagged, while also bringing those innovations to market more quickly and affordably. Prize systems of this type have been in operation in the United States for more than 150 years, in the form of the False Claims Act, and date back to “qui tam” actions from the 13th century, thus predating the patent system by several hundred years. (Download PDF)

Citizens Police Data Project (Chicago)

Curated on November 25, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“The Citizens Police Data Project houses police disciplinary information obtained from the City of Chicago.

The information and stories we have collected here are intended as a resource for public oversight. Our aim is to create a new model of accountability between officers and citizens.

This is an evolving platform. We are constantly adding data, and we welcome questions, feedback, and collaboration.

28,567 allegations of misconduct were filed against Chicago Police Department officers between March 2011 and September 2015.

Less than 2% of those complaints resulted in any discipline.

Of those cases in which discipline is imposed, the vast majority result in a reprimand or a suspension of less than one week….(More)”

Analyzing 1.1 Billion NYC Taxi and Uber Trips

Curated on November 20, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Todd W. Schneider: “The New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission has released a staggeringly detailed historical dataset covering over 1.1 billion individual taxi trips in the city from January 2009 through June 2015. Taken as a whole, the detailed trip-level data is more than just a vast list of taxi pickup and drop off coordinates: it’s a story of New York. How bad is the rush hour traffic from Midtown to JFK? Where does the Bridge and Tunnel crowd hang out on Saturday nights? What time do investment bankers get to work? How has Uber changed the landscape for taxis? And could Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have made it from 72nd and Broadway to Wall Street in less than 30 minutes? The dataset addresses all of these questions and many more.

I mapped the coordinates of every trip to local census tracts and neighborhoods, then set about in an attempt to extract stories and meaning from the data. This post covers a lot, but for those who want to pursue more analysis on their own: everything in this post—the data, software, and code—is freely available. Full instructions to download and analyze the data for yourself are available on GitHub.

RethinkCityHall.org

Curated on November 18, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release (Boston): “Mayor Martin J. Walsh today announced the launch of RethinkCityHall.org, a website designed to encourage civic participation in the City Hall campus plan study, a one-year comprehensive planning process that will serve as a roadmap for the operation and design improvements to City Hall and the plaza.

This announcement is one of three interrelated efforts that the City is pursuing to reinvigorate and bring new life to both City Hall and City Hall Plaza. As part of the Campus Plan Request for Qualifications (RFQ) that was released on June 8, 2015, the City has selected Utile, a local architecture and planning firm, to partner with the city to lead the campus plan study. Utile is teamed with Grimshaw Architects and Reed Hilderbrand for the design phases of the effort.

“I am excited to have Utile on board as we work to identify ways to activate our civic spaces,” said Mayor Walsh. “As we progress in the planning process, it is important to take inventory of all of our assets to be able to identify opportunities for improvement. This study will help us develop a thoughtful and forward-thinking plan to reimagine City Hall and the plaza as thriving, healthy and innovative civic spaces.”

“We are energized by Mayor Walsh’s challenge and are excited to work with the various constituencies to develop an innovative plan,” said Tim Love, a principal at Utile. “Thinking about the functional, programmatic and experiential aspects of both the building and plaza provides the opportunity to fundamentally rethink City Hall.”

Both the City and Utile are committed to an open and interactive process that engages members of the public, community groups, professional organizations, and as part of that effort the website will include information about stakeholder meetings and public forums. Additionally, the website will be updated on an ongoing basis with the research, analysis, concepts and design scenarios generated by the consultant team….(More)”

Will Open Data Policies Contribute to Solving Development Challenges?

Curated on November 18, 2015July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Fabrizio Scrollini at IODC: “As the international open data charter gains momentum in the context of the wider development agenda related to the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations, a pertinent question to ask is: will open data policies contribute to solve development challenges? In this post I try to answer this question grounded in recent Latin American experience to contribute to a global debate.

Latin America has been exploring open data since 2013, when the first open data unconference (Abrelatam)and conference took place in Montevideo. In September 2015 in Santiago de Chile a vibrant community of activists, public servants, and entrepreneurs gathered in the third edition of Abrelatam and Condatos. It is now a more mature community. The days where it was sufficient to just open a few datasets and set up a portal are now gone. The focus of this meeting was on collaboration and use of data to address several social challenges.

Take for instance the health sector. Transparency in this sector is key to deliver better development goals. One of the panels at Condatos showed three different ways to use data to promote transparency and citizen empowerment in this sector. A tu servicio, a joint venture of DATA and the Uruguayan Ministry of Health helped to standardize and open public datasets that allowed around 30,000 users to improve the way they choose health providers. Government-civil society collaboration was crucial in this process in terms pooling resources and skills. The first prototype was only possible because some data was already open.

This contrasts with Cuidados Intensivos, a Peruvian endeavour aiming to provide key information about the health sector. Peruvian activists had to fill right to information requests, transform, and standardize data to eventually release it. Both experiences demanded a great deal of technical, policy, and communication craft. And both show the attitudes the public sector can take: either engaging or at the very best ignoring the potential of open data.

In the same sector look at a recent study dealing with Dengue and open data developed by our research initiative. If international organizations and countries were persuaded to adopt common standards for Dengue outbreaks, they could be potentially predicted if the right public data is available and standardized. Open data in this sector not only delivers accountability but also efficiency and foresight to allocate scarce resources.

Latin American countries – gathered in the open data group of the Red Gealc – acknowledge the increasing public value of open data. This group engaged constructively in Condatos with the principles enshrined in the charter and will foster the formalization of open data policies in the region. A data revolution won’t yield results if data is closed. When you open data you allow for several initiatives to emerge and show its value.

Once a certain level of maturity is reached in a particular sector, more than data is needed. Standards are crucial to ensure comparability and ease the collection, processing, and use of open government data. To foster and engage with open data users is also needed, as several strategies deployed by some Latin American cities show.

Coming back to our question: will open data policies contribute to solve development challenges? The Latin American experience shows evidence that it will….(More)”

Batea: a Wikipedia hack for medical students

Curated on November 18, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom Sullivan at HealthCareIT: “Medical students use Wikipedia in great numbers, but what if it were a more trusted source of information?

That’s the idea behind Batea, a piece of software that essentially collects data from clinical reference URLs medical students visit, then aggregates that information to share with WikiProject Medicine, such that relevant medical editors can glean insights about how best to enhance Wikipedia’s medical content.

Batea takes its name from the Spanish name for gold pan, according to Fred Trotter, a data journalist at DocGraph.

“It’s a data mining project,” Trotter explained, “so we wanted a short term that positively referenced mining.”

DocGraph built Batea with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and, prior to releasing it on Tuesday, operated beta testing pilots of the browser extension at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Texas, Houston.

UCSF, for instance, has what Trotter described as “a unique program where medical students edit Wikipedia for credit. They helped us tremendously in testing the alpha versions of the software.”

Wikipedia houses some 25,000 medical articles that receive more than 200 million views each month, according to the DocGraph announcement, while 8,000 pharmacology articles are read more than 40 million times a month.

DocGraph is encouraging medical students around the country to download the Batea extension – and anonymously donate their clinical-related browsing history. Should Batea gain critical mass, the potential exists for it to substantively enhance Wikipedia….(More)”