How Government Can Unlock Economic Benefits from Open Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

at GovTech: “Zillow, the fast-growing online real estate marketplace, couldn’t exist without public data. More specifically, it probably couldn’t exist without online public data relating to real estate sales information. The nation has more than 3,000 counties, each with its own registry of deeds where routine but vital data are recorded on every transaction involving the sale of homes, businesses and land. Until recently, much of that information resided in paper documents stored in filing cabinets. But as that information has moved online, its value has increased, making it possible for firms like Zillow to use the data in new ways, creating its popular “zestimate” forecast on home values.

Zillow is a prime example of how open data creates economic value. The Seattle-based company has grown rapidly since its launch in 2006, generating more than $78 million in revenue in its last financial quarter and employing more than 500 workers. But real estate firms aren’t the only businesses benefiting from data collected and published by government.
GovLab, a research laboratory run by New York University, publishes the Open Data 500, a list of companies that benefit from open data produced by the federal government. The list contains more than 15 categories of businesses, ranging from health care and education to energy, finance, legal and the environment. And the data flows from all the major agencies, including NASA, Defense, Transportation, Homeland Security and Labor….
Zillow’s road to success underscores the challenges that lie ahead if local government is going to grab its share of open data’s economic bonanza. One of the company’s biggest hurdles was to create a system that could integrate government data from thousands of databases in county government. “There’s no standard format, which is very frustrating,” Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, told Computerworld.com. “It’s up to us to figure out 3,000 different ways to ingest data and make sense of it…. More at GovTech”

An Introduction to the Economic Analysis of Open Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Research Note by Soichiro Takagi: “Open data generally refers to a movement in which public organizations provide data in a machine-readable format to the public, so that anyone can reuse the data. Open data is becoming an important phenomenon in Japan. At this moment, utilization of open data in Japan is emerging with collaborative efforts among small units of production such as individuals. These collaborations have been also observed in the Open Source Software (OSS) movement, but collaboration in open data is somewhat different in respect to small-scale, distributed collaboration. The aim of this research note is to share the phenomena of open data as an object of economic analysis with readers by describing the movement and providing a preliminary analysis. This note discusses how open data is associated with mass collaboration from the viewpoint of organizational economics. It also provides the results of empirical analysis on how the regional characteristics of municipalities affect the decision of local governments to conduct open data initiatives.”

The Free 'Big Data' Sources Everyone Should Know

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bernard Marr at Linkedin Pulse: “…The moves by companies and governments to put large amounts of information into the public domain have made large volumes of data accessible to everyone….here’s my rundown of some of the best free big data sources available today.

Data.gov

The US Government pledged last year to make all government data available freely online. This site is the first stage and acts as a portal to all sorts of amazing information on everything from climate to crime. To check it out, click here.

US Census Bureau

A wealth of information on the lives of US citizens covering population data, geographic data and education. To check it out, click here. To check it out, click here.

European Union Open Data Portal

As the above, but based on data from European Union institutions. To check it out, click here.

Data.gov.uk

Data from the UK Government, including the British National Bibliography – metadata on all UK books and publications since 1950. To check it out, click here.

The CIA World Factbook

Information on history, population, economy, government, infrastructure and military of 267 countries. To check it out, click here.

Healthdata.gov

125 years of US healthcare data including claim-level Medicare data, epidemiology and population statistics. To check it out, click here.

NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre

Health data sets from the UK National Health Service. To check it out, click here.

Amazon Web Services public datasets

Huge resource of public data, including the 1000 Genome Project, an attempt to build the most comprehensive database of human genetic information and NASA’s database of satellite imagery of Earth. To check it out, click here.

Facebook Graph

Although much of the information on users’ Facebook profile is private, a lot isn’t – Facebook provide the Graph API as a way of querying the huge amount of information that its users are happy to share with the world (or can’t hide because they haven’t worked out how the privacy settings work). To check it out, click here.

Gapminder

Compilation of data from sources including the World Health Organization and World Bank covering economic, medical and social statistics from around the world. To check it out, click here.

Google Trends

Statistics on search volume (as a proportion of total search) for any given term, since 2004. To check it out, click here.

Google Finance

40 years’ worth of stock market data, updated in real time. To check it out, click here.

Google Books Ngrams

Search and analyze the full text of any of the millions of books digitised as part of the Google Books project. To check it out, click here.

National Climatic Data Center

Huge collection of environmental, meteorological and climate data sets from the US National Climatic Data Center. The world’s largest archive of weather data. To check it out, click here.

DBPedia

Wikipedia is comprised of millions of pieces of data, structured and unstructured on every subject under the sun. DBPedia is an ambitious project to catalogue and create a public, freely distributable database allowing anyone to analyze this data. To check it out, click here.

Topsy

Free, comprehensive social media data is hard to come by – after all their data is what generates profits for the big players (Facebook, Twitter etc) so they don’t want to give it away. However Topsy provides a searchable database of public tweets going back to 2006 as well as several tools to analyze the conversations. To check it out, click here.

Likebutton

Mines Facebook’s public data – globally and from your own network – to give an overview of what people “Like” at the moment. To check it out, click here.

New York Times

Searchable, indexed archive of news articles going back to 1851. To check it out, click here.

Freebase

A community-compiled database of structured data about people, places and things, with over 45 million entries. To check it out, click here.

Million Song Data Set

Metadata on over a million songs and pieces of music. Part of Amazon Web Services. To check it out, click here.”
See also Bernard Marr‘s blog at Big Data Guru

4 Tech Trends Changing How Cities Operate

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

at Governing: “Louis Brandeis famously characterized states as laboratories for democracy, but cities could be called labs for innovation or new practices….When Government Technology magazine (produced by Governing’s parent company, e.Republic, Inc.) published its annual Digital Cities Survey, the results provided an interesting look at how local governments are using technology to improve how they deliver services, increase production and streamline operations…the survey also showed four technology trends changing how local government operates and serves its citizens:

1. Open Data

…Big cities were the first to open up their data and gained national attention for their transparency. New York City, which passed an open data law in 2012, leads all cities with more than 1,300 data sets open to the public; Chicago started opening up data to the public in 2010 following an executive order and is second among cities with more than 600; and San Francisco, which was the first major city to open the doors to transparency in 2009, had the highest score from the U.S. Open Data Census for the quality of its open data.
But the survey shows that a growing number of mid-sized jurisdictions are now getting involved, too. Tacoma, Wash., has a portal with 40 data sets that show how the city is spending tax dollars on public works, economic development, transportation and public safety. Ann Arbor, Mich., has a financial transparency tool that reveals what the city is spending on a daily basis, in some cases….

2. ‘Stat’ Programs and Data Analytics

…First, the so-called “stat” programs are proliferating. Started by the New York Police Department in the 1980s, CompStat was a management technique that merged data with staff feedback to drive better performance by police officers and precinct captains. Its success led to many imitations over the years and, as the digital survey shows, stat programs continue to grow in importance. For example, Louisville has used its “LouieStat” program to cut the city’s bill for unscheduled employee overtime by $23 million as well as to spot weaknesses in performance.
Second, cities are increasing their use of data analytics to measure and improve performance. Denver, Jacksonville, Fla., and Phoenix have launched programs that sift through data sets to find patterns that can lead to better governance decisions. Los Angeles has combined transparency with analytics to create an online system that tracks performance for the city’s economy, service delivery, public safety and government operations that the public can view. Robert J. O’Neill Jr., executive director of the International City/County Management Association, said that both of these tech-driven performance trends “enable real-time decision-making.” He argued that public leaders who grasp the significance of these new tools can deliver government services that today’s constituents expect.

3. Online Citizen Engagement

…Avondale, Ariz., population 78,822, is engaging citizens with a mobile app and an online forum that solicits ideas that other residents can vote up or down.
In Westminster, Colo., population 110,945, a similar forum allows citizens to vote online about community ideas and gives rewards to users who engage with the online forum on a regular basis (free passes to a local driving range or fitness program). Cities are promoting more engagement activities to combat a decline in public trust in government. The days when a public meeting could provide citizen engagement aren’t enough in today’s technology-dominated  world. That’s why social media tools, online surveys and even e-commerce rewards programs are popping up in cities around the country to create high-value interaction with its citizens.

4. Geographic Information Systems

… Cities now use them to analyze financial decisions to increase performance, support public safety, improve public transit, run social service activities and, increasingly, engage citizens about their city’s governance.
Augusta, Ga., won an award for its well-designed and easy-to-use transit maps. Sugar Land, Texas, uses GIS to support economic development and, as part of its citizen engagement efforts, to highlight its capital improvement projects. GIS is now used citywide by 92 percent of the survey respondents. That’s significant because GIS has long been considered a specialized (and expensive) technology primarily for city planning and environmental projects….”

The Global Open Data Index 2014

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Open Knowledge Foundation: “The Global Open Data Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of information in ten key areas, including government spending, election results, transport timetables, and pollution levels.
The UK tops the 2014 Index retaining its pole position with an overall score of 96%, closely followed by Denmark and then France at number 3 up from 12th last year. Finland comes in 4th while Australia and New Zealand share the 5th place. Impressive results were seen from India at #10 (up from #27) and Latin American countries like Colombia and Uruguay who came in joint 12th .
Sierra Leone, Mali, Haiti and Guinea rank lowest of the countries assessed, but there are many countries where the governments are less open but that were not assessed because of lack of openness or a sufficiently engaged civil society.
Overall, whilst there is meaningful improvement in the number of open datasets (from 87 to 105), the percentage of open datasets across all the surveyed countries remained low at only 11%.
Even amongst the leaders on open government data there is still room for improvement: the US and Germany, for example, do not provide a consolidated, open register of corporations. There was also a disappointing degree of openness around the details of government spending with most countries either failing to provide information at all or limiting the information available – only two countries out of 97 (the UK and Greece) got full marks here. This is noteworthy as in a period of sluggish growth and continuing austerity in many countries, giving citizens and businesses free and open access to this sort of data would seem to be an effective means of saving money and improving government efficiency.
Explore the Global Open Data Index 2014 for yourself!”

How do we improve open data for police accountability?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

at the SunLight Foundation: “This is a challenging time for people who worry about the fairness of American governmental institutions. In quick succession, grand juries declined to indict two police officers accused of killing black men. In the case of Ferguson, Mo. officer Darren Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown, the grand jury’s decision appeared to center on uncertainty about whether Wilson’s action was legal and whether he killed under threat. In the case of New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo’s killing of Eric Garner, however, a bystander recorded and made public a video of the police officer causing Garner’s death through an illegal chokehold. In Pantaleo’s case, the availability of video data has made the question about institutional fairness even more urgent, as people can see for themselves the context in which the officer exercised power. The data has given us a common set of facts to use in judging police behavior.
We grant law enforcement and corrections departments the right to exercise more physical power over the public than we do to any other part of our government. But do we generally have the data we need to evaluate how they’re using it?….
The time to find good solutions to these problems is now. Responding to widespread frustration, President Obama has just announced a three-part initiative to “strengthen community policing”: an increased focus on transparency and oversight for federal-to-local transfers of military equipment, a proposal to provide matching funding to local police departments to buy body cameras, and a “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” that will make recommendations for how to implement community-oriented policing practices.
While each element of Obama’s initiative corresponds to a distinct set of concerns about policing, one element they share in common is the need to increase access to information about police work. Each of the three approaches will rely on mechanisms to increase the flow of public information about what police officers are doing in their official roles and how they are doing it. How are police officers going about fulfilling their responsibility to ensure public safety? Are they working in ways that appropriately respect individual rights? Are they responsive to public concerns, when concerns are raised?
By encouraging the collection and publication of more data about how government is working, Obama’s initiative has the potential to support precisely the kind of increase in data availability that can transform public outcomes. When applied with the intent to improve transparency and accountability and to increase public engagement, open data — and the civic tech that uses this data — can bridge the often too-large gap between the public and government.
However, because Obama’s initiatives depend on the effective collection, publication, and communication of information, open data advocates have a particular contribution to make. It’s important to think about what lessons we can apply from our experiences with open data — and with data collected and used for police accountability — in order to ensure that this initiative has the greatest possible impact. As an open data and open government community, can we make recommendations that can help improve the data we’re collecting for police transparency and accountability?
I’m going to begin a list, but it’s just a beginning – I am certain that you have many more recommendations to make. I’ll categorize them first by Obama’s “Strengthening Community Policing” initiatives and then keep thinking about what additional data is needed. Please think along with me about what kind of datasets we will need, what potential issues with data availability and quality we’re likely to see, what kind of laws may need to be changed to improve access to the data necessary for police accountability, then make your recommendations in the Google Doc embedded at the end of this post. If you’ve seen any great projects you’ve seen which improve police transparency and accountability, be sure to share those as well….”

The Year of Data-Driven Government Accountability

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Robert Runge in Pacific Standard: “Indeed, 2014 could be called the Year of Government Accountability, as voters on just about every continent have demanded that public officials govern with relentless efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and transparency….
The bottom line, in my view, is that facts must be the fundamental basis for critical and strategic decision-making at every level of government around the world today.
This belief—the foundation of massive technology and social movements, such as open data, big data, and data-driven government—is currently shared by a number of global government leaders. Just recently, for example, President Obama declared that “We must respond based on facts, not fear” when confronting the global Ebola crisis.
To be sure, presenting facts to decision-makers where and when they are needed is one of the most urgent technology priorities of our time. The good news is that we’re seeing progress on this front each and every day as civic organizations around the world rush to open their vast troves of data on the Internet and usher in a new era in data-driven government that will produce facts at the speed of light, and deliver them in context to political leaders, everyday citizens, professional academicians, scientists, journalists, and software developers wherever they are connected to the Web.
Data-driven government, which capitalizes on data, one of the most valuable natural resources of the 21st century, is a breakthrough opportunity of truly significant proportions. And it will be absolutely critical if governments everywhere are to achieve their ultimate mission. Without it, I worry that we just won’t be able to provide citizens with a higher quality of life and with greater opportunities to achieve their full potential.

Forget the FOIA Request: Cities, States Open Data Portals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

in MediaShift (PBS): “In almost any city you can read your local leaders’ emails if you formally ask for them. In Gainesville, Fla., all you have to do is go here.
In most states you can find out how tax dollars are being spent if you officially request expenditure records. In Wisconsin, you just click here.
For the last 50 years, governments have given up public records in response to Freedom of Information requests. But a number of public agencies are learning the value of proactively providing information before anyone has to ask for it.
The trend is part of the open-data movement that most large cities and the federal government have already begun to embrace. The information itself can range from simple emails to complex datasets, but the general idea is the same: Deliver information directly to the public using digital tools that can save money and serve the goal of government transparency.
…And there’s the added benefit of helping the bottom line. Users don’t have to request information if it’s already posted, saving agencies time and money, and a centralized FOIA tracking system can further streamline processing.
Sean Moulton of the Center for Effective Government testified before Congress that full participation in FOIAonline could save federal agencies an estimated $40 million per year in processing costs.
And Reinvent Albany, a nonprofit that pushes for transparency in New York, estimated in a June report that New York City could reduce FOI-related costs by 66 percent – from $20 million per year down to $7 million – by adopting an open-data system and doing away with its “hodgepodge of paper-based methods that are expensive, slow and unreliable.”
So…What’s the Catch?
In their survey, chief information officers were asked to name the top three barriers to advancing open data in state government. Fifty-three percent cited “agencies’ willingness to publish data,” and 49 percent cited “the reliability of the data.”
Information is of little value to the public if it’s faulty or too complex to understand. It could become a way for agencies to claim they’re being transparent without actually providing anything useful.
Plus, some worry that public servants will self-censor if they know, for example, their emails are automatically being shared with the world….”

Selected Readings on Cities and Civic Technology

Curated on Posted on by Julia Root

By Julia Root and Stefaan Verhulst

The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of civic innovation was originally published in 2014.

The last five years have seen a wave of new organizations, entrepreneurs and investment in cities and the field of civic innovation.  Two subfields, Civic Tech and Government Innovation, are particularly aligned with GovLab’s interest in the ways in which technology is and can be deployed to redesign public institutions and re-imagine governance.

The emerging field of civic technology, or “Civic Tech,” champions new digital platforms, open data and collaboration tools for transforming government service delivery and engagement with citizens. Government Innovation, while not a new field, has seen in the last five years a proliferation of new structures (e.g. Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics), roles (e.g. Chief Technology/Innovation Officer) and public/private investment (e.g. Innovation Delivery Teams and Code for America Fellows) that are building a world-wide movement for transforming how government thinks about and designs services for its citizens.

There is no set definition for “civic innovation.” However, broadly speaking, it is about improving our cities through the implementation of tools, ideas and engagement methods that strengthen the relationship between government and citizens. The civic innovation field encompasses diverse actors from across the public, private and nonprofit spectrums. These can include government leaders, nonprofit and foundation professionals, urbanists, technologists, researchers, business leaders and community organizers, each of whom may use the term in a different way, but ultimately are seeking to disrupt how cities and public institutions solve problems and invest in solutions.

Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Annotated Selected Readings (in alphabetical order)

Books

Goldsmith, Stephen, and Susan Crawford. The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance. 1 edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2014. http://bit.ly/1zvKOL0.

  • The Responsive City, a guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age, is the culmination of research originating from the Data-Smart City Solutions initiative, an ongoing project at Harvard Kennedy School working to catalyze adoption of data projects on the city level.
  • The “data smart city” is one that is responsive to citizens, engages them in problem solving and finds new innovative solutions for dismantling entrenched bureaucracy.
  • The authors document case studies from New York City, Boston and Chicago to explore the following topics:
    • Building trust in the public sector and fostering a sustained, collective voice among communities;
    • Using data-smart governance to preempt and predict problems while improving quality of life;
    • Creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer money with digital tools; and
    • Spearheading these new approaches to government with innovative leadership.

Townsend, Anthony M. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. 1 edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. http://bit.ly/17Y4G0R.

  • In this book, Townsend illustrates how “cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity.”
  • He also considers “the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings” of the many stakeholders involved in the development of smart cities, and poses a new civics to guide these efforts.
  • He argues that smart cities are not made smart by various, soon-to-be-obsolete technologies built into its infrastructure; instead, it is how citizens are using ever-changing and grassroots technologies to be “human-centered, inclusive and resilient” that will make cities ‘smart.’

Reports + Journal Articles

Black, Alissa, and Rachel Burstein. “The 2050 City – What Civic Innovation Looks Like Today and Tomorrow.” White Paper. New America Foundation – California Civic Innovation Project, June 2013. https://bit.ly/2GohMvw.

  • Through their interviews, the authors determine that civic innovation is not just a “compilation of projects” but that it can inspire institutional structural change.
  • Civic innovation projects that have a “technology focus can sound very different than process-related innovations”; however the outcomes are actually quite similar as they disrupt how citizens and government engage with one another.
  • Technology is viewed by some of the experts as an enabler of civic innovation – not necessarily the driver for innovation itself. What constitutes innovation is how new tools are implemented by government or by civic groups that changes the governing dynamic.

Patel, Mayur, Jon Sotsky, Sean Gourley, and Daniel Houghton. “Knight Foundation Report on Civic Technology.” Presentation. Knight Foundation, December 2013. http://slidesha.re/11UYgO0.

  • This reports aims to advance the field of civic technology, which compared to the tech industry as a whole is relatively young. It maps the field, creating a starting place for understanding activity and investment in the sector.
  • It defines two themes, Open Government and Civic Action, and identifies 11 clusters of civic tech innovation that fall into the two themes. For each cluster, the authors describe the type of activities and highlights specific organizations.
  • The report identified more than $430 million of private and philanthropic investment directed to 102 civic tech organizations from January 2011 to May 2013.

Open Plans. “Field Scan on Civic Technology.” Living Cities, November 2012. http://bit.ly/1HGjGih.

  • Commissioned by Living Cities and authored by Open Plans, the Field Scan investigates the emergent field of civic technology and generates the first analysis of the potential impact for the field as well as a critique for how tools and new methods need to be more inclusive of low-income communities in their use and implementation.
  • Respondents generally agreed that the tools developed and in use in cities so far are demonstrations of the potential power of civic tech, but that these tools don’t yet go far enough.
  • Civic tech tools have the potential to improve the lives of low-income people in a number of ways. However, these tools often fail to reach the population they are intended to benefit. To better understand this challenge, civic tech for low-income people must be considered in the broader context of their interactions with technology and with government.
  • Although hackathons are popular, their approach to problem solving is not always driven by community needs, and hackathons often do not produce useful material for governments or citizens in need.

Goldberg, Jeremy M. “Riding the Second Wave of Civic Innovation.” Governing, August 28, 2014. http://bit.ly/1vOKnhJ.

  • In this piece, Goldberg argues that innovation and entrepreneurship in local government increasingly require mobilizing talent from many sectors and skill sets.

Black, Alissa, and Burstein, Rachel. “A Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work.” IBM Center for the Business of Government, October 2014. http://bit.ly/1vOFZP4.

  • In this report, Burstein and Black examine the recent trend toward the creation of innovation offices across the nation at all levels of government to understand the structural models now being used to stimulate innovation—both internally within an agency, and externally for the agency’s partners and communities.
  • The authors conducted interviews with leadership of innovation offices of cities that include Philadelphia, Austin, Kansas City, Chicago, Davis, Memphis and Los Angeles.
  • The report cites examples of offices, generates a typology for the field, links to projects and highlights success factors.

Mulholland, Jessica, and Noelle Knell. “Chief Innovation Officers in State and Local Government (Interactive Map).” Government Technology, March 28, 2014. http://bit.ly/1ycArvX.

  • This article provides an overview of how different cities structure their Chief Innovation Officer positions and provides links to offices, projects and additional editorial content.
  • Some innovation officers find their duties merged with traditional CIO responsibilities, as is the case in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City. Others, like those in Louisville and Nashville, have titles that reveal a link to their jurisdiction’s economic development endeavors.

Toolkits

Bloomberg Philanthropies. January 2014. “Transform Your City through Innovation: The Innovation Delivery Model for Making It Happen.” New York: Bloomberg Philanthropies. http://bloombg.org/120VrKB.

  • In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies funded a three-year innovation capacity program in five major United States cities— Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Memphis, and New Orleans – in which cities could hire top-level staff to develop and see through the implementation of solutions to top mayoral priorities such as customer service, murder, homelessness, and economic development, using a sequence of steps.
  • The Innovation Delivery Team Playbook describes the Innovation Delivery Model and describes each aspect of the model from how to hire and structure the team, to how to manage roundtables and run competitions.

Participatory sensing: enabling interactive local governance through citizen engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New White Paper by the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (Australia): “Local government (such as the City of Melbourne) is accountable and responsible for establishment, execution and oversight of strategic objectives and resource management in the metropolis. Faced with a rising population, Council has in place a number of strategic plans to ensure it is able to deliver services that maintain (and ideally improve) the quality of life for its citizens (including residents, workers and visitors). This publication explores participatory sensing (PS) and issues associated with governance in the light of new information gathering capabilities that directly engage citizens in collecting data and providing contextual insight that has the potential to greatly enhance Council operations in managing these environments. Download: Participatory Sensing: Enabling interactive local governance through citizen engagement (pdf: 2.3mb)“