Rise of the Government Chatbot


Zack Quaintance at Government Technology: “A robot uprising has begun, except instead of overthrowing mankind so as to usher in a bleak yet efficient age of cold judgment and colder steel, this uprising is one of friendly robots (so far).

Which is all an alarming way to say that many state, county and municipal governments across the country have begun to deploy relatively simple chatbots, aimed at helping users get more out of online public services such as a city’s website, pothole reporting and open data. These chatbots have been installed in recent months in a diverse range of places including Kansas City, Mo.; North Charleston, S.C.; and Los Angeles — and by many indications, there is an accompanying wave of civic tech companies that are offering this tech to the public sector.

They range from simple to complex in scope, and most of the jurisdictions currently using them say they are doing so on somewhat of a trial or experimental basis. That’s certainly the case in Kansas City, where the city now has a Facebook chatbot to help users get more out of its open data portal.

“The idea was never to create a final chatbot that was super intelligent and amazing,” said Eric Roche, Kansas City’s chief data officer. “The idea was let’s put together a good effort, and put it out there and see if people find it interesting. If they use it, get some lessons learned and then figure out — either in our city, or with developers, or with people like me in other cities, other chief data officers and such — and talk about the future of this platform.”

Roche developed Kansas City’s chatbot earlier this year by working after hours with Code for Kansas City, the local Code for America brigade — and he did so because since in the four-plus years the city’s open data program has been active, there have been regular concerns that the info available through it was hard to navigate, search and use for average citizens who aren’t data scientists and don’t work for the city (a common issue currently being addressed by many jurisdictions). The idea behind the Facebook chatbot is that Roche can program it with a host of answers to the most prevalent questions, enabling it to both help interested users and save him time for other work….

In North Charleston, S.C., the city has adopted a text-based chatbot, which goes above common 311-style interfaces by allowing users to report potholes or any other lapses in city services they may notice. It also allows them to ask questions, which it subsequently answers by crawling city websites and replying with relevant links, said Ryan Johnson, the city’s public relations coordinator.

North Charleston has done this by partnering with a local tech startup that has deep roots in the area’s local government. The company is called Citibot …

With Citibot, residents can report a pothole at 2 a.m., or they can get info about street signs or trash pickup sent right to their phones.

There are also more complex chatbot technologies taking hold at both the civic and state levels, in Los Angeles and Mississippi, to be exact.

Mississippi’s chatbot is called Missi, and its capabilities are vast and nuanced. Residents can even use it for help submitting online payments. It’s accessible by clicking a small chat icon on the side of the website.

Back in May, Los Angeles rolled out Chip, or City Hall Internet Personality, on the Los Angeles Business Assistance Virtual Network. The chatbot aims to assist visitors by operating as a 24/7 digital assistant for visitors to the site, helping them navigate it and better understand its services by answering their inquiries. It is capable of presenting info from anywhere on the site, and it can even go so far as helping users fill out forms or set up email alerts….(More)”

Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet Be Reclaimed?


Paper by Susan Nevelow Mart: “…examines the legal bases of the public’s right to access government information, reviews the types of information that have recently been removed from the Internet, and analyzes the rationales given for the removals. She suggests that the concerted use of the Freedom of Information Act by public interest groups and their constituents is a possible method of returning the information to the Internet….(More)”.

Civic Tech for Urban Collaborative Governance


Hollie Russon-Gilman in PS: Political Science & Politics: “This article aims to contribute to a burgeoning field of ‘civic technology’ to identify precise pathways through which multi-stakeholder partnerships can foster, embed, and encourage more collaborative governance, outlining a research agenda to guide next steps. Instead of looking at technology as a civic panacea or, at the other extreme, as an irrelevant force, this article takes seriously both the democratic potential and the political constraints of the use of technology for more collaborative governance. The article begins by delineating contours of a civic definition of technology focused on generating public good, provides case study examples of civic tech deployed in America’s cities, raises research questions to inform future multi-stakeholder partnerships, and concludes with implications for the public sector workforce and ecosystem.”…(More)”.

Using Collaboration to Harness Big Data for Social Good


Jake Porway at SSIR: “These days, it’s hard to get away from the hype around “big data.” We read articles about how Silicon Valley is using data to drive everything from website traffic to autonomous cars. We hear speakers at social sector conferences talk about how nonprofits can maximize their impact by leveraging new sources of digital information like social media data, open data, and satellite imagery.

Braving this world can be challenging, we know. Creating a data-driven organization can require big changes in culture and process. Some nonprofits, like Crisis Text Line and Watsi, started off boldly by building their own data science teams. But for the many other organizations wondering how to best use data to advance their mission, we’ve found that one ingredient works better than all the software and tech that you can throw at a problem: collaboration.

As a nonprofit dedicated to applying data science for social good, DataKind has run more than 200 projects in collaboration with other nonprofits worldwide by connecting them to teams of volunteer data scientists. What do the most successful ones have in common? Strong collaborations on three levels: with data science experts, within the organization itself, and across the nonprofit sector as a whole.

1. Collaborate with data science experts to define your project. As we often say, finding problems can be harder than finding solutions. ….

2. Collaborate across your organization to “build with, not for.” Our projects follow the principles of human-centered design and the philosophy pioneered in the civic tech world of “design with, not for.” ….

3. Collaborate across your sector to move the needle. Many organizations think about building data science solutions for unique challenges they face, such as predicting the best location for their next field office. However, most of us are fighting common causes shared by many other groups….

By focusing on building strong collaborations on these three levels—with data experts, across your organization, and across your sector—you’ll go from merely talking about big data to making big impact….(More).

A distributed model for internet governance


Global Partners Digital: “Across the world, increased internet adoption has radically altered people’s lives – creating the need for new methods of internet governance that are more effective, flexible, inclusive, and legitimate. Conversations about reforming the internet governance ecosystem are already taking place at the CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation, and within the wider IGF community.

A new paper by GovLab co-founder and GPD Advisory Board member Stefaan Verhulst – A distributed model for internet governance – seeks to contribute to this evolving debate by proposing a distributed yet coordinated framework for internet governance – one which accommodates existing and emerging decision-making approaches, while also enabling broader participation by a wider range of institutions and actors….(More)”

The Age of Customer.gov: Can the Tech that Drives 311 Help Government Deliver an Amazon-like Experience?


Tod Newcombe  at GovTech: “The Digital Communities Special … June 2017 report explores the idea that the tech that drives 311 can help government deliver an Amazon-like experience.

PART 1: 311: FROM A HOTLINE TO A PLATFORM FOR CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT

PART 2: CLOUD 311 POPULARITY GROWS AS CITIES OF ALL SIZES MOVE TO REMOTELY HOSTED CRM

PART 3: THE FUTURE OF CRM AND CUSTOMER SERVICE: LOOK TO BOSTON

PART 4: CRM USE IS GAINING TRACTION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT — HERE ARE THE NUMBERS TO PROVE IT…(More)”.

Civic Tech Cities


Paper by Rebecca Rumbul and Emily Shaw: “‘Civic technology’ is mostly used to refer to NGO led digital initiatives designed to bridge the gap between citizen and institution. However, since the rise of Code for America and similar organisations around the world, civic citizen-focused tech has increasingly been developed and implemented by and with public bodies themselves in an attempt to reach out to citizens and increase engagement and participation. Whilst early civic tech tended to focus on country-level issues, these initiatives are now proliferating at sub-national levels, particularly in cities. These emerging sub-national and municipal level civic technologies form the focus of this research, which explores five case studies of municipal civic tech operating in the US. It examines not only the impacts of this tech upon citizen users, but the effects it has upon the implementing institutions.

Whilst many governments in the world are still working with centralised forms of digital governance, the US has over the last 10 years experienced a plurality of growth in sub-state civic tech usage by city and municipal governments. This nascent government civic tech environment provided a most fertile opportunity for research into the operations and impacts of civic tech employed by official institutions.

This project was designed to examine how civic tech implemented by government is currently operating, who is using it, and what impacts it is having upon service delivery. The aim of this research is therefore to provide a comprehensive picture of civic technology implementation by municipal level public bodies and the challenges and benefits that arise in the process. It is hoped that this report will be of practical use to both public bodies and civic technologists working with them.

The primary deliverable of this project was five case studies of civic tech projects that have been deployed by US cities since 2013:

  • SpeakUpAustin (www.speakupaustin.org), in Austin, Texas
  • LargeLots (www.largelots.org), in Chicago, Illinois
  • RecordTrac (records.oaklandnet.com), in Oakland, California
  • DC311 (311.dc.gov), in Washington, DC
  • Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) Police Complaint Tracker (www.seattle.gov/opa/file-acomplaint-about-the-seattle-police), in Seattle, Washington

In the study, the users of the civic tech tools and the implementers of the tools within government were interviewed about the impact of the tool’s introduction on the delivery of the relevant public service, how these additional sources of public input affected the departments where they had been introduced, whether the department had noted increased efficiency, and whether internal or external stakeholders perceived increased effectiveness.

The civic technology tools examined in this study were generally well-appreciated both internally and externally, receiving good reviews both from the government and non-government sides of their use. People inside and outside of government appreciated the benefits of using them, and expressed interest in maintaining and improving them….(More)”

Building a Better Relationship Between Citizens and Governments


Felipe Estefan at Positive Returns: “Right now you don’t have to look very hard to find evidence of the tense, often broken, relationship between between citizens and their governments around the world.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Brazil. In just the past couple of years the country has faced the impeachment of a President, numerous major corruption scandals, and most recently the news that investigations are being opened into the conduct of more than 100 high-ranking political officials.

Each of these incidents has deepened the distrust of government and those that hold privileged positions of power in Brazil. At the same time this is reinforcing the belief that those in power operate to a different set of rules that are focused on self-interest rather than public good….

When governments fail to listen to and provide the services citizens need, opportunities are removed. If we are to restore the relationship between citizens and governments many things need to change. Not the least is the ability of citizens to have their voices heard and their needs met by government, and in turn for governments to be more efficient and effective in their responses….Colab — a Brazilian civic technology startup which provides a social network for engagement between citizens and local governments.

Colab provides citizens an opportunity to report local issues and suggest urban improvements, such as potholes, illegal car parking, public lighting, broken sidewalks, among others. It also allows citizens to proactively participate in the decisions that will impact their future and the futures of those around them.

For local governments, Colab offers a workflow management and engagement tool, as well as a data analytics system to manage and respond to citizens’ requests and to better evaluate their own performance.

Colab has already reached over 130 municipalities in Brazil, including Santos, Campinas, Niteroi, and Teresina. Across the country, they have over 150,000 members. So far the platform has enabled citizens from across these municipalities to submit more than 85,000 reports, with local governments responding to over 75% of those.

For instance, in Niteroi a citizen reported an issue with the drainage in the streets. Government resolved the issue and informed the citizen through the Colab platform. In a similar case in Pelotas, a citizen reported an issue with a pothole which government didn’t address correctly. Using the Colab platform the citizen engaged with government again to ensure to appropriate resolution of the issue. Similar cases in which government has successfully addressed the issues reported by citizens can be found in municipalities from Teresina to Recife.

Colab has been so successful at creating a vital bridge between citizens and local governments that it is now being used for a wide-range of purposes, from conducting participatory budgeting consultations to managing the outbreak of Zika….(More)”.

Updated N.Y.P.D. Anti-Crime System to Ask: ‘How We Doing?’


It was a policing invention with a futuristic sounding name — CompStat — when the New York Police Department introduced it as a management system for fighting crime in an era of much higher violence in the 1990s. Police departments around the country, and the world, adapted its system of mapping muggings, robberies and other crimes; measuring police activity; and holding local commanders accountable.

Now, a quarter-century later, it is getting a broad reimagining and being brought into the mobile age. Moving away from simple stats and figures, CompStat is getting touchy-feely. It’s going to ask New Yorkers — via thousands of questions on their phones — “How are you feeling?” and “How are we, the police, doing?”

Whether this new approach will be mimicked elsewhere is still unknown, but as is the case with almost all new tactics in the N.Y.P.D. — the largest municipal police force in the United States by far — it will be closely watched. Nor is it clear if New Yorkers will embrace this approach, reject it as intrusive or simply be annoyed by it.

The system, using location technology, sends out short sets of questions to smartphones along three themes: Do you feel safe in your neighborhood? Do you trust the police? Are you confident in the New York Police Department?

The questions stream out every day, around the clock, on 50,000 different smartphone applications and present themselves on screens as eight-second surveys.

The department believes it will get a more diverse measure of community satisfaction, and allow it to further drive down crime. For now, Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill is calling the tool a “sentiment meter,” though he is open to suggestions for a better name….(More)”.

SeeClickFix Empowers Citizens by Connecting Them to Their Local Governments


Paper by Ben Berkowitz and Jean-Paul Gagnon in Democratic Theory: “SeeClickFix began in 2009 when founder and present CEO Ben Berkowitz spotted a piece of graffiti in his New Haven, Connecticut, neighborhood. After calling numerous departments at city hall in a bid to have the graffiti removed, Berkowitz felt no closer to fixing the problem. Confused and frustrated, his emotions resonated with what many citizens in real- existing democracies feel today (Manning 2015): we see problems in public and want to fix them but can’t. This all too habitual inability for “common people” to fix problems they have to live with on a day-to-day basis is a prelude to the irascible citizen (White 2012), which, according to certain scholars (e.g., Dean 1960; Lee 2009), is itself a prelude to political apathy and a citizen’s alienation from specific political institutions….(More)”