Tag: Government

March 6, 2011

Ten Principles for Designing Open Government Institutions

The below tweets are @ThomKearney‘s attempt to share part of @BethNoveck‘s testimony to Cdn Parliament http://ow.ly/48GeM #w2p #goc on March 2nd, 2011

1. Go Open – Government should work in the open. contracts, grants, legislation, regulation and policies should be transparent #w2p #goc

2. Open Gov Includes Open Access – After the public has paid once, it shouldn’t have to pay again. #w2p #goc

3. Make Open Gov Productive Not Adversarial –Gov”t shld invest in providing the data that people really want and will use. #w2p #goc

4. Be Collaborative – Rulemaking should be open to public early to allow for constructive alternative proposals. #w2p #goc

5. Love Data – Design policies informed by real-time data. Release data for economic benefit. See http://ow.ly/48Ga7 for more #w2p #goc

6. Be Nimble – Forcing organizations to act quickly discourages bureaucracy and encourages creative brainstorming and innovation. #goc #w2p

7. Do More, Spend Less – Design solutions that do more with less. Instead of cutting… ask if there is another way…#w2p #goc

8. Invest in Platforms – … Focus on going forward practices of creating raw data and real engagement. #w2p #goc

9. Invest in People – Changing the culture of government will not happen through statements of policy alone…. #w2p #goc

10. Design for Democracy..ask if legislation enables engagement that uses people’s abilities and enthusiasm for the collective. #w2p #goc

Ten Principles from Beth Noveck @BethNoveck related via Twitter by @ThomKearney

December 29, 2010

iVote, eGovt, and all that mobile stuff

The social media enthusiast that I am, I started wondering about how to continue improving constituent connections over the next five years here in wild, wonderful West Virginia. Yes, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, MeetUp, etc… all play a significant role, but there is something even bigger I believe we need to focus more efforts on: mobile government.

Also called mGovernment, mobile government is an extension of online government connections to mobile platforms and the tactical use of these applications which are only possible using mobile phones, iPads, laptops, and any other devices that utilize wireless infrastructure. mGovernment can assist with making public information and other governmental services available to citizens anytime, any place, and the ubiquity of mobile devices mandates their employment in government functions, e.g. a mass text in an emergency, like a gas leak. However, several government agencies and public sector organizations are hesitant to adopt mGovernment. Why? Because experimenting with these technologies in the public sector is far more risky than the private sector.

December 22, 2010

Open Formats & Open Source for Better Government

The Government of Canada is currently reliant on proprietary file formats and proprietary software applications, which lock it into a licensing bind with a single software manufacturer — Microsoft. There is not only a question of cost — as we pay a monopoly corporation for per-seat licenses to run software that already dominates the market — but more importantly, there is the question of future access to our own data. In this post, I’d like to share my thoughts on both issues.

Before you dismiss the idea of a major institution losing access to its stored data as ludicrous, consider this quote from Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of the UK National Archives:

“If you put paper on shelves, it’s pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years. If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago [2003-04], you’d have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it. Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper. The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.”

The UK National Archives includes a collection of 900 years of written material. As of 2007 they estimated that 580 terabytes of their data (the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopedias) was stored in file formats which have since become extinct.

December 22, 2010

Web 2.0 Roles, Services & Vision Statement for Government

This was the initial visualization graphic I developed quite awhile ago when I was first aligning types of Web 2.0 according to roles in Government.

This aligns examples of Web 2.0 tools, along government roles, with 4 other axes thrown into the mix: Gov’t/Public, Internal/External.It also offers another way to look at the types of Web 2.0: according to Information flow. Once we have visualized these potential actor, application, interaction and information flows, what’s required is a Vision Statement to better understand the reasons Web 2.0 should and can most effectively be applied.

If the rockies are web 2.0, then a vision statement elaborates the reason for your trek.

A “Vision statement” is valuable for any strategic planning (right up there with elaborating the Mission statement & Values). For a few months now I have been sharing one that I developed a while ago. It takes a step back and reiterates the reason public servants and government want or need Web 2.0: to improve the work of public servants and government. I offer you a vision statement for Government to support Web 2.0:

Develop an engaged, networked & resilient public service responsive to a connected, knowledgeable & skilled public.

Notice that “Web 2.0″ isn’t actually in there. That’s because Web 2.0 is the means for the work of public servants to do what they do, like technology, communications hardware and desks. But this Vision Statement still supports Web 2.0. You don’t want to be doing Web 2.0 for the sake of doing Web 2.0 – but because it’s the best means to improve the modern public service.

December 15, 2010

Victoria on the go with mobile government

Victoria is emerging as a hub for mobile-government, as the State’s government departments release a variety of smartphone apps and mobile-friendly websites that will cement its position as the nation’s leader in Gov 2.0.

In the lead up to the election, the Electoral Commission released the Vote Victoria app, which uses GPS technology to direct users to their nearest polling booth. VicRoads boasts the SmartPark app which reminds city drivers about clearway times and notifies them when their meter is due to expire. It has also developed Live Drive with real time updates on traffic conditions. And the State Revenue Office has just launched an application targeted at first home buyers with which they can calculate the amount of government assistance they are eligible for to help them with their purchase.

Dale Bowerman, Strategic Account Manager with Gov 2.0 strategists Collabforge, attributes Victoria’s momentum in this space to a series of policies which have opened the way for collaboration and innovation.

“The Gov 2.0 Action Plan and VPS Innovation Strategy have really set the tone for expectations around the Gov 2.0 and Web 2.0 space. In particular the Gov 2.0 Action plan, which is signed by the secretaries of all of the major departments, has given the green light to go forth and engage in the public space,” he says.

The company’s director, Mark Elliot, traces it back to the Future Melbourne plan (which Collabforge helped develop), an interactive wiki designed to cooperatively develop a ten year vision for the city. Link to full article at Intermedium

December 15, 2010

Recognition and Social Fear — The Competing Forces of Citizen Participation

What makes for a good day? When you get home at night do you feel like you have had a good day when it is filled with non-stop listening to others and you have had little to say? Or do you have a good day when you can say – “You know what, I had something to say that someone listened to, and I think it made a difference”?[1]

The desire to be recognized is one of the most powerful human motivations that all of us share. And it is at the core of many government 2.0 applications – often, cooperative platforms that enable complete visibility and back and forth between citizens and at times agency employees and officials.

Wikis, crowd sourcing, forums, and blogs are all examples of specific cooperative applications. These tool technologies are often touted as enabling inclusion of citizens, agency partners, and employees in a way not before possible. Many of these social tools are in fact designed to build social friendships or relationships in closed groups, or have a strong social element.

Social fear, too, affects citizen inclusion.

Of course the flip side of openness is the social fear that it creates.[2] It too is a powerful emotion.

Do you remember the first time that you walked to a podium in a public meeting to share your point of view? Did you have a lump in your throat and a pit in your stomach? For many in America and throughout the World, this is the case. We don’t naturally gravitate to public recognition. We fear looking stupid and being ridiculed. And so it is online.

Why would citizens with constructive ideas share them in an online food fight, where in today’s hyper-partisan world cooperative tools are used as mega-phones for deeply held beliefs, often at the expense and ridicule of those trying to be constructive? In that sense a good case could be made that they inhibit inclusion rather than expand it – standing alone.

December 12, 2010

Feds will expand use of social media

By Andrew Mayeda, Postmedia News: “The federal government is developing plans to give public servants more freedom to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter so departments can engage more directly with the public and recruit young talent who expect a “Web 2.0” workplace.

Senior information-management officials also propose creating a central “open-data” portal that would make raw government information available to web surfers, provided the data isn’t personal, secret or confidential, according to internal documents obtained by Postmedia News.” Link to full article at Canada.com

November 24, 2010

Governments listening to what you say, and how you feel

Image by williamcho via Flickr

In many countries you vote as a method of expressing your opinion on your leaders, and on certain key issues. In some countries surveys, ideation platforms, and other methods are used to understand opinions without the requirement of implementing changes, simply as a tool to hear what citizens are thinking.

Singapore, however, is launching an effort to mine sentiment from social media, using tools developed by IBM.

This will enable the government of Singapore to gain a deeper understanding of how people feel about various topics through passive listening. Of course, it is important to remember that automated sentiment analysis is imperfect, but so too are manual surveys. It is also important to fully understand the demographic being monitored as it may not represent the right cross-section of citizens, and manual surveys may still be required.

However, it’s a good first step and certainly something that, balanced with other solutions, should help governments better understand how citizens feel about key issues.

John F. Moore

Government in the Lab

November 24, 2010

Without Engagement Gov 2.0 Will Fail

For people who are on the cutting edge of the Gov 2.0 movement, we often forget that a majority of government employees are still not enthusiastic about the potential of the new social networking technologies in their workplace. Now many of these folks are using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. to keep up with their family and friends but haven’t made that conceptual leap from using these tools at their job (“Surveys see developing use of gov 2.0 tools in state and local government”; Human Capital Institute Study). There are several reasons for this but I argue that the largest cause is due to lack of engagement by government employees. Link to entire article

November 18, 2010

Open data is data that delivers results

Image via Wikipedia

I struck a nerve around open data, as I mentioned in my earlier article, when I stated that “XML is simply a markup language, a container for data. Is it one of the most preferred containers? Absolutely. However, open government data is not synonymous with XML. Open government data is simply government-owned data that can be mined in order to create useful information. It can be in XML, PDF, text files, print outs, etc… The key point is that the data is being released for others to use to create value from it, not the format that it is released in”.

Initial comments on twitter argued that open data had to be XML, then opened up to being any open, non-proprietary format. For developers I would absolutely agree that this makes sense. It’s much easier for developers to work with open formats like CSV and XML vs. proprietary formats like PDF. Developers, however, are not the leaders of open government.