Video:

Honolulu Chief Information Officer Gordon Bruce and Deputy CIO Forest Frizzell discuss the the app here.

For questions or more information, contact Janelle Kessler at janelle.kessler@sfgov.org.

From the RFP:

The 311 Customer Service Center seeks solution strategies and pricing schedules for Mobile and Web self service enhancements complying with the Open311 specification. The solution will provide public access to the City’s CRM application using the Open311 standard via an end-to-end connection from the web and mobile clients. City expects to license an existing software system, with defined enhancements to that system during the implementation.

RFP:

City and County of San Francisco Request for Proposals for Open311 to Lagan CRM integration

Addendum:

City and County of San Francisco Request for Proposals for Open311 to Lagan CRM integration

• App of the Year
• Best Transit App
• Best 311 App
• Best Emergency Management App
• Best Social Services App

Every day, tech-minded citizens across the country are doing good by their communities, literally geeking out about how they can help re-define the relationship government has with its citizens, using technology as a democratic tool to collaboratively empower both.

So much is happening in the civic technology community – website redesigns, new websites, open data initiatives, apps, camps, developer contests, hackathons and more – it’s hard to get a perspective on or truly appreciate the collective work of these dot-dogooders both inside and outside government.

That’s why we created the 2011 GovFresh Awards.

It’s time to recognize and honor all that’s been accomplished this year.

It’s time to say thank you.

Here are the categories. Start entering and start voting.

• City of the Year
• Public Servant of the Year
• Citizen of the Year
• App of the Year
• Best Government/Citizen Collaboration
• Best Use of Open Source
• Best Open and Participatory Budgeting Initiative
• Best Open Government Policy
• Best Open Data Platform
• Best Civic Hackathon
• Best Civic Start-up
• Best Use of Social Media
• Best Use of Social Media for Emergency Management
• Best Transit App
• Best 311 App
• Best Emergency Management App
• Best Social Services App

John Mertens – Art Mapper

Erik Michaels-Ober – Adopt-a-Hydrant

Anna Bloom – Change By Us

Aaron Ogle – ReRoute.it

Jeremy Canfield – Open311 Dashboard

Max Ogden – DataCouch

Michelle Koeth – Civic Commons Legal Guide

Karla Macedo – Iconathon

Chach Sikes – CityGroups

Scott Silverman – ClassTalk

Matt Lewis – JobOps

Ryan Resella – TechnoFinder

Joel Mahoney – DiscoverBPS

An iPhone app is already available, and YouTown says Blackberry and mobile web versions are coming soon.

In 2007, Robert Vogel and Mike Alvarez Cohen started Peak Democracy to “build public trust in government through online public comment forums that are civil yet meet government freedom-of-speech and transparency laws.” Peak Democracy’s Open Town Hall now serves more than 25 government agencies and elected officials.

Vogel and Alvarez share their philosophy and experience building Open Town Hall and helping citizens become engaged by meeting them where they are.

What problem does Open Town Hall solve for government?

Open Town Hall enables governments to provide constituents with online public comment forums that have the order and decorum of government meetings — thereby making the online forums civil, constructive, and legal.

More specifically, the problems that Open Town Hall solves for government include:

• Diversifying community feedback beyond those few that have the time or inclination to attend public hearings;
• Providing an alternative to online community blogs that are frequently filled with vitriolic attacks, dominated by a few extremists, and consequently uninviting for most constituents; and/or,
• Satisfying explicit or latent demand by constituents for their government to offer online public forums (that are civil and informative).

How do Open Town Hall online public comment forums work?

Integrating Open Town Hall into a government’s website can take less than an hour of a webmaster’s time. Peak Democracy provides an HTML snippet to the webmaster, and then the webmaster simply embeds the HTML into a page of the government’s website. The forum’s look (i.e. color, logos, etc) can be easily customized by the webmaster. All of the forum’s IT requirements are provided by Peak Democracy’s servers — including bandwidth, storage and backup, etc.

Government staff access the forums via a password-protected dashboard and backend suite of tools. Staff prepare topics, review the content, and then make the forums available to the public. The forums are then announced to subscribers and the community via email, Facebook and Twitter — as well as announcements at meetings, and other communication channels.

People visit the online public comment forums, learn more about the topics, read and support other perspectives, as well as post their own public comments.

In addition to handling all IT requirements, Peak Democracy’s software and staff monitor comments to maintain civility, authenticate participants to prevent fraud, and provide end-user support.

Government leaders can read the responses and synthesize voluminous feedback using Open Town Hall’s analysis tools. The forums can be archived for public records retention, and printed for distribution at community meetings.

What’s the pricing model, current customers, and how are they leveraging Peak Democracy?

Peak Democracy’s cloud-computing architecture, smart software and economies of scale enable the company to cost-effectively price it Open Town Hall service — as described on this web page. Pricing is based on client population, and starts at $2,400 per year of unlimited use, or $700 per forum — for communities with populations below 25,000.

Open Town Hall is used by over 25 towns, cities and counties. They have launched almost 600 topics, and have had about 50,000 people attend those online forums. All the forums include user surveys with results that are accessible to government staff. Over 96% of user survey respondents indicate that they like Open Town Hall.

Clients are leveraging Open Town Hall to post forums that range from (1) topics agendized on council and commission meetings such as fiscal budgets, annual priorities, and land-use projects, to (2) topics of general interest to government leaders and staff such as transportation studies, sustainability projects, and safety issues.

What are lessons-learned and advice you have for government when it comes to conducting online public comment forums?

Having supported almost 600 online forums from communities across the US (and Canada), Peak Democracy staff has learned a great deal about the best practices for online commuity feedback. For example, online public comment forums should never be positioned as votes or polls — otherwise they can usurp the decision-making autonomy of government leaders.

Learn more about Open Town Hall at the Peak Democracy website.

There’s a lot more to democratic government than holding elections and town hall meetings.

It’s about transparency and openness in government operations. It’s about empowering citizens with information, access to services, and opportunities for engagement. It’s about being “of the people and for the people” in every way possible.

In many ways, mobile technologies offer an ideal avenue for agencies to achieve these goals. Mobile trends suggest that increasing numbers of people are using smart phones for information and interaction — for personal, business and consumer purposes. Naturally, proponents of open government have been clamoring for agencies to get on board by providing mobile options to citizens. Whether it is a mobile version of a municipal site, apps for government services, mobile civic engagement campaigns, or a combination, making some type of mobile effort can show an agency’s commitment to connecting with citizens.

So … what can mobile government do for democracy? Here are a few ideas:

Engage more people

Not just the civic-minded folks that have time to attend public meetings or write to their elected officials — mobile tools can be used to reach people that might otherwise have very limited means of connecting with government. Rural residents, youth, handicapped or home-bound citizens, even people who are just plain busy — all can benefit from mobile access to government info and services. Mobile is everywhere, and it’s growing ever more common and affordable. By utilizing this avenue, governments can provide information AND get feedback from a broader swath of the population than by other means. This is democracy — equal opportunity — or at least a significant advancement in that direction.

Meet them where they are

Too often, governments do not make the effort (or just don’t know how) to connect with residents in meaningful ways. A government “for” the people will meet people where they already are, use the tools they are using, communicate in a way they can understand. This doesn’t mean that citizens are dumb, it just means that agencies need to cut the jargon, red tape and long lines as much as possible if they truly wish to empower the people. Mobile efforts are an ideal step in this direction. Through mobile interfaces, governments can offer no-wait access to services like bill payments, licenses and registrations, transit information, citizen reporting and beyond. Bringing these options TO the people, meeting them where they are, demonstrates a true democratic mindset and a sincere effort to connect with citizens.

Power to the people

Knowledge is power, and the democratic concept of empowering people through the opening of government data is a large part of the open government movement. It seems inevitable that agencies should aim to jump-start this process by going mobile — after all, citizens are already getting the majority of their daily information (weather, traffic, socialization, stocks, news, business, etc.) through their mobile devices. Governments hold great amounts of potentially helpful data in their hands. Opening this data by releasing it on public websites is good, but using mobile interfaces to disseminate it in a usable form is even better, and puts the power where it belongs — with the people.

Affordable democracy

Mobile democracy is affordable in the deepest sense (not just monetarily). It makes government connections and interactions more affordable for citizens in terms of effort, portability, flexibility, and convenience. Given mobile gov options, people are more likely to interact with their governments frequently, increasing trust and familiarity in ways that should be the goal of every democracy. They may visit the voting booth once a year or less, but citizens use government services — transit, taxes, sanitation, public works — every day. They also use their mobile phones every day. See the connection?

For a true democracy, a government striving for openness and accountability, getting on board with mobile technology just makes sense. Many agencies have made significant mobile efforts, with success, encouraging others to follow suit. Mobile democracy takes “open data” and makes it usable for the people … and wasn’t that the whole point of open government in the first place?

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