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?

What inspired you to create Commons?

Sometimes moving to a new place gives you a fresh perspective on routine activities. When I moved to NYC two years ago, I was surprised to see so many opportunities for neighborhood improvements near my home and school, and I was fascinated by NYC’s highly utilized 311 citizen reporting system. It was clear to me that NYC citizens care about improving their city, and that our City government is committed to listening to its citizens.

But one thing that struck me about these analog and digital methods of reporting was that people were not reporting as a community — they were reporting as individuals — many people reporting in parallel without any shared awareness of one another’s activities. I then thought about designing a virtual social system that mimics the town hall meeting, where one person reports a problem or suggests an improvement, and 49 people “vote it up” (or in today’s terms, “like” it). In today’s super connected world, we need a civic engagement system designed to support conversation among many people at once – and that is how I came up with the initial idea for Commons.

Then I started thinking about the ways that I could connect to my new neighbors on the issues that I care about in our neighborhood, while on the go and in short bursts of focused time and energy, kind of like playing a game that is on-going over time and is something that you keep coming back to check and make a move. Citizens are now used to having a digital presence that is de-coupled from our traditional notions of time and space.

We have apps for citizen reporting of problems and complaints, like 311, SeeClickFix, FixMyStreet, and we have apps for sharing ideas for improvement, like Give A Minute (Local Projects), but I have this notion that these two worlds should be united in one as they seem like two sides of the same coin to me. I believe these two methods complement each other for a more complete civic engagement experience, and Commons aims to fulfill this vision.

I’m a graduate student at ITP in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where I study interaction design, social software, and creative technology, a graduate researcher at the NYU Polytechnic Social Game Lab, spring intern at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Digital Coordination, and summer intern at Apple doing mobile user experience design, so I spend a lot of my time these days thinking about the intersection of these things.

Aren’t there enough 311 apps out there? How is Commons different?

We think Commons is one of the first in a new genre of “civic gaming”, a new approach to take citizen reporting social. It’s a mobile, location-aware civic media app for urban communities that merges methods from traditional citizen reporting tools, with gaming mechanics and social voting.

We hope that Commons will challenge the ways in which people think about their role in their communities, and in civic life in general. We hope it will transform the way that we as citizens engage with one another about the issues and places we share in common, and how we approach solving many of our own problems before government even gets involved.

Commons provides a fun and constructive outlet for what is usually a frustrating experience of complaining about how broken your city is. And it goes way beyond reporting a pothole — in fact, if you report a pothole in the game, you most likely won’t win very many votes or kudos from your fellow neighbors because the game is designed to reward creative solutions and collaborative problem-solving. We already have apps and websites for reporting potholes, like SeeClickFix and FixMyStreet in the UK, and like the NYC Daily Pothole, so we’re not aiming to create another one.

In our 3 playtests and on actual game day, players said they really liked the positive social mechanics and voting aspect of the game, and how ‘community leaders’ seem to naturally emerge from the streams of activity.

I don’t think people need attractive game mechanics to want to get involved in community service or town hall meetings, or any other sort of activity. On the other hand, elements of fun and competitive play introduce opportunities for serendipitous social interactions and competing to do good, which I love. Doing activities with a thematic approach, or mission-centered perspective, helps keep people focused on the objective while having fun and making each individual’s input count.

How do you hope to officially integrate Commons with municipality 311 centers?

Commons is a social platform that leverages crowdsourcing and location-based reporting techniques to improve city services and standards of living. This civic engagement game is a way to connect citizens through the places they share in common, and to enable the government to fix the right problems, faster. Through Commons, local government can 1) receive accurate and timely information, 2) identify priority areas, 3) efficiently allocate resources, and, ultimately, 4) demonstrate accountability to its citizens.

Our goal is to build the next version of Commons as a cross-platform app on iOS, Android, (and possibly RIM in cities where it makes sense), with SMS integration and interoperability with Open311 technologies and read/write APIs for each city, so that 311 teams can integrate with Commons on the backend to pull its incoming data into their current operating centers and visualize trends from the data in realt-time.

It is our hope that the data gathered from Commons will be valuable to city governments and municipality 311 centers, whose mission it is to enable citizen-centric, collaborative government and to expand civic engagement through new digital tools and real-time information services.

What trends do you see occurring in open government / Gov 2.0 that you’re most excited about?

Commons is definitely Gov 2.1+, combining the powers of serendipitous social interactions, mobile crowdsourcing, and game mechanics.

Some of the rad trends in Gov 2.0 that I’m digging right now are: 1) cities supporting open data initiatives with read/write APIs, 2) mobile and location-based services, e.g. mobile banking, m-health, and m4d (mobile for development), 3) open standards for 311 services, like Open311, 4) citywide grassroots innovation contests, like NYCBigApps and DataSF App Contest, 5) open sharing of dev tools and code so we don’t all re-invent the same apps over again for each city, e.g. Code for America. I am also a huge supporter of bottom-up projects like Open Street Map, where citizens can collaboratively edit geographical data about their cities and neighborhoods and build useful and relevant maps from scratch.

Download Commons on iTunes.

Video:

Kirkpatrick:

“It’s exciting to be with other practitioners who are thinking about the idea of the relationship between technology and social change and civic empowerment, so we’re glad to be part of that conversation. “

Download Commons on iTunes here.

Video overview:

Sample installment:

What is YouTown?

YouTown is an all-in-one mobile platform that allows government agencies to get mobile within a day. Agencies just have to create a YouTown account and can start adding their open data feeds (like their RSS feeds, Calendar feeds, Maps and Services).

When citizens download the app, they gain access to all this published information including local maps, news, events and services. From council meetings to festivals, from sanitation schedules to sporting events, people have the information they need at their fingertips no matter where they are. Mobile is overtaking other forms of communication, so it just makes sense for cities to publish their data this way.

What problem does it solve?

Cost-effectiveness is a top consideration for most agencies in today’s economic climate. Many do not have the time or funds to invest in app development to make city information mobile. For those that have been able to introduce mobility, fragmentation is a problem: an app for public works, an app for the city’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, an app for the Chamber of Commerce, and so forth. YouTown puts it all together on one screen. It takes 60 seconds to sign up for YouTown, and it’s free. Agencies can also opt for one of several affordable subscription fees to get access to more features. Most citizens are already using their mobile devices for weather, e-mail, music, social networking and other day-to-day activities. YouTown integrates local government into that framework.

How does it make life easier for governments?

YouTown makes life easier for agencies looking for the “next step” in open data and mobile government. It takes the guesswork out of providing this mobile information to citizens. Just sign up and begin uploading feeds, articles, maps, calendars, datasets and more. YouTown is simple enough that any agency employee with basic technical understanding can handle the admin. This makes it ideal for small towns and booming cities alike. It is a one-of-a-kind platform that solves the problem of opening government data to citizens in a mobile, intuitive way.

What did you learn during the development process?

The Beta program was organized as a “co-creation” innovation process. From the very beginning, YouTown developers partnered with over 25 government agencies across the US to gain feedback and ideas for the app.

Crowd-sourcing was a key factor as developers reached out to citizens to discover their priorities for mobile government. The beta cities/counties were consulted in every step of the process, from the first sketches till the beta test.

One of the biggest challenges of the Beta process, although YouTown was built on open standards, was the different interpretation and errors that surfaced with the standards across multiple agencies and caused tech issues. After ironing out the bugs, and combining the feedback of citizens and agencies, YouTown emerged as a more intuitive and functional platform to take government/citizen communication to a whole new level.

Screenshots:

The company is led by tech veterans Stephen Hood (del.icio.us), Dave Baggeroer (Stanford Institute of Design), Josh Whiting (Craigslist) and Ian Kallen (Technorati) and backed by well-known angel and venture capital investors, including Battery Ventures, Mitch Kapor, Founder Collective, Harrison Metal, Joshua Schachter, Josh Stylman and Tom McInerney.

Co-founder Stephen Hood shares insights into the new venture and its plans for the future:

Give us the elevator pitch

Blockboard is the app for your neighborhood. It’s a mobile bulletin board that uses your iPhone (and soon, your Android phone) to connect you with your neighbors. If it’s about your neighborhood, you can find it or post it on Blockboard.

For example, you can:

• Ask a question of your neighbors (we’ll notify you when someone answers)
• See and post interesting photos from around the neighborhood
• Read the latest neighborhood news as reported both by the best local blogs and by your own neighbors
• Report graffiti, litter, or other problems to the city (we’ll automatically submit it to San Francisco’s 311 system and follow-up on the status)
• Use our neighborhood directory to get those impossible-to-find city phone numbers, find the nearest police station, or connect directly with your elected representatives.

We just launched a small pilot project a couple of weeks ago for the Mission District here in San Francisco, and will be adding more neighborhoods soon.

Why does this matter?

In this age of social networking, we now spend so much time talking to people who are far away that we’ve forgotten how to talk to the person next door. Many of us simply don’t know our neighbors any more. We are living together, and yet alone.

While we may not always want to be friends with our neighbors, we have a lot to gain in having a connection. We all face real issues everyday in the communities where we live. Some are big, like safety, government, and sustainability. Some are smaller, like figuring out what’s going on in my neighborhood tonight or trying to get a streetlight fixed. How are we going to solve these problems on our own?

At Blockboard we believe that technology – and smartphones in particular – can help reconnect neighbors and empower them to improve their neighborhoods, and that’s our goal in a nutshell.

What’s your strategy for expanding to different neighborhoods and cities?

We’ve purposely started with a single neighborhood (the Mission) so that we can build something that is very relevant and useful to the people who live there. Our next step will be to expand to a wider variety of neighborhoods in San Francisco. We expect that Blockboard will evolve a little differently for every neighborhood and city it services, and we’ve built our technology to allow for that. Once we’ve reached a certain level of usage in San Francisco we will begin to look at other cities… but first things first!

What are your plans for revenue?

Our only focus right now is making sure that Blockboard is useful to people and makes a positive impact in San Francisco. If we build the product we’re envisioning we’re confident that we can monetize it in a way that also benefits the communities it serves.

Twelve months from now, what does Blockboard look like? How are we using it?

In twelve months we expect that Blockboard will be active in every neighborhood of San Francisco and will be used in ways we probably can’t even imagine right now. It’s our hope that each neighborhood will make Blockboard “their own” and will use it to address their own unique needs and challenges.

Connect with Blockboard on Twitter.

Screenshots:

Peterson answers the following questions:

• What is Routesy?
• What challenges did you face developing Routesy?
• What advice do you have for civic developers?
• What open data advice do you have for government?

Full interview:

Advice to developers:

“Take advantage of the large amount of data that’s actually available from the city and other public sources. There are a lot of great things that haven’t been built yet and really a lot of opportunities to take that public domain stuff and make it into something really useful. I would also advise developers to actively talk to people in government and to let them know what data they want available that’s not available and to make sure everything’s working the way it’s supposed to and to have a good relationship with those public officials.”

Advice to government:

“Government really should be working with developers to figure out what formats they can provide data in in order for developers to create the best products possible. They should also continue to just be open and publish as much data as possible, because that’s really where the innovation and technology around that data is going to come from.”

Download Routesy on iTunes or connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Zonability is a zoning information Web application for ‘property owners, renters, sellers, buyers, remodelers, investors, and neighborhood watchdog groups.’ It was an Apps for Californians winner and is now competing in the NYC BigApps 2.0 contest. Founder Leigh Budlong discusses her work, challenges with open data, thoughts on Gov 2.0 and shares lessons-learned advice to other civic developers.

How did you get the idea for Zonability?

Zonability is an idea that I carried in the back of my head for years, but it took the 2008 financial crisis to make it come to life. As a former commercial real estate appraiser, I was always tracking down zoning information. While I knew I couldn’t establish an opinion of value without it, I dreaded doing it because it was time consuming. It meant waiting for city planners to return a call or picking through online PDFs that are hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pages long. The bottom line, it was one of those tasks that always left me with the thought of “there has to be a better way.”

The collapse of the real estate market and subsequent financial meltdown put almost all of my customers out of business. By the end of 2009, I knew I had to re-invent my 6-year old company if I wanted to keep it going.

What have been your challenges developing Zonability?

We are working on multiple fronts so there are several major challenges that range from access to information, developing a sound business model and resource allocation. Zonability is a bootstrapped project. We know first hand what it takes to be a “skinny startup” and have reached out to others in this sector to ask how they are doing it – it is a great community of software developers!

Regarding the technology piece, designing and building the database has been most perplexing given the disparity of data sets and the sheer volume of data found in a typical zoning ordinance.

Incorporating GIS (geographical information system) data became a big part of our product once we learned how to successfully embed the zoning ordinance data. The fusion of two produced our interactive map – I was hooked! The drawback has been the time required to go to individual municipalities to inquire about a GIS shapefiles (this is the format for GIS). Some places have the information online, others require a signed statement outlining the purpose of asking for the data while others simply say “no” because we are not a non-profit. Convincing cities to provide these files has been an ongoing challenge.

What are your thoughts on Gov 2.0?

In my view, we are at the beginning stages of an evolving trend and this is due to several reasons: the popularity of smart phones, increased adoption of self service informational platforms, and stripped government budgets. We are also at the forefront of people collectively solving problems. That in itself may lead to other interesting turns of events. Adoption rates will be fast once the benefits become clear and the process for creating an open data platform get easier.

I’m currently reading The Change Function by Pip Coburn who talks extensively about why some technology is adopted while others are not. It comes down to ease of use. I see the next chapter for Gov 2.0 focusing on how to consume this now open data with a cleaned up and conforming structure such as APIs.

Once that milestone is reached, I anticipate the real adoption to start. One way to track the success of Gov 2.0 will be to monitor the growth of civic software jobs. “Government as a platform” has tremendous potential to be a successful example of public/private partnership. Using Zonability as an example, we started with an idea, grew it to something tangible and are now starting to pay people with different backgrounds and talents in the hope of building a business. That is where I think Gov 2.0 is going … to new job creation and entrepreneurship.

What advice do you have for aspiring civic software developers?

Well, it is a bit like construction – it takes twice as long and costs twice as much. Really though, it is good to recognize early that despite having great plans, things may take longer and not go the way you thought they would. This seems to be especially true for civic software given the “new-ness” of the concept.

These are my tips:

1. Don’t get down or give up when you hear “no.”
2. Don’t think you are the only one hearing “no” so reach out to other developers.
3. Explain clearly what data you need (and why) and be prepared to make your request in writing.
4. Be an ambassador for Gov 2.0 and help explain it to people since it is so new. It is important to recognize the distinction between data and information. In fact, that is a critical point. The government has data – tons of it – but it is and will remain worthless without ‘doing something’ with it to make it useful.
5. Encourage other civic software developers – this is a brand new field and there is plenty of room for all of those interested to enter. There is no successful business model to point to (at least not quite yet).
6. Timing is everything. Be prepared, think ahead and have fun because this is an undefined space where you can make a difference and be apart of a fast-changing cottage industry.

From a personal perspective, Zonability is stretching my boundaries on so many levels. It is like being in a lab where you learn technology, government protocol and product development while coping with the risk of failure. It requires a leap of faith to devote all of your time and personal savings to a new venture, but it is incredibly rewarding – even before seeing a single dollar of the revenue we aspire to create in the future.

To learn more, contact Leigh or follow Zonability on Twitter.

Zonability video overview:

Be A Hero: San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District Chief Richard Price shares the latest on a new app that links trained volunteers with heart attack victims using GPS-enabled smart phones. Chief Price tells Gov 2.0 Radio that volunteer developers from Workday are building out a software development kit for the project, while a foundation will help implement and provide support for agencies in the U.S. and around the world. Learn more and register interest in the Chain of Life 2.0 project here.

Public servants, developers and entrepreneurs gathered together to discuss and learn about the civic value of open data and how the City of San Francisco and private citizens are leveraging this opportunity at sf.govfresh, Sept. 1, at Adobe Systems’ San Francisco offices. Speakers included San Francisco Chief Information Officer Chris Vein, Mom Maps Founder & CEO Jill Seman, San Francisco Department of Technology Director of Innovation Jay Nath, Stamen Partner Michal Migurski, Routesy Founder Steven Peterson and SF Environment Internet Communications Coordinator Lawrence Grodeska.

Watch the entire playback here. Presentation videos are also posted below.

Be sure to read Adriel Hampton’s review at OpenSF or see the #sfgf hashtag for the Twitter discussion around the event.

Special thanks to Adobe for hosting and sponsoring the event. This was GovFresh’s first event, and we couldn’t have asked for a better partner and supporter. I firmly believe fostering true community through events such as sf.govfresh is where industry needs to invest more of its outreach budget.

Video presentations

Chris Vein, CIO, San Francisco (Part 1):

Chris Vein, CIO, San Francisco (Part 2):

Jay Nath, Director of Innovation, San Francisco:

Steven Peterson, Routesy:

Lawrence Grodeska, SF Environment:

Michal Migurski, Stamen Design + Crimespotting:

Jill Seman, Mom Maps (Part 1):

Jill Seman, Mom Maps (Part 2):

Open Q&A with Chris Vein, CIO, San Francisco:

Presentations

Here’s a few of the presentations slides.

‘Open311 API‘ (Jay Nath, Director of Innovation, San Francisco):

EcoFinder Open Data, Open Source, Open Collaboration (Lawrence Grodeska, SF Environment):