Open source saves union jobs

San Francisco’s legislation came about from a combination of factors, but the primary one was the City wanted to save money without laying off employees. Reducing the millions of dollars that were being spent on software licensing fees and other proprietary software was a no brainer for city leaders facing a half a billion-dollar budget deficit.

The first-of-its-kind policy requires that open source be considered equally to commercial products when buying new software. Instead of paying software-licensing fees year after year, under the direction of the City’s CIO, Chris Vein, and the Department of Technology the City opted to train employees with new skills.

San Francisco decided to invest in people and a new open source government.

It all started with a tweet

Last week, former Local 21 President Richard Isen (an app developer for the City of San Francisco) and I were talking about what I should talk about later today. He reminded me how the open source movement in San Francisco government started with a tweet.

Eighteen months ago, Mayor Newsom was at Twitter headquarters for a conversation about technology in government. During the town hall Newsom received a tweet about a pothole. He turned to Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams and said let’s find a way for people to tweet their service requests directly to San Francisco’s 311 customer service center.

Three months later, San Francisco launched the first Twitter 311 service, @SF311 allowing residents to tweet, text, and send photos of potholes and other requests directly to the City. As it turns out, Isen was the app developer on the project.

Working with Twitter and using the open source platform, CoTweet Isen turned @SF311 into reality. Normally, the software procurement process for something like this would have taken months. Instead from idea to implementation it took less than three months. Oh and the latest reports show @SF311 is saving the city money in call center costs.

Security in open source

Craig of Craigslist always reminds me when talking about open source to highlight the added security and stability of open source over proprietary software. I won’t get into it here but I recommend reading Sun Microsystems President & COO Bill Vass’ blog about the topic, “The No. 1 Reason to Move to Open Source is to IMPROVE Security.”

Unions for open source

Since the launch of @SF311, San Francisco has continued to utilize open source software to expand city services while reducing costs and implementation times from DataSF.org to the first national API for government. Meanwhile, open source legislation has spread from California to Vermont.

Unions should join the Gov 2.0 effort and make the open source movement their own. Demanding that more local governments pass open source legislation will save taxpayers money and protect union jobs.

Related posts:

1. SF Mayor Newsom: Open source ‘more reliable’
2. Open source in government: Who was first?
3. Open Source for America launches new video campaign

Initial toolkits includes Healthy SF, Plastic Bag, SF Promise, JobsNowSF! and Open Data.

SF Mayor Gavin Newsom video announcement:

Related posts:

1. SF selects Brightidea to power employee ideas campaign
2. SF mayor Newsom addresses open government plan to department heads
3. Open Gov Blog Challenge: Share your ideas to get more open gov ideas

Kundra’s Open311 comments from the White House blog:

This is a great approach that ties together efforts in San Francisco, Boston, the District of Columbia, Portland, and Los Angeles to open more services to citizens, and to use data to drive progress in people’s lives. Too often, people grumble that their complaints about government – be it city, county, state, or federal – get swallowed by the bureaucracy. Open 311 is an answer to that problem, placing the role of service evaluator and service dispatcher in the power of citizens’ hands. Through this approach, new web applications can mash publicly available, real-time data from the cities to allow people to track the status of repairs or improvements, while also allowing them to make new requests for services. For instance, I can use the same application to report a broken parking meter when I’m home in the District of Columbia or traveling to cities like Portland, Los Angeles, Boston, or San Francisco. This is the perfect example of how government is simplifying access to citizen services. Open 311 is an innovation that will improve people’s lives and make better use of taxpayer dollars.

Video:

Related posts:

1. Gov 2.0 guide to 311 and Open311
2. Building an Open311 application
3. SF mayor Newsom addresses open government plan to department heads

The top idea will be selected for implementation with 10 other high ranking ideas recognized in an event with Mayor Gavin Newsom and get featured on SFGov.org as well as the city’s Facebook page.

“ImproveSF.org will allow the City to tap into valuable ideas from city employees to help solve some of our most pressing issues,” said Newsom. “I encourage employees to submit creative solutions to help balance our budget.”

Brightidea also powers Ireland’s Your Country Your Call campaign.

Related posts:

1. SF launches PolicySF to help governments share ideas
2. FedSpace wants your ideas
3. 7 ideas to get more open government ideas

Quotable:

San Francisco just this last week became the first city in the United States of America to adopt and open source software policy. First city in America … Open source software is really exciting and this is leading, cutting edge. More reliable from my perspective, we can get the technology moving much quicker from they typical procurement processes and we can deliver it … at a lesser cost to the taxpayer.

Related posts:

1. SF mayor Newsom addresses open government plan to department heads
2. An open source union movement
3. Open Source for America launches new video campaign

COIT Software Evaluation Policy

Introduction

Under the provisions of the City and County San Francisco Administrative Code, information resources are the strategic assets of the City and County of San Francisco that will be managed at the direction of the Committee on Information Technology (COIT). The COIT Software Evaluation Policy will require a standard, rigorous evaluation of the operational benefits and total cost of ownership of new software. The Software Evaluation Policy will require departments to consider open source alternatives, when available, on an equal basis to commercial software, as these may reduce cost and speed the time needed to bring software applications to production. (Open source software means that the underlying source code is not copyrighted and therefore available free of charge to read, modify, and build upon.) This policy is part of the City’s “Open SF” project which is intended to engage our constituents in developing creative solutions to our shared challenges.

Purpose

The purpose of the COIT Software Evaluation policy is to ensure that all departments thoroughly and fairly evaluate software alternatives, including open source prior to acquiring new software. New software means an additional software system or a complete replacement of an existing system, rather than an upgrade or modification to an existing system. COIT believes that a rigorous evaluation process will help departments make software choices that meet operational requirements, reduce costs, and possibly speed the time to bring software applications into production. The intent is that this process occur concurrent with existing procurement process and not add additional time to the procurement process.

Policy

The Software Evaluation Method or equivalent method must be used for all new software purchases over $100,000. COIT directs that the Software Evaluation Method or equivalent method be used for all new software purchases, including non-application software, such as databases, operating systems, web application servers. The Software Evaluation Method shall be available on the COIT website and will be developed and maintained by the City’s Chief Information Officer.

Departments are responsible for completing the Software Evaluation Method or equivalent method at two possible junctures:

1. In cases where requirements have been established, but no software solution identified, the Software Evaluation Method or equivalent must be part of the evaluation of responses to a Request for Proposal or similar procurement vehicle; or

2. In cases where a software solution has been identified, the Software Evaluation Method must be applied prior to commencing a request for bids through the Technology Store or similar procurement vehicle.

The CIO will reject purchases that do not document that they have followed the COIT Software Evaluation Method or equivalent process.

The CIO will determine whether a department has made a good faith effort to consider open source software alternatives, and may reject purchases that do not.

The Performance and Planning and Budget Subcommittees will review each Software Evaluation as part of its oversight of IT projects.

New enterprise agreements for existing software used by the City are not considered a new software acquisition.

Exceptions to this standard can be granted by COIT upon request by department.

Dates

Approved by Resources Subcommittee: January 6, 2010
Approved by COIT: January 21, 2010

Effective Date: February 1, 2010

Related posts:

1. SF Mayor Newsom: Open source ‘more reliable’
2. Red Hat lead architect on open source software in government
3. Gov 2.0 guide to San Francisco

Here’s a review:

The former news girl in me loves this data stream, but EveryBlock is more than just neighborly news. It’s everything you want to know about what’s going on in your neighborhood at a given time! The information presented is a bit hodge-podge (it pulled x-rays of someone’s hand that were posted to Flickr and tagged with the right neighborhood), but the fact that this app CAN pull all that data is amazing enough to make me not care that I might have to wade through some of the stuff I don’t care as much about.

EveryBlock features what calls to the city have been made recently, including 911 calls, businesses in the area, reviews of businesses and pictures. Plus, there’s a section where you can notify your neighbors – the option to create a missing pet particularly caught my eye as that could have come in handy when I lost my dog a few months ago (don’t worry – she came home safe and sound)!

Spot Crime is an enlightening – yet somewhat frightening! – app that shows you, day-to-day, where crimes have taken place. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but most of the reported crimes are assaults that have either been handled or were canceled before units were even dispatched. Spot Crime is interesting to look at and assess the relative safety of the neighborhood you live in, but chances are if you live there, you likely don’t need a map to tell you how safe/unsafe it is! I could see this being more useful if you’re looking to move and want to see what stats are in other areas. Or if you saw or heard about a crime and want to see what ended up happening.

There are a number of other different crime-mapping apps as well that pull similar data and offer similar services. CrimeSpotting is an interactive map of crimes while Crime Reports provides stats integrating Google maps, using the street level view. With this app, users can also create free accounts on the site if they would like to receive email alerts when crimes occur near their home or work. Your Mapper allows you to see the closest crimes to any address, and Crime Mapping is dedicated to helping San Francisco Police Department provide the public with valuable information about crime activity by neighborhood.

If you want to know how to keep yourself safe from a bad meal, check out CleanScores. Perhaps you have an idea of where you want to eat, but you’re not sure about whether you SHOULD eat there – y’know, because it might not be up to health code standard! Don’t lie, you know you’ve chosen or not chosen to eat somewhere at some point based off of the health code rating a restaurant received! This app goes beyond the rating card in the window and gives you recent information along with reviews – beware though, you may not want to eat at ALL after reading what some reviewers have to say about certain eateries!

Clean Scores is great if you know a place you want to try, but just want some clean, healthy data to make or break your decision. You can read all the reasons a restaurant may have received a violation and find out when their most recent inspection was.

But seriously, if you ever want to eat again, you may want to pass on reading some of the reviews!

If you’re a mom, you need more than a database of safe, clean restaurants at your disposal. Enter Mom Maps. Not only is the site design fun, inviting and cute (which, ok, isn’t necessary but sure makes the experience even better!) the app provides a valuable service to moms on the go. With this app you’ll find kid-friendly spots throughout the SF Bay Area, NYC, LA, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Boise and Hawaii. WHEW! That’s a lot of kid fun!

Whether you end up with a few extra hours on your hands, you’re looking for a great place for a play date, need to do something indoors/outdoors, or any one of a number of other possibilities, you can find a solution here! The app contains an extensive list of Parks, Playgrounds, Restaurants, Museums and Indoor Play Areas that are kid friendly and fun.

Put in your location and using GPS – you’ll see results which are close to you, plus a map to get you there. Pick from the above selections that are closest to you – or suit your preferences the best. You have a multitude of new and fun options for you and your kid at your fingertips!

From there, you can select from other great open data apps – like MuniApp, Rail Bandit, Dadnab or others – that will assist you with public transit or commuting options to get you to your kid-friendly destination.

There’s a number of apps that make your public transit experience a bit better, but sometimes you just have to drive. And there are apps to make this experience better as well, including the The Original Parking Locater. This app ensures that if you do drive ad park, you never lose your car again. The interface provides the ability to take photos of where you’re parked as well as enter different details to document specific land marks ~ like where exactly you need to enter the garage, or which one-way alley you parked down! Special integrated features for all the major Bay Area airports for flight schedules, airports services, parking fees & information, as well as security, roadside assistance and more.

Accessible Parking SF takes into account your basic needs when trying to get to point A to point B in the city: how to get there and where to park. Accessible Parking SF provides directions and then shows available parking spaces within a certain radius of your destination. The one thing that isn’t clear is how this is monitored and how the system knows if the parking spot will be available at a given time, or if the app is merely showing the spots in the area that COULD be available.

Either way, it’s worth noting that the app provides info on public, street and garage parking.

Commuting made easy. Well, easIER.

Dadnab has a funny name, but it’s a great app. Maybe you’re one of the few that don’t have a smart phone. Or maybe you’re trying to get home from the middle of nowhere without web access. Either way, if you find yourself offline and needing to get home – or somewhere else – this app can help you out of a jam! Dadnab uses text messaging to provide users with directions to and from their destination, so all you need is a couple bars of reception. The app allows you to select your area, then text your exact location and your destination. Viola! The app responds with public transit directions!

MuniApp gives you real-time data on all the various Muni lines including buses, trolleys and street cars. Locate nearby stops and their respective bus routes based on user location, or quickly navigate through the bus lines and stops to access prediction information. The nice thing about this app versus, say, the city’s NextMuni site is that you can see multiple lines at once without having to switch between lines.

iCommuteSF is powered by NextBus but goes deeper than that. In addition to providing the normal NextBus service of finding when your desired line is coming, it also provides a GPS location device that will point you to the nearest stop based on your location, if you’re not sure how to get around. You can also save your most frequent commuter lines into your favorites for easy access. iCommute SF Lite is also available for free.

If you’re looking to make trip planning easier, you might also want to check out TransiCast for the Android which provides real-time departure information for major metro lines, iBART which uses BART’s real-time arrival feed to display upcoming arrivals, and Transit Time Map shows how far you can travel on public transit from a given location in a certain amount of time which is a “baby step towards helping you find a walkable, transit-friendly place to live so that you can ditch the zero (your car) and get with the hero (your new walkable condo near a light rail stop).”

I’m grateful I live in a city that has relatively decent public transportation options. What makes it “relatively decent” and not “stellar” has a lot to do with what it takes to plan a trip – problems the BART Arrivals and Rail Bandit apps are hoping to minimize.

BART Arrivals focuses on the BART system, tracking train arrival times in real time as well as providing system alerts. The app utilizes Netvibes, iGoogle, Apple Dashboard, Vista Sidebar and Opera, simply select the station where you’re waiting and you’ll see the next incoming trains and their destinations. It’s like the city’s NextMuni site, but a much more convenient mobile app and serving the BART system.

Rail Bandit does something similar for train schedules and also provides BART arrival updates as well as updates from Muni trains, Caltrain and ACE trains. These updates are aggregated into a single network. This app enables the user to select the train lines they are interested in, then the corresponding schedules are downloaded and stored locally on the phone.

I wanted to give special recognition to Transit Bay, which gives blind or vision impaired BART travelers the ability to ascertain real-time departure times of the trains they’re waiting on. The app relies on voice recognition software and the person simply tells the app their departure station and the app’s speech synthesis will respond with all real-time departure trains from this station. It will also tell you any BART system service advisories. Access is free to the platform and can be done in numerous ways: – by Skype phone – by SIP phone – by Inum phone.

I don’t even remember when we had to use those crazy fold-out schedules, and hope and pray the times were right and things were running on time. Thank goodness for up-to-the-minute data integration or public transportation could be a lot more inconvenient. At least if you’re going to have to wait for a train, you’ll know it ahead of time!

Related posts:

1. San Francisco’s app showcase highlights civic innovation
2. San Francisco’s open data directive
3. EcoFinder iPhone app blends open data, sustainability

Here’s an overview:

San Francisco’s Open Data Executive Directive

On October 21, 2009, Mayor Gavin Newsom issued SF’s Open Data Executive Directive that states:

The City and County of San Francisco will be able to engage our innovative high-tech workforce by releasing data, a key component of San Francisco’s future economic development. By providing government data that adheres to privacy and security policies, San Francisco’s world class technology community is given the platform from which to create useful civic tools, all at no cost to City government. By bringing City data and San Francisco’s entrepreneurs together, we can effectively leverage existing resources to stimulate industry, create jobs and highlight San Francisco’s creative culture and attractiveness as a place to live and work. Finally, the City and County of San Francisco’s technology presence will begin to reflect that of our world class, cutting edge private technology sector, and help us better engage the wealth of knowledge and skills of our local community.

(See also San Francisco’s open data directive and SF mayor Newsom addresses open government plan to department heads)

Newsom and others discuss launch of DataSF and the city’s open government initiative with city department heads:

DataSF

DataSF.org is SF’s open data site that provides “structured, raw and machine-readable government data to the public in an easily downloadable format.” Dataset categories include geography, admin & finance, environment, housing, human services, public safety, public works and transit.

(See also San Francisco’s DataSF launch)

Press conference announcing DataSF launch:

DataSF App Showcase

DataSF App Showcase highlights Web and mobile applications developed using the SF’s open data.

(See also San Francisco’s app showcase highlights civic innovation)

SF311

SF311 is SF’s citizen service call center that includes Twitter (@SF311).

Video from SFGTV:

SF on GovFreshTV

Francisco’s CIO Chris Vein answers the question ‘What does Gov 2.0 mean to you?’

SF Director of Innovation Jay Nath:

Related coverage

Gov 2.0 Radio:

The Promise of Open Data: We talk with City of San Francisco CTO Blair Adams, SF innovations manager Jay Nath, and Web developer Tom Croucher about the open access to government data.

InformationWeek:

Related posts:

1. San Francisco’s app showcase highlights civic innovation
2. San Francisco’s open data directive
3. SF mayor Newsom addresses open government plan to department heads

According to the site, DataSF App Showcase “celebrates the innovators and innovations who are championing the Mayor’s vision of a more collaborative and open government.”

Recommendations to SF and other cities who want to do the same:

• Create an RSS feed for new apps.
• Allow filter by category or Web/mobile.

Related posts:

1. Gov 2.0 guide to San Francisco
2. 17 open data apps for San Francisco
3. San Francisco’s open data directive

EcoFinder is a free iPhone app that helps San Francisco residents and businesses find recycle locations throughout the city, including electronics, appliance and matresses. Users can filter drop-off/pick-up options by free or pay services.

EcoFinder was created using open data from SF Environment as part of San Francisco’s open data initiative and developed by Haku Wale in partnership with SF Environment, Nextive and AdMob.

• EcoFinder Website
• Download

Video overview:

Related posts:

1. InformationWeek video features SF’s open government efforts
2. Sunlight whips up Real Time Congress iPhone app
3. 17 open data apps for San Francisco