Connect with John on Twitter at @chicagoCTO and @immerito.

(Photo: Code for America)

I’ve been collecting links (below) from the UK’s Government Digital Service blog for a while wondering when they’ll stop executing their great “beta” work on GOV.UK, but they continue to outdo themselves.

As Simon Dickson writes, “Betagov not afraid of public commitment.” See also Alex Howard’s “With GOV.UK, British government redefines the online government platform.”

Many will appreciate UK ICT Futures Programme Director Liam Maxwell’s quote in the Guardian:

“For years we spent on IT systems built for bureaucrats, they were not built for people.”

Here, Maxwell outlines the role of IT in open and efficient government:

Links:

• This is why we are here
• Introducing the beta of GOV.UK
• GOV.UK- a truly open and collaborative platform
• Introducing the next phase of the GOV.UK beta
• INSIDE GOVERNMENT – a few highlights
• Local services and GOV.UK
• Using HTML5 for GOV.UK
• It’s all about the words
• Writing simply: language choices for the GOV.UK navigation
• Creating videos for GOV.UK
• Pulling the servers’ strings
• Where are those APIs you promised?
• The mobile question: Responsive Design
• Browsers we support and why
• Hosting the beta of GOV.UK

The right to vote is being chiseled away by voter ID laws that require voters to show government-issued photo ID in order to vote.

In December, the Department of Justice blocked South Carolina’s voter ID law on the grounds it would make it harder for minorities to vote in violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Mississippi and Texas voting ID laws also must be pre-cleared but Texas is not waiting. The Lone Star State filed a federal lawsuit in an effort to speed up a decision.

Strict photo ID requirements will be in place in at least five states – Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin — In November. With Election Day less than nine months away, voters without an official photo ID cannot wait for the challenges to play out at the Justice Department and in the courts.

In Wisconsin, for instance, voters must navigate “The 4 Proofs.”

I am a founding member of the Election Protection Coalition. Still, looking at the infographic makes my head hurt. More worrisome, it discourages voters from completing the application process. So I presented the problem of TMI (read: disenfranchisement by design) at Random Hacks of Kindness and the Hackathon for Social Good. Citizen programmers developed solutions to quickly provide voters with information on how to get a voter ID.

During Social Week Washington, DC, I gave a demo of the Cost of Freedom web-based app developed by Kin Lane, API Evangelist for CityGrid.

Users in Wisconsin can forget about “The 4 Proofs.” Instead, in four clicks or less, they will be able to access information about the state’s voter ID requirements, how to obtain a certified copy of their birth certificate (the document that’s typically produced to establish one’s identity), and the location, hours and directions to the Office of Vital Records using public transit.

I also gave a live demo of the Cost of Freedom text-based app developed by Jack Aboutboul, Twilio’s API Evangelist. Twilio is making an in-contribution of text message services to promote voter education.

To commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we plan to launch the Cost of Freedom App on April 4, 2012.

I will post regular updates about the Cost of Freedom Project and other initiatives that are using civic innovation to protect the right to vote. The conversation about voter ID also gives us an opportunity to raise awareness about disruptive technologies in the public sector beyond election administration.

For more information, please visit us at Facebook.com/CostofFreedom. You can sign up to receive notice when the Cost of Freedom App is launched.

Find it Fast – Cook County Public Facilities and Services Map

2011 Top 5 Sheriff’s Police Violations

Map of FY 2011 Outpatient Registrations, by Zip to Current Period

Cook County Mortgages

Map of Elected Officials Serving Cook County

Revenue

All amounts of money received by a government from external sources–net of refunds and other correcting transactions–other than from issuance of debt, liquidation of investments, and as agency and private trust transactions. Note that revenue excludes noncash transactions such as receipt of services, commodities, or other “receipts in kind.”

Cash Security Holdings

Cash and deposits and governmental and private securities (bonds, notes, mortgages, corporate stocks, etc., including loans and other credit paper held by state loan and investment funds) except holdings of agency and private trust funds. Includes fund investments in securities issued by government concerned but does not include interfund loans, receivables, and the value of real property and other fixed assets.

Expenditure

All amounts of money paid out by a government–net of recoveries and other correcting transactions–other than for retirement of debt, investment in securities, extension of credit, or as agency transactions. Note that expenditure includes only external transactions of a government and excludes non-cash transactions such as the provision of perquisites or other payments in kind.

Debt at end of fiscal year

All long-term credit obligations of the government and its agencies whether backed by the governments’ full faith and credit or nonguaranteed, and all interest-bearing short-term credit obligations. Includes judgments, mortgages, and revenue bonds, as well as general obligations bonds, notes, and interest-bearing warrants.

Listen

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

While it’s difficult to understand the full context, it appears Taggart is presenting a hypothetical scenario of what could happen to the open data movement if it doesn’t focus on key areas, such as forming a critical mass and getting Google to accommodate open data in its search results. Slides 27-33 offer ideas on how open data could be made more relevant and are worth reviewing.

One particular bullet point (“Build a business on open data. Really. Do it now!”) jumps out at me, because I hear this mantra over and over from people who aren’t practicing what they preach. My general comment is that there are vocal champions that advocate open data business models, but aren’t taking the entrepreneurial leap themselves.

My advice to them: Be the example.

Excerpt:

In developing this open data ecosystem there are three key things are needed: material, tools and people. This is a key point: open information without tools and communities to utilise it is not enough, after all, openness isn’t an end itself – open material has no value if it isn’t used. We need therefore to have widely available the capabilities for utilising open material, for processing, analysing and sharing it, especially on a large scale. Relevant tools need to be freely and openly available and the related infrastructure — after all tools need somewhere to run, and data needs somewhere to be stored — should be capable of effective deployment by distributed communities.

Video:

Excerpt:

Data-driven analytics is the systematic use of information to find patterns of interest. For cities, this means looking inwards at the detailed data that city agencies continually collect – citizen complaints, licenses and permits, transactions, violations – and identifying new areas of high risk and high cost.

Cities can then respond to these findings by prioritizing the high impact areas appropriately. In the past, individual agencies have been limited in their ability to conduct large-scale analytics by mandate, scope, and organizational structure. City agencies across the country, which each already have a prescribed list of duties they must fulfill to keep the city running smoothly, often do not share data with one another, nor are they equipped analyze it. In an era of shrinking budgets, however, many cities, including New York, have made new efforts to solve this problem by creating teams existing specifically for the purpose of data investigation that can cross agency boundaries, with promising results.

My recommendation to Bloomberg and other mayors would be to open the analytics to the public so that everyone has access and can contribute solutions. Perhaps a lesser concern, keeping this type of information private gives incumbents insider information when assessing what issues voters are most concerned about.

For those unfamiliar with the “Moneyball” premise and have’t read the book or seen the movie, here’s a two-minute overview:

Full post: Expanding the Use of Data Analytics in City Governments