Mayor Bloomberg unveils Road Map for the Digital City with Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne on May 16, 2011. (Photo Credit: Spencer T Tucker)

New York City was honored as the ‘City of the Year’ in our  2011 GovFresh Awards. We asked NYC Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne to highlight the work done in 2011, what made it happen, and share what’s to come in 2012.

What happened in NYC this year?

2011 has been a thrilling year for technology in New York City. Last January Mayor Bloomberg created NYC Digital and we hit the ground running with a focus on improving the way we serve New Yorkers through digital technology. Our first order of business was publishing the Road Map for the Digital City, which gathered information about the state of the City’s technology initiatives and outlined our plans to realize New York City potential as the leading Digital City in the world. Shortly afterwards, we hosted the City’s first-ever hackathon, Reinvent NYC.GOV. Thanks to the over one hundred individuals who participated, it was a great success and attracted developers from across the country who built innovative prototypes re-imagining the City’s website. With our Engage NYC initiative, we’ve developed workshops and training sessions for communications staff across City government. We unveiled NYC Open Data, a repository of over 850 government datasets, and an accompanying Tumblr for striking data visualizations to make our data more accessible to the broader NYC community; we grew to over 200 social media channels with more than 1.5 million followers across City government; we’re constantly reaching out to the city’s burgeoning start-up scene and getting input from entrepreneurs; we’ve joined the Mayor to recognize homegrown startups Foursquare, Tumblr, and Etsy with official visits, and to open new offices with Facebook, Twitter and Yelp– the list goes on and on.

And of course there’s the Applied Sciences NYC Initiative which heralds the creation of a brand-new engineering campus in New York City. Just this week, Mayor Bloomberg announced that Cornell and Technion were chosen to develop the campus on Roosevelt Island, which will be a game-changer for both the city’s tech scene and its economic future.

What’s your secret? How does a large city like NYC inspire and maintain civic innovation?

Listening to public needs and taking a metrics-based approach to innovation is at the core of our strategy. The Mayor often remarks that New York City is the intellectual capital of the world. We’re fortunate to benefit from the phenomenal input, ideas and efforts from the public, from the tech community, and from inside City government.

We make it a priority to connect government folks with technology partners, to bridge those sectors, and to provide New York City government employees with the support and freedom they need to be effective communicators and innovators.

An important part of our mission is to provide the resources needed to help City agencies realize their own digital media goals and leverage technologies to achieve their objectives.

We know that New Yorkers who engage with their government through these digital channels will feel empowered and want to get involved even further – that’s the most satisfying part about all of our efforts, and it really speaks to Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment to the power of technology and innovation within government.

Who all deserves a shout-out?

Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership has fueled innovation in City government. New York City is the greatest city in the world, and the Mayor decided that we needed to have the most innovative City government, too. And the hard work of the many talented digital and communications staffers across New York City government has been crucial. The Social Media Advisory and Research Taskforce (http://on.nyc.gov/o0P3Ta), a group of digital pioneers from across City agencies, has been instrumental in embracing new technologies and evolving policies. And we all know there is still so much more we can do.

We’ve also been fortunate to partner with some of the greatest tech companies in the world, many homegrown in NYC, including Bitly, Buddy Media, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Soundcloud, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube. We use their tools and products all the time, and their help has made a world of difference. In addition, we are hugely appreciative to devoted technologists who have helped us innovate, both virtually and in person, at the Reinvent NYC.GOVhackathon, and by creating applications using NYC’s OpenData platform.

But above all, the New Yorkers who engage with the City online every day deserve the biggest shout out of all. They are playing a huge role in New York City government and helping us to improve our own efforts every day.

We’ve also been fortunate to partner with some of the greatest tech companies in the world, including Bitly, Buddy Media, Facebook, Foursquare, General Assembly, Google, Soundcloud, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube. We use their tools and products all the time, and their help has made a world of difference. In addition, we are hugely appreciative to devoted technologists who have helped us innovative both virtually and in person, at the Reinvent NYC.GOVhackathon, and by creating dozens of applications using NYC’s OpenData platform.

But above all, the New Yorkers who engage with the City online every day deserve the biggest shout out of all. They are playing a huge role in New York City government and helping us to improve our own efforts every day.

What can we expect in 2012?

As great as 2011 was, 2012 will be even better. We’re going to completely relaunch nyc.govand make it the best government website across the globe. Our goal is to make it as convenient and quick as possible for residents to get the information and services they seek.

We’re going to increase and improve our social media channels too – there are a lot of interesting projects and campaigns in the pipeline. We will introduce a new Citywide social media management platform, in addition to the launching and relaunching of Citywide social media verticals including a Foursquare badge, Facebook page, Tumblr, and our great @nycgov Twitter feed. Stay tuned, because it’s going to be very exciting.

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

See also Alex Howard’s thorough post on how data and open government are transforming NYC.

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.

Photo via Wikipedia

New York open government advocates and civic techs will gather this weekend to build on its past and current efforts at OpenGov Camp. The event is this Sunday, June 5, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Register here.

Organizer Noel Hidalgo of Reinvent Albany discusses the event’s objectives and what he hopes will come of it.

What is OpenGovNYC and who should attend?

OpenGov NYC is for the “DO’er,” the entrepreneur, the thinker, the academic AND the government worker. For the past few years, our friends up and down the eastern seaboard and across the NYC metro area AND up in Albany have been doing a great opening the doors of government. In many of these cases, it has been a partnership of participation. This is why we have Reinvent Albany – an advocacy group, Personal Democracy Forum – a network of journalists, and Digital Democracy – an on the ground “do tank”. This event follows in the tradition of creating a safe space for conversation and a platform for collaboration.

Give us your take on what’s happening in NYC open government.

Open government in NYC and in Albany is in a very precious location. No longer is about an experiment, but how to maximize an investment of tax dollars. From the SAGE commission in Albany to NYC’s digital future report, NY’s leaders know that there are smart people who have the knowledge to outline the problems. The real problem is if we have the political will to take on those problems and apply a logical, fiscally responsible solution. The only way to do this is to remove the blinders and openly talk about the problems.

In Albany, Governor Cuomo has a policy playbook filled with program outlines and sample operational structure to create a team that will open NY.

Here in NYC, the Council, the Administration and good government advocates are trying to advance several pieces of legislation that would embolden the great work the city has done and point it in the proper direction for the 21st century. It’s a struggle because some in the Administration get it and some don’t. This isn’t unique to open government; we see the same stubbornness in the advocacy for car-free transportation alternatives.

What do you want attendees to take away from OpenGovNYC and any longer-term objectives?

At OpenGov Camp, attendees will leave knowing that they have friends in and out of government. Our work is too precious for advocates to fight against the system. We want to work hand-in-hand through the tough, confusing and archaic thinking to create a City and state State home to the most innovative ideas, the social entrepreneurs and the “developers”. Together, we can have a double bottom line that helps out “Main Street” and “City Hall”.

Register for OpenGov Camp and follow the latest news on Twitter at @OpenNYforum and the hashtag #OGCamp.

Photo by Richard Drdul

Transportation enthusiasts will gather in New York City and San Francisco over the next few weeks for TransportationCamp, a series of transit-meets-tech unconferences organized by the non-profit OpenPlans. TransportationCamp East will be held in New York City March 5-6 and TransportationCamp West in San Francisco March 19-20. There are also Ignite #Transpo afterparties. Here’s how it works, and here’s where you can suggest ideas.

OpenPlans Director of Civic Works Nick Grossman discusses TransportationCamp’s objectives and transportation’s impact on the bigger issues around Gov 2.0 and open government:

What is TransportationCamp? Who should attend?

TransportationCamp is an “unconference” focusing on the intersection of transportation and technology. How is technology (such as mobile apps, powerful mapping tools, open data coming from government agencies, etc.) changing the way we move around our cities? How is it changing the way we plan our cities? What does this mean for governments agencies who manage transportation systems, for companies working in the space, and for citizens? How can we insure that advances in transportation tech help us work towards equitability and sustainability goals, and not against them?

For two upcoming weekends (March 5-6 in NYC and March 19-20 in SF), a group of about 250 technologists, transportation enthusiasts, public officials, and others will convene to discuss these issues and work on related problems. This is not a traditional conference: following the BarCamp or “unconference” model, nearly all of the working sessions will be proposed and led by attendees.

You should attend if:

• you work in transportation operations or policy, especially in roles relating to the management of technology and data;
• you work for a company that’s building tech tools for transportation (there are tons of startups entering this space right now);
• you’re a transportation or urban planning advocate with a futurist bent (either skeptical or optimistic OK!); or
• if you are just generally interested in how cities operate.

We already have a great list of participants signed up for each event, representing these communities and more. Both East and West are currently sold out, but if you’re interested, you should definitely sign up for the waiting list, and we’ll do our best to open up tickets.

What is the goal of the camps and longer-term objectives?

The technology landscape, effecting transportation and of course more broadly, is evolving really quickly. TransportationCamp intends to make connections between many players working in the space, across industry and sector lines, to help make sense of the problems and opportunities. By bringing together a group of people who share a common interest but do not often cross paths, we hope to spark collaborations and partnerships and provide a venue for collaborative problem-solving.

In this short-term, this might mean connecting a transit agency with members of the software development community who are building apps on that agency’s data, to help inform the direction of those data sets. Or simply exposing people to a side of the problem that they don’t typically think about.

Longer-term, we’d love to see that connections made during TransportationCamp have blossomed into longer-term projects, collaborations, and partnerships. As the organizers of TransportationCamp, we can’t force that to happen; but we can create an environment that’s fertile ground for these types of connections.

How do transportation issues relate to broader open government / Gov 2.0?

The transportation space is a great one to watch for those interested in “Gov 2.0″ for a few reasons:

First, from a public service perspective, transportation is one of the only government services that people interact with directly on a daily basis. Whether it’s riding the subway or paying for a parking space, transportation is one of the most accessible and tangible government sectors. We think that’s why we’ve seen such an explosion in government and private sector innovation in the transportation space: agencies across the US are opening up data sets for developers to hack on; entrepreneurs and interested citizens have made hundreds of transportation apps (from bus trackers to tax-sharing apps and way more).

Second, beyond the immediate mobility and efficiency concerns represented by the transportation app explosion, transportation planning is an area where policies, plans, and their related public involvement processes touch countless citizens. While innovations in “open government” approaches to transportation planning are slower to develop and materialize, they will no doubt have a major impact on how cities are planned and managed. We believe that agencies that are experiencing the benefit of Gov 2.0 on the efficiency side will also be more inclined to pursue open government activities on the planning side.

So, transportation has really been an amazing place to study the effects of “Gov 2.0″ approaches, and we expect this to continue.

Follow @transpocamp and the #transpo hashtag on Twitter.

Collecting ideas and opening public data is a great step, but understanding how citizens are using government Websites, whether they’re finding the information they need, and whether government is responding appropriately by making it easier to access is a much more large scale, proactive, real-time open government practice.

The New York State Senate releases a publicly available bi-weekly Web analytics report that highlights Web site traffic and activity. The report can be download in .doc or .xls format or viewed at the Senate’s Scribd account. The executive summary and granular analyses provides interesting trend information valuable to private citizens and other public agencies.

Here’s why this is important and why all agencies should do this:

• Forces your agency to actively evaluate and iterate Web and social media strategy.
• Shows the public you’re paying attention to user activity.
• Other agencies can glean information and leverage as strategy.

Here’s the New York State Senate’s most recent report:

Weekly Report 2-13-10

OpenInternet.gov

OpenInternet.gov is a place to join the discussion about the important issues facing the future of the Internet. Through this site you can stay connected to all Federal Communication Commission activities on the issue, and share your thoughts and ideas on open Internet.

Broadband.gov

Share your ideas on the National Broadband Plan.

OpenGov

How can we strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative?

New York State Senate Property Tax Ideas

The New York Senate is working on ways to help New Yorkers cope with high property taxes – and we need your ideas.

OpenAustin

OpenAustin is a community-based effort to crowdsource the requirements and development for the new City of Austin web site using local software developers, marketing experts, and graphic designers that have been displaced from their jobs due to the current economic downturn. This will produce a superior web site for the citizens of Austin at a fraction of the cost of the city’s lowest bid.