GovFresh - Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people

Video: ‘How open source can make us a stronger society’

Luke Fretwell — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:46:27 +0000

Ingres Vice President of Product Management Deb Woods discusses Open Source for America and government policy issues around open source. Ingres is an OSFA founding member and Woods serves on its Steering Committee. She also runs the open source blog and podcast Out of the Woods.

(HT Kim Jokisch and opensource.com)

There’s a LocalGovChat for that

Luke Fretwell — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:16:09 +0000

LocalGovChat (@localgovchat) is a weekly Twitter chat to help local government communicators connect and learn from one another. Chats are held Wednesdays from 9-10 p.m. EST.

LocalGovChat is managed by Mike Rupert (@rupertmike) and Amy Taylor (@nomeatballs).

“We want to start what we hope to be an ongoing, open dialogue between local government communicators – public relations, community outreach, webmasters, graphic designers – in hopes of sharing ideas, our successes and our failures,” said Rupert.

How it works:

1. Follow the #localgovchat hashtag Twitter stream every Wednesday from 9-10 p.m. EST.
2. Tag your tweets with #localgovchat if you have comments or questions.

Open vs. Open

Bobby Caudill — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:35 +0000

As someone who’s been around the block more than once in the technology industry, I’ve had the opportunity to witness a plethora of developments, ideas and concepts, some good, some not so good. One particular debate, or perhaps, a point is confusion, is around the word ‘open’.

In the early days of computing, groups of like-minded individuals came together for the purpose of defining standard ways to ‘do things.’ For the most part, these folks realized that it was generally better for the industry, as well as the users of technology, to establish standards so that systems AND people could work together. There is no doubt that many of these groups have changed the nature of computing and technology for the better. Email flows, the internet works, people can view documents, pictures, listen to music, etc.

Standards tend to come in two varieties, open and de facto. Open standards are designed and controlled usually by some form of governing body and made available to all interested parties. De facto standards are typically owned and governed by a commercial organization and not necessarily released. Regardless of open or de facto, standards are useful to creating meaningful experiences and solutions. What’s interesting about open standards is they allow for organizations, commercial or otherwise, to develop applications and solutions that can work in a greater eco-system while allowing for innovations and creativity in the implementation of the standard. If your organization writes better code, faster code, has more bells and whistles, it has the opportunity to gain better adoption than competitors. Open standards are usually good.

Fast forward a few years to discuss the next wave of ‘open’ from a technology perspective: open source. Undoubtedly, open source software has had yet another dramatic impact on technology. I would venture to say that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who uses the Internet in any fashion who does not get benefit from the many efforts of the open source community. Web servers, email servers, browsers, and so many more applications and solutions are made freely available to the world to leverage and use. The nature of open source software is to be developed in the open, meaning, the actual source code is accessible to all who wish to see it or work on it.

I’ve introduced open standards and open source. They do share a couple common traits. They are freely available to all interested parties, they are generally developed and governed by committee and, as pointed out, they are both usually thought of as good. However, and this is a BIG however that many people seem to ignore, nowhere is there a rule that specifies open source and open standards are mutually exclusive. I will admit that where you find open source, you generally find open standards, but, think about how many commercially available products there are that are fully dependent on open standards that are not in anyway open source! I would also venture a guess that you may find open source software out there that is not dependent on open standards as well. Regardless, my point stands, while there may be some really good reasons to use open source and open standards in conjunction with each other, nothing says it HAS to be this way.

So, why do so many technologists lump open source and open standards together as if they are the same thing?

I think it is also a good idea to point out the that the goals of these two efforts, while sometimes complementary, are not the same. Open standards are driving for interoperability between systems or applications, while, the goal of open source is to make high-quality software available to the market free of charge.

One more fast forward, let’s add the third wave of open, that of open government. Open government carries with it the promise of dramatically altering the way citizens view and engage with government. There is the promise of unprecedented levels of transparency, participation and collaboration, driving accountability and effectiveness like never before. Like open source and open standards, there’s no doubt open government has the potential to be a good thing, right?

Now back to word ‘open.’ Just like there are people who make the mistake of lumping together open source and open standards as if they are the same, I’m now witnessing people adding open government to the ‘bundle,’ making the assumption that for government to be open, it must rely solely on open source and open standards. Now really folks, I will not argue that the end goal of open government will not in many ways benefit from open standards and to some extent open source, but, are they really mutually exclusive? Are there no opportunities for innovative commercial products and services, de facto standards, and custom solutions in open government?

Unlike open source and open standards, open government is about far more than technology or access to ‘raw’ data. In fact, to illustrate my point, doesn’t open government also need to take into consideration a few little non-technical details, such as new policies and behavioral changes??

I do understand the tendency to view the world through personal filters, where we assume everyone else has the same perspectives and needs, but, we need to question the idea that adding the word ‘open’ to something automatically associates it to all others things dubbed ‘open.’ That approach can be quite limiting and short-sighted. Rather, especially with regards to open government, let’s help our government leaders by keeping them focus on the desired outcomes, their intended audience and only then, allow the discussion of which technologies to bring to the party.

Remember, open government should be about people, not technology.

Facebook Public Policy Director talks privacy, free speech, Beltway presence

Luke Fretwell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:59:29 +0000

Facebook Public Policy Director Tim Sparapani discusses privacy and free speech issues affecting his company and opening a Washington DC public policy office on C-SPAN’s Communicators.

Edmonton CIO discusses city’s approach to open data

Luke Fretwell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:06:17 +0000

Edmonton’s Chief Information Officer Chris Moore discusses three ‘big things’ they’re addressing regarding open data, including collaboration, the role of government, non-profit organizations, universities and private sector.

FreshWrap: This week’s posts

Luke Fretwell — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:17:02 +0000

A wrap-up of this week’s posts:

Kundra, SF officials promote Open311 API

Luke Fretwell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:38:00 +0000

Here’s video from yesterday’s Open311 press conference in San Francisco, including Vivek Kundra, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, SF CIO Chris Vein and O’Reilly Media’s Tim O’Reilly.

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:

Open government means open analytics

Luke Fretwell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:14:29 +0000

While there’s a push for citizen ideas using collaboration tools, the trend towards open analytics should be just as important, because it exposes what information real users want and where the agency should focus more of its attention. This should be standard practice for all Web/IT departments, so making this information public is as simple as posting it to the agency blog.

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

Video: ‘New Media Risks and Rewards: People First, Mission Always’

Luke Fretwell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:27:16 +0000

Deloitte has put out a video, New Media Risks and Rewards: People First, Mission Always, featuring Steve Lunceford Deloitte Senior Manager (also founder of GovTwit and co-host of Gov 2.0 Radio). Video highlights social media tips for agencies, including start small, have an executive champion, get key contacts collaborating early and focus on the mission first.

Quotable:

“Agencies shouldn’t get enamored with one particular channel, one particular tool. They need to look at what their mission is, what their objectives are, how they’re going to be able to measure success in using these tools, and then approach it from a really strategic perspective. So I think building a strategy up front is very important.”

Developers for Glory

Gunnar Hellekson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:43:46 +0000

Although it may be simple to conflate the Apps for Democracy and Apps for America contests with the exciting new Apps for Army contest, they really couldn’t be more different. Together they represent an exciting experiment in what it takes to pull communities together around a problem. Though they all offer cash prizes to the winners, they each took a slightly different approach, with different results.

Cash incentives are somewhat controversial in open source circles. Most old-school advocates for open source development strongly prefer developers who are personally invested — famously, those that “scratch their own itch.” Developers who are paid a salary to work on software are also invested, but perhaps less zealously than those who are solving a problem they are afflicted with themselves. Developers who are working for glory and cash prizes, the model used by the “Apps for…” competitions, is yet another class of developer, and despite the excellent submissions to the previous contests, there are valid concerns that the quality and sustainability of the code is not as good as it could be with a different set of incentives. Time will tell, of course.

If I’m a developer for glory, I may compete for the cash prize, or for altruistic reasons, but I’m also competing for the notoriety I’ll get if I win. If I don’t win, what will I do with the code I’ve developed? Even if I win, what are my incentives to continue working on the project? Put another way: how can we ensure that all of this good work and goodwill turns into viable, and active software projects once the contest is over?

Apps for Democracy is instructive. The contest encouraged developers to provide services on top of the “platform” of Washington, D.C.’s IT infrastructure. This platform includes 270 public data feeds and the city’s newly unveiled 311 API. 47 submissions were collected in 30 days, and the winner was an iPhone and Facebook application that enabled users to take snapshots of potholes, broken windows, and so forth, have them tagged with GPS coordinates, and submitted to the city’s 311 service. Very handy. Unfortunately, the ongoing care and feeding for the application doesn’t seem to be there. The Washington City Paper found in a January 25th, 2010 followup on the contest:

The “Touch City’s Heart” Social DC 311 Web site seems to have been abandoned—it hasn’t been updated for months—saying the “IPhone” app is still waiting for approval from Apple (Apple approved it long ago). Some members of the D.C. 311 team had never laid eyes on the Web site until City Desk asked about it. “I’ve never even heard of it,” said one 311 operator. It has only 27 active monthly users on its Facebook Fan page and 40 followers on Twitter.

I’ll also note that after some cursory research, the source code doesn’t seem to be disclosed to the public yet, which I understand was one of the intents of the contest. Now, to be fair, there seem to be bigger plans afoot:

The dismal following is not a sign of failure, Sivak says. The District intends to take Social DC 311 and revamp the current model into an app that’s “enterprise-ready and robust for a large volume of users,” Sivak says. “Think of this first step as a pilot.”

Fair enough, but I would think that one of the desired outcomes was an ongoing community of developers that are producing and maintaining applications like this — whether it’s for love, money, or fame. It would be a shame to see hard work like this die on the vine because we’ve lost the carrot of a cash prize.

The first Apps for America contest winner was Filibusted, a tool for outing Senate obstructionists. It measures obstruction by the Senator’s votes on cloture motions. You can find the source on GitHub, but there doesn’t seem to be much activity since the initial checkin. One bug was opened 8 months ago, and doesn’t appear to have been addressed. The last blog post was in December. At the same time, there’s not much to work on — the site has a single purpose, which it seems to fulfil even without much of a community around it. It doesn’t really need a large community, I’d guess, because it’s “done.”

The second Apps for America yielded DataMasher. This tools allows you to compare Federal data sets with each other. Once you have the data and visualization you like, you can share it with others on the site. The source code was released, per the terms of the contest, but doesn’t seem to have much of a community around it. In fact, the DataMasher website doesn’t seem to link to the code from their own site. That hasn’t made the application less popular, though — the community isn’t working on the code, it’s working on the datasets. There’s a steady stream of new mashups that other users rate and comment on. In all, a healthy community that relies on user-generated content to ensure it remains a useful tool.

The second Apps for America contest also produced the strikingly elegant govpulse.us. It’s a vastly improved interfact to the Federal Register developed by the gifted team at GravyCones. The code for this application is available to the public, and seems actively developed to this day. This is, I think, exactly what the organizers had in mind when they started this contest: the tool is popular, the development community is active, and the project continues to improve.

Which brings us to Apps for Army, which is a serious departure from the other contests. First, it’s available only to Army soldiers and civilian employees, nobody from the public — not even reservists. In fact, you need a DoD ID card to go to the official contest website. Second, it seems that only the first 100 teams can participate. From a community standpoint, the project is wading into very unfamiliar territory. Rather than gathering the collective wisdom an initiative of thousands of interested developers, they’ll be picking 100 volunteers, seemingly at random.

The Apps for Army contest further diminishes its potential reach by dictating the tools developers will use: the DISA RACE environment to host the project, and the forge.mil repository for code. Since these resources are being paid for by the Army’s CIO, who is sponsoring the contest, what will happen to the competitors once the competition’s over? There are, of course, excellent reasons for asking folks to use the existing DoD infrastructure, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the doors were flung open, and the bar was lowered for participation.

This isn’t to say that I’m less enthusiastic about these experiments. I’m very excited at the idea of encouraging employees — in the Army, or anywhere else — to solve their own problems. That’s a goodness in and of itself. We just can’t forget that software isn’t a product — it’s a process that requires nurturing. The best way to nurture is to build a community, and that requires transparency and a low barrier to entry for participants. The larger and more active the community, the more likely the software will be better. The more closed, prescriptive, and limited the project, I think, the less likely that it will be viable in the long-term.

So these “Apps for…” competitions are instructive. Each project is building its own kind of community, and I’m eager to see how these projects fare in the months and years ahead.