Washington-based DevelopmentSeed continues to tell dazzling data stories with open source mapping tools. This week, they’ve posted a map of the local impact of unemployment and recovery spending. The map visualizes unemployment rate changes at a county level and folds in total economic recovery spending by the government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In the map embedded below, red corresponds to an increased unemployment rate and green corresponds to a lower unemployment rate or job growth. Counties that received less than $10 million dollars in recovery spending have a white pattern.
David Cole explains more in a post at DevelopmentSeed.org:
Over the last year, we see that unemployment dropped in 58% of counties by an average of 0.25 percentage points. On average the Recovery Act funded 31 projects at a total of $24,131,582.47 per county. Nationally this works out to about $282.66 in recovery spending per person.
…
Overall, it’s impossible to tell for sure how much recovery spending improved the economic situation, because we just don’t know how bad things could have been. It may be the case that without spending, this map would have a lot more red. Or maybe not. What’s interesting here is the local impact and information we are able to see from processing a few sets of open data. Check out how your county is doing compared to its surroundings. How about compared to a more or less urban county nearby?
Strata Conference New York 2011, being held Sept. 22-23, covers the latest and best tools and technologies for data science — from gathering, cleaning, analyzing, and storing data to communicating data intelligence effectively. Save 20% on registration with the code STN11RAD
This past weekend, citizens acted as important sensors as Hurricane Irene washed up the East Coast of the United States, sharing crisis data as the storm moved through their communities and damage reports in its wake.
Baltimore has embraced the open 311 standard with a new 311 API and take a major step forward towards a collaborative approach to reporting issues with the launch of new mobile applications for the iPhone and Android devices.
“The new 311 Mobile App allows citizens to have real-time collaboration with their government,” said Mayor Rawlings-Blake in a prepared statement. “If you see a pothole, graffiti, or a broken streetlight, you can see it, shoot it, and send it to us — we have an app for that!”
As Philip Ashlock highlighted at Civic Commons in a post on open 311 in Baltimore, the city has a long history with 311:
The City of Baltimore has a long history of leading the way with 311. In 1996, they were the first city to deploy the 311 short code and unified call center, and in 1999, the city launched CitiStat, pioneering the use of statistics based performance management. Now both of these innovations can be amplified by a much more open and collaborative relationship between Baltimoreans and their government through Open311.
Ashlock highlighted another key detail about the integration of the standard by Motorola, which was crucial in DC and San Francisco, the first cities in the U.S. to embrace the Open311 standard.
The launch of Baltimore’s Open311 apps and API was aided by the fact that they were able to leverage the Open311 compliant solutions provided by Motorola CSR and Connected Bits. Baltimore CIO Rico Singleton went as far as to say that their choice of software solutions was influenced by the interoperability provided by the standard.
There are a limited number of citizens who have the time, expertise, passion and education to go clean up public data. There are quite a few more who will report issues in the neighborhoods they live in or work near and share what they see. This kind of mobile networked accountability is going to be a big deal in Africa, Asia and South America very soon. We’ve been seeing early versions of it emerge already during disasters, man-made and otherwise.
With the launch of more mobile applications that connect citizens to existing systems for accountability, city governments are empowering citizens to act as sensors, connecting the real world to the Internet and creating positive feedback loops. That’s good news for Baltimore and beyond.
“This is a huge accomplishment — a nationwide UK system for individuals to document and report problems with any kind of public transportation system,” wroteCivicCommons executive director Andrew McLaughlin this morning. “MySociety has figured out how to route every kind of report to the responsible agency (or even person) — “the service works everywhere in Great Britain, our database has over 300,000 stops and routes for train, tube, tram, bus, coach and ferry.” Great design and interface. Congratulations, +Tom Steinberg and team!”
“We’ve never before launched a site that took so much work to build, or that contained so much data,” writes Steinberg at the MySociety blog, where he explained more about what it’s for. (The emphasis below is mine.)
FixMyTransport has two goals – one in your face, and the other more subtle.
The first goal, as the site’s name suggests, is to help people get common public transport problems resolved. We’re talking broken ticket machines, gates that should be open and stations without stair-free access. We’ll help by dramatically lowering the barrier to working out who’s responsible, and getting a problem report sent to them – a task that would have been impossible without the help of volunteers who gathered a huge number of operator email addresses for us. Consequently the service works everywhere in Great Britain, our database has over 300,000 stops and routes for train, tube, tram, bus, coach and ferry.
The second goal – the subtle one – is to see if it is possible to use the internet to coax non-activist, non-political people into their first taste of micro-activism. Whilst the site intentionally doesn’t contain any language about campaigning or democracy, we encourage and provide tools to facilitate the gathering of supporters, the emailing of local media, the posting of photos of problems, and the general application of pressure where it is needed. We also make problem reports and correspondence between operators and users public, which we have frequently seen create positive pressure when used on sister sites FixMyStreet and WhatDoTheyKnow.
I’m not saying it is impossible to hack brilliant things without piles of VC gold. But if you are going to hack something really, genuinely valuable in just a couple of weeks, and you want it to thrive and survive in the real Internet, you need to have an idea that is as simple as it is brilliant. Matthew Somerville’s accessible Traintimes fits into this category, as does FlyOnTime.us, E.ggtimer.com and doodle.ch. But ideas like this are super rare — they’re so simple and powerful that really polished sites can be built and sustained on volunteer-level time contributions. I salute the geniuses who gave us the four sites I just mentioned. They make me feel small and stupid.
If your civic hack idea is more complicated than this, then you should really go hunting for funding before you set about coding. Because the Internet is a savagely competitive place, and if your site isn’t pretty spanking, nobody is going to come except the robots and spammers.
To be clear — FixMyTransport is not an example of a super-simple genius idea. I wish it were. Rather it’s our response to the questions “What’s missing in the civic web?” and “What’s still too hard to get done online?”
Tonight, Denice W. Ross, director of applications for the city of New Orleans, tweeted the news that “NOLA” had soft launched an open data site. There’s not a lot of data there yet but it’s a great start. Data.NOLA.gov is beautifully designed and based upon the Socrata platform, which will give the embryonic site room to grow.
As Ross shared, New Orleans’ new open data site starts its life online with data on parcels, streets, building permits, council districts and census data. The site also has data on post-Hurricane damage assessment that some plucky civic developer or data journalist will likely mash up to good effect.
For those unfamiliar, open government data broadly refers to public sector records that have been made available to citizens. Putting up an open government data platform online is not in of itself a guarantor of more open government, responsive government or good government — but it can be a enabler for all those things, in partnership with public officials, nonprofits, developers, media and citizens.
I first encountered Ross last year, at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington. Ross, who was then affiliated with the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, gave a terrific talk about “An App We Can Trust: Lessons Learned in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” I’ve embedded it below.
UPDATE: As Leando Oliva shared, today was also the release of the sixth New Orleans Index. According to the Brooking Institute, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center took on the publication of this index as a solo effort:
The results of a new survey from the Pew Internet and Life Project will come as no surprise to most: Internet users: search and email top the list of the things people do online. These two activities have been the most popular since Pew first started tracking online behavior over the last decade. The advent of broadband, mobile devices and social media has not changed that dynamic, though it’s a safe bet that adults under 30 are sending quite a lot of Facemail, IMs and tweets these days too.
That said, Pew did identify a difference. “The most significant change over that time is that both activities have become more habitual,” writes Kristen Purcell. “Today, roughly six in ten online adults engage in each of these activities on a typical day; in 2002, 49% of online adults used email each day, while just 29% used a search engine daily.”
Search and email demographics
According to Pew’s numbers, search is most popular among adult internet users aged age 18-29, 96% of whom use search engines to find information online.
There’s also some evidence of a continuing digital divide based upon education and race. According to Pew, online adults, college-educated, and those in the highest income categories are more likely than others to use email.
“These demographic differences are considerably more pronounced when one looks at email use on a typical day,” writes Purcell. “Moreover, while overall email use is comparable across white, African-American and Hispanic online adults, internet use on any given day is not. White online adults are significantly more likely than both African-American and Hispanic online adults to be email users on a typical day (63% v. 48% v. 53%, respectively).”
These results also suggest that as exciting as the integration of social media into government may be, officials tasked with public engagement and consultation shouldn’t neglect using email to communicate with citizens, along with Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and the other apps available to them. The difference in demographics usage of social media and email, however, does highlight that social media offers an important complementary channel to reach mobile citizens that access the Internet primarily through their mobile phones.
This week, Luke Fretwell suggested that “instead of building apps, civic hackathons should focus on redesigning websites, then turning them over to gov.” Today in New York City, the first day of the Revinvent NYC.gov hackathon started work on just that. (NYC had been working on this open government event long before Fretwell’s suggestion, but the confluence is worth noting.)
They’re using a combination of digital and analog tools, including blackboards, projection screens, laptops and Post-Its. You can track the progress of the hackathon over at the NYC Digital Tumblr.
The formula here seems to be: Reserve space, provide coffee, bagels, electricity and Internet access and use the power of modern social networking, publishing tools and the New York City Mayor’s to convene the community.
If New Yorkers end up with a rethought, redesigned and relaunched NYC.gov, maybe other cities will try out that formula themselves.
The federal government is hosting a hackathon focused on unlocking the value from the newly opened click data from its URL shortener. Organizers hope the developer community can create apps that provide meaningful information from the online audience’s activity. Later this month, USA.gov has organized a nationwide hack day, inviting software developers, entrepreneurs, and citizens to engage with the data produced by 1.USA.gov, its URL shortener.
The USA.gov hackathon fits into a larger open government zeitgeist. Simply put, if you enjoy building applications that improve the lives of others, there may never have been a better time to be alive. Whether it’s rethinking transportation or convening for a datacamp, every month, there are new hackathons, challenges, apps contests and code-a-thons to participate in, contributing time and effort to the benefit of others. This July is no exception. Last Saturday, Google Chicago hosted a hackathon to encourage people to work on Apps for Metro Chicago. On the Saturday after OSCON, an API Hackday in Portland, Oregon for “an all-day coding fest focused on building apps and mashups.” If you’re free and interested in participating in a new kind of public service, on July 29th, hack days will be hosted by USA.gov in Washington, D.C., Measured Voice in San Diego, bitly* in New York City, and SimpleGeo in San Francisco. If New Yorkers still have some fire in your belly to collaborate with their local government, the city of New York is hosting its first-ever hackathon to re-imagine NYC.gov on July 30-31.
How URL shorteners and 1.USA.gov work
To understand why this particular set of open data from USA.gov is interesting, however, you have to know a bit more about USA.gov and how social media has changed information sharing online. A URL is the Web address, like, say, oreilly.com, that a citizen types into a Web browser to go to a site. Many URLs are long, which makes sharing them on Twitter or other mobile platforms awkward. As a result, many people share shortened versions. (O’Reilly Media links are shortened to oreil.ly, for instance.) One of the challenges that face users is that, unless a citizen uses one of several tools to view what the actual hyperlink is below the link, he or she might be led astray or exposed to malicious code that was included in the original link. In other words, this is about being able to trust a link.
Last year, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) launched a Go.USA.gov URL shortener at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C. Whenever a government employee used Bit.ly (or any service that uses Bit.ly to shorten URLs, like Tweetdeck) to shorten a .gov or .mil URL, the link will be converted to a short go.USA.gov. That meant that whenever a citizen saw a go.usa.gov short URL on a social network, she knows the content came from an official government source.
For more on how Go.USA.gov URLs work, watch Michele Chronister’s presentation from the last year’s Gov 2.0 Expo, below. Chronister is a presidential management fellow and Web content manager for USA.gov in the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies at the GSA.
This March, the GSA added a 1.USA.gov URL shortener for civilian use. “The whole idea is to improve people’s experience when dealing with government information online,” explained Jed Sundwall, a contractor for USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov, via email. “We keep USA.gov in the domain for usability reasons. It’s crystal clear, worldwide, that 1.USA.gov URLs point to trustworthy government information.”
According to Sundwall, ABC senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper was the first to use it when he tweeted out a link to a PDF containing new unemployment information at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics: “For those asking follow-ups on unemployment, here’s the BLS link http://1.usa.gov/XUtpL“
Months later, Tapper has been followed by thousands of other people that have used the 1.USA.gov URL shortener simply by using the tools there already knew.”The beauty is that Jake used it without knowing he was using it,” writes Sundwall.”We’re trying making it easy for anyone to identify .gov information as it’s being shared online.”
That easy identification is quite helpful given the increasing pace of news and information sharing on the Web. “Trust is a valuable thing online, and being able to know that the information you’re receiving is reliable and accurate is difficult yet essential — especially so for government websites, where people go for critical information, like health services and public safety,” wrote Abhi Nemani, director of strategy and communications for Code for America.
Code for America is “excited to be partnering them to help bring together passionate developers, designers, and really anyone interested to see what we can hack together with the data,” wrote Nemani. The 1.USA.gov hackathon will tap into “a huge and growing resource for new and really interesting apps,” he wrote at the Code for America blog. “See, this data gives a lens into how people are interacting with government, online; an increasingly important lens as citizen/government interaction moves from the front desk or the phone line to the web browser.”
To learn a bit(ly) more about the hackathon and its goals, I conducted an email interview with Michele Chronister and Sundwall.
What does the GSA hope to achieve with this hackathon? How can open data help the agency achieve the missions taxpayers expect their dollars to be applied towards?
Chronister: We hope to encourage software developers, entrepreneurs, and curious citizens to engage with the data produced by 1.USA.gov. 1.USA.gov data provides real-time insights into the government content people are sharing online and we know hack day participants will surprise us with creative new uses for the data. We anticipate that what’s produced will benefit the government and the public. Making this data public expands GSA’s commitment to open, participatory and transparent government.
What hacks can come of this that aren’t simply visualizing the most popular content being shared using 1.USA.gov?
Sundwall: First of all, the issue of popular content is an important one. Before this data set, no one has had such a broad view of how government information is being viewed online. Getting a view of what’s popular across government in real time is a big deal, but a big list of popular URL’s isn’t killer per se.
The data from 1.USA.gov includes a lot of data beyond just clicks, including clickers’ browser version (firefox v ie, mobile v desktop, etc) and IP-derived geo data. It’s also real time. This allows people to look at the data across a number of different dimensions to get actionable meaning out of it. A few ideas:
1. Geo data. The geo data included in the 1.USA.gov feed is derived from IP addresses, which makes it intentionally imprecise for privacy reasons (we don’t show the IP address of each click), but precise enough to spot location-based trends.
One of the reasons we brought SimpleGeo on as a collaborator for the hack day is because they’re really good at making location data easy to work with. Their Context product makes it easy to filter clicks through a number of geographic boundaries including legislative districts. They also make it easy to mash the data up with Census demographic data.
We want to let journalists, analysts, campaign strategists, and other researchers know that 1.USA.gov data is a powerful tool to spot trends in the areas where they work. I gave a demo of 1.USA.gov to Richard Boly at the State Dept soon after we launched 1.USA.gov and thought it could be a tool for country desk officers to spot trends in their countries. Hint: if you’re coming to the hack day, think about building something like this.
We hacked together a quick video showing click data mapped out across the US for most of June: red dots are non-mobile clicks and green are mobile. It’s a blunt visualization, but it’s fascinating to watch the clicks pulse across the country, from the east to west in the morning, and then from red to green when people leave their desks and get on their phones.
We could enhance visualizations like this to see if there are trends in how particular kinds of information are shared throughout cities and across the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if clicks on certain links from certain agencies turn out to be leading indicators—perhaps municipal leaders should pay attention to spikes in clicks on hud.gov links.
2. Browser data. We log, on average, about 56,000 clicks on 1.USA.gov links per day. It’s not a ton of data like Google, but the 1.USA.gov dataset provides a really nice sample of user behavior—particularly social media users because the short URLs are most frequently shared and clicked via Twitter and FB.
I’m hoping 1.USA.gov data can be useful to people tracking trends in browser adoption and trends in mobile usage. The data science team at bitly is already doing this kind of analysis with their much larger set of click data, but we’re really excited to give a slice of that data out to researchers for free.
3. Contextual data. Each link points to a file that is likely to include some amount of machine readable content such as an HTML page title, meta description, body content, etc. Many links, if not most, are shared via Twitter. Both the content of the link’s file and the content of the tweet that included the link when it was shared provide insight into not just what links people are sharing, but what topics people are talking about.
What are some of the early successes — and failures — that inform how the GSA is approaching its open data initiatives? And how will it all relate to citizen engagement?
Chonister: Data.gov has successfully built a community of people interested in government data and we hope to expand on that by making USA.gov’s data more available. One part of this is releasing the 1.USA.gov click data to the public. We also provide XML for all of our frequently asked questions on answers.usa.gov and a product recall API. These resources can be found at www.usa.gov/About/developer_resources/developers.shtml
We know that raw government data is not interesting or useful to everyone which is why we are trying to engage specific communities with the hack day. Hopefully any tools created in the hack day will help engage a larger audience and show what’s possible when government opens their data and makes it available.
What are some useful examples of “infohacks” where someone can easily find useful information already?
Sundwall: USA.gov actually used a method to finding useful government information from 1.USA.gov (and Go.USA.gov) by instructing people to search for USA.gov + tsunami on Twitter after the Japan earthquake in early March — this was the best way for people to find the best government information about the tsunami at the time. It allowed us to crowdsource the best government resources about the tsunami by relying on what everyone on Twitter was already finding and sharing. You won’t see this now, but at the time, the search results featured a few “top tweets” pointing to useful government information. 1.USA.gov let us know it was authoritative even though it was being shared from non-govt Twitter accounts like @BreakingNews.
This Twitter search trick is one of my favorite hacks. I subscribe to RSS feeds of USA.gov + awesome and USA.gov + cool and find great crowdsourced govt information every day. Just last week, this tweet inspired this blog post, which ended up being the most popular post on the USA.gov blog ever.
How else could this bit.ly data be made more useful to citizens – or government?
Sundwall: Researchers could use this Twitter search method to be notified of new information by subscribing to searches like USA.gov + cancer, USA.gov + human rights, USA.gov + Afghanistan, etc. I sometimes get a kick out of searching “USA.gov + wtf.” I’m a nerd.
What’s the incentive for developers to donate their time and skill to hacking on this data?
Sundwall: This is the best question. I hope some of the ideas I’ve presented above give an idea of how powerful this dataset is. This is the kind of information that organizations usually regard as proprietary because it gives them intelligence that they don’t want their competitors to have. I’m really really proud to work with the folks at USA.gov because opening up this dataset reveals a deep understanding of how open data can work.
USA.gov wants to help people by helping them find the government information they need. This data will allow other people to join them in this endeavor. As Tim says, “Create more value than you capture.” I hope that people will recognize the value in this data and create tools, apps, more efficient research methods, and perhaps even businesses based on it. I’m certain this data will prove to be valuable to many people who will discover applications of it that we haven’t imagined yet.
*Editor’s Note: bit.ly is funded by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
As social media becomes more integrated into the world’s political, educational and economic fabric, more and more organizations have moved from asking “what it is” to “how to do we use it?”
Today in Big Sky, Montana, the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies hosted a summer meeting with a plenary session on Gov 2.0 that included:
a talk on about rethinking a more mobile government from Peter Corbett, “Apps for Fish & Wildlife”
a discussion of social media and the FBI
a talk on “Citizen 2.0” from Microsoft’s Mark Drapeau
Today, the citizens of Utah have one of the best state government websites online – or at least the newest and easily one of the most beautiful. Whether they notice the change or not, Utah.gov relaunched with a major redesign this morning.
The new site is organized around search, with a big search field front and center. Search now indexes agency information, office hours, interactive maps, and related forms. Utah.gov also uses personalization by location and integration of new media from state officials and agencies. And, in a nod to the Web 2.0 world, Utah.gov will show “what’s trending” as more citizens uses the site. Visitors can already see the most popular searches.
“We are thrilled to announce the re-design of Utah.Gov. Utahns are tech savvy and they expect their government to be the same,” said Utah Governor Gary Herbert in a prepared statement. “Economic development in the State has been a top priority and the new design focuses on utilizing the most innovative technology to better serve Utah citizens and business 24/7.”
For a quick introduction to the new Utah.gov, check out this introductory video:
“Utah’s new site introduces a new dimension in government web design,” tweeted state CIO David Fletcher a few hours before launch. He gave the new Utah.gov a warm reception over at his personal blog:
It’s been two years since the state of Utah did a major upgrade to its website and a lot has changed during that time. The internet continues to represent an enormous opportunity for state government. In just five short years, the number of visitors to the Utah.gov domain has doubled, reaching 1.4 million unique visitors in March 2011. The new site has been developed, based on extensive research, to address the most important needs of Utah citizens. It takes into account changes that have occurred in Utah society and with technology. We appreciate the fact that Utah.gov has come to represent a trusted source for all kinds of information.
Two years ago, social media services, such as Twitter and Facebook, were still new to many Utahns, so we provided aggregation services where citizens could discover new agency Twitter feeds and begin to interact. The new site, integrates collaborative features into more aspects of the site so you will find information from Twitter and Facebook, and videos from YouTube integrated into many of the pages of Utah.gov. We continue to use the internet to open up government and make it more accessible through services like Open.Utah.gov. There’s also lots of data available in a variety of formats at Data.Utah.gov. Of course, we try to be as open as possible while still maintaining the privacy of our individual citizens.
Still, the most important features on Utah.gov are the numerous services that save time and money for citizens, while bringing tremendous efficiencies to state government as well as the vast libraries of information on topics as varied as healthcare, transportation, caregivers, business creation, and hunting. In 2010, Utah citizens engaged the domain for over 25.1 million interactive transactions, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
Utah.gov was recognized as the best community resource in Utah in 2008 and has won many awards over the years. Looks like they’ll be in the running for more soon.
UPDATE: There are plenty of other folks commenting on the new Utah.gov. Luke Fretwell shared his review of the new Utah.gov here at Govfresh.
At Govloop, Andy Krzmarzick writes that Utah’s stunning web revitalization effort sets “a new bar not just for government web design, but for any location on the web.”
Reno.gov webmaster Kristy Fifelski’s video review for GovGirl.com includes a few concerns regarding YouTube and collecting user-submitted content:
Abhi Nemani called Utah.gov a beautiful new government website over at Code for America, focusing in on the importance of search:
A citizen coming to Utah.gov isn’t given a sprawling tree of links they have to cut their way through. It’s just a search box. It’s just that simple. As the state government put in its release, “search is unmistakable.” In Britain, some innovators within the government have too been experimenting with the interfaces for government websites; they too determined this search-centric model is ideal. Understandably so, I’d say, because it aligns with the motivations a user has in visiting a government website: namely, you have a question. You’re wondering what time that office is open till or where that other one is; which form do you need to fill out and how do you submit it. Government is just as much an information resource as a service provider. Smart web design, like we see on Utah.gov, helps it do both.
Bottom line: When it put search front and center, Utah.gov’s redesign reflected how citizens navigate online.
Today, New York City released its strategy to use technology to improve productivity, save money, attract startups and upgrade the services it provides to citizens. That’s a tall order, but then New Yorkers have rarely been know to think small or dream moderately.
“We want New York City to be the nation’s premier digital city – in how local government interacts with New Yorkers, in how New Yorkers have access to and capitalize on new technologies, and in how our tech and digital media sectors evolve, grow businesses and create jobs,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. His office released an official statement digital roadmap at MikeBloomberg.com. “NYC’s #digitalroadmap has 4 goals: access, open government, citizen engagement & expanding NYC’s digital job growth,” tweeted Bloomberg after the announcement.
Nick Judd secured an advance copy of NYC’s road map to the digital city over at techPresident, which I’ve embedded below, and has this analysis of some of the important bytes.
There are no explicit plans in the report for increasing the number of available datasets — such as more detailed city budget data — but do include an “apps wishlist” to streamline the process of requesting more data.
Implementing the recommendations in the report will in large part be the responsibility of city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Carole Post, who is already in the process of pushing internally for updated city IT.
Archived video of today’s announcement by Mayor Bloomberg and NYC chief digital officer Rachel Sterne (which was, appropriately, livestreamed online) is embedded below.
Social media will play a role in the months ahead. When Adam Sharp, Twitter’s government guy, tweeted out the Wall Street Journal above, he highlighted a feature that melds social media with old school mobile technology: the use of “Fast Follow,” a function that goes back to Twitter’s earliest days.
“New Yorkers who want to follow @nycgov by SMS can text “follow nycgov” to 40404. No @Twitter acct or computer needed,” tweeted Sharp.
That means that every resident with a phone call can receive updates from the city’s official account. It will be interesting to see if city government advertises that to its residents over the coming months, particularly in areas where Internet penetration rates are lower.
Anil Dash, native New Yorker, blogger and entrepreneur, highlighted something important in the plan that transcended any particular initiative, technology or policy: it captures New York City government thinking about the Web as a public space.
It’s an extraordinary document, and as someone who loves the web, civic engagement, public infrastructure and New York City, it feels like a momentous accomplishment, even though it marks the beginning of a years-long process, not just the end of a months-long one.
But the single biggest lesson I got from the 65-page, 11.8mb PDF is a simple one: The greatest city in the world can take shared public spaces online as seriously as it takes its public spaces in the physical world.
As you’d expect, there’s a press release about the Digital Road Map, but more reassuringly, the document demonstrates the idea of the web as public space throughout, making the idea explicit on page 43:
Maintaining digital ‘public spaces’ such as nyc.gov or 311 Online is equally important as maintaining physical public spaces like Prospect Park or the New York Public Library. Both digital and physical should be welcoming, accessible, cared for, and easy to navigate. Both must provide value to New Yorkers. And for both, regular stewardship and improvements are a necessity.
New York City’s road map for a digital city plan is embedded below. You also can download the digital city roadmap as a PDF.
UPDATE: There are some concerns about what happens next out there in the community. New York City resident and director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) Steven Romalewski also listened in on the announcement and blogged his concerns about ‘open data fatigue“:
I always worry when I see the city touting its technology efforts without also including local Community Boards, neighborhood groups, business advocates, urban planners, other elected officials, etc. who rely on access to public data so they can hold government accountable and do their jobs better. In my view, these groups need the data moreso than app developers. That is why open data efforts and policies are so important.
But the city seems more focused on apps than on community. I understand the economic development appeal of fostering startups. But the open data movement long predated apps. I highlighted this in my post last year (see the “Misplaced Priorities” section).
Apps are great (I use them constantly, and I’ve even developed one myself). And kudos to the city and its agencies for responding to app developers and making data more open so the developers can do great things with the data (things even the city might not do).
I just hope the latest announcements by the city will result in more real and lasting efforts to make data easier to access than the latest check-in craze. The Mayor already expressed some hesitation to making data accessible when a reporter asked him about CrashStat. CrashStat is a great example of my point — it wasn’t created to be an “app” per se; it’s an effort by a local nonprofit group to use public data to educate the public and hold government agencies more accountable about traffic injuries and fatalities. But the Mayor said he didn’t even know what CrashStat was, while making excuses about not making data available if it’s not in electronic format, or needs to be vetted, or is “sensitive”. Blah blah blah – we’ve heard all that before and it undermines my confidence in the city’s pronouncements that more data will really be made open.
E Pluribus Unum 