Erik Paulson published an excellent new series on Gov 2.0 in Madison, Wisconsin today:
The citizens of Madison are a fairly tech-savvy bunch, but when it comes to technology in the civic space, we’re not as far out it the lead as we should be. I’d like us to change that, and join the list of cities developing applications as part of a Gov 2.0 movement. This is a brief introduction, and what follows below is a three-part set of posts.
Part I focuses on some of what Gov 2.0 is, and uses Madison Metro as an example. Part II looks at how Madison is doing with Gov 2.0, and what we can be doing better. Part III looks at some specific Gov 2.0 systems that we could be building.
All three articles are excellent, and include several kind nods towards this blog and to Code for America and Civic Commons, two of the civic innovations organizations to watch in 2011.You’ll find thoughts on citizens as sensors, urban data, civic development, government as a platform, a “neighborhood API,”improving libraries, adding fibre, legislation tracking and more. Highly recommended.
As dozens of freshmen Representatives move into their second week of work as legislators here in the District of Columbia, they’re going to come up against a key truth that White House officials have long since discovered since the heady … Continue reading →
Facebook users are now able to receive social AMBER Alerts based in their state or region. The AMBER Alert program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement, media, transportation companies and other entities that shares information relevant to child abduction … Continue reading →
Today, C-SPAN’s Facebook page will host streaming video coverage of Wednesday’s special U.S. House session on the Tucson shootings. The livestream will start at 10 AM ET, when the House will consider a resolution on the shootings. The session is also … Continue reading →
Digital Capital Week is coming back to the United States Capital on November 4th, 2011. In a livestream today, the organizers of the inaugural 2010 event announced the data and opened the gates for DC Week registration and ideas for … Continue reading →
The new public database of consumer complaints is mandated by Section 212 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), which was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The CPSIA requires the Commission to establish and maintain a publicly accessible product safety information database that is available to the public. In the 21st Century, that means online, searchable and accessible at SaferProducts.gov.
As Lyndsey Layton points out at the Washington Post, the implementation of the database is not without controversy or political context. Manufacturing and industry groups are concerned about fictitious complaints or inaccurate claims made by competitors. Opponents of the launch of SaferProducts.gov are working against it, arguing that the public database could add additional burdens for businesses in a difficult economic environment.
The CPSC already collects reports of defective products from a wide range of sources, including consumers, health-care providers, death certificates and media accounts.But most of that information is shielded from public view. Until now, the only way for consumers to access safety complaints is to file a public-records request with the CPSC. The agency is then required by law to consult with the manufacturer before releasing information about their products, and the company can protest or sue to stop disclosure. If the agency thinks a dangerous product should be pulled from the market, it must negotiate a recall with the manufacturer, a process that can take months or years.
Under the new system, consumer complaints will be posted for any reader to find at SaferProducts.gov within 15 days after they are filed. When a consumer files a complaint under the new system, the CPSC will have 5 days to notify a manufacturer, which then has 10 days to respond to the complaint by challenging it, submitting a response or arguing that it violates a trade secret. A response would be published online with the complaint at SaferProductsgov, while the CPSC would have to decide to withhold or publish a complaint if a company asserts a false complaint.
This Tuesday, at 10:30 AM EST, the CPSC will host a webcast showing the new SaferProducts.gov report form at SaferProducts.gov/live. Visit CPSC.gov or follow the @OnSafety account at Twitter for updates on the official launch of the site.
In the meantime, consumers can continue to make use of the mobile recalls app that the federal government launched last year at USA.gov. These product recall datasets have been some of the most queried data on Data.gov over the past year, no doubt helped in part by the connected applications.
The CPSC also has a widget that blogs (like this one) can embed with recall information:
The contest is reasonably straightforward, at least as a proposal; challenge developers to create applications that test networks that inform consumers about broadband Internet connections. Specifically:
The Open Internet Challenge is designed to encourage the development of creative, innovative and functional Internet software tools for fixed or mobile broadband that provide users with real-time data about their Internet connection and, when aggregated, can show Internet-wide patterns and trends.
Apps that can detect, aggregate and analyze such information might be of use to both the agency and consumers alike, in terms of making policy or consumption decisions:
The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of creative, innovative and functional applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with open Internet principles. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content.
These applications should also collect anonoymized data that is useful for network research and analysis that enables the discovery of patterns and trends in Internet openness.
One popular platform for Internet software tools is Measurement Lab (M-Lab), which “is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools.” Those interested in running their software tools on the M-Lab platform should contact the M-Lab steering committee, which coordinates research on the M-Lab platform.
The commission is also soliciting research as part of the challenge:
In addition to measurement tools, this challenge also seeks research papers that analyze relevant Internet openness measurement techniques, approaches, and data. The Challenge is designed to encourage and reward the creation of novel, innovative and useful research. The research must be new or recent and directly involve open Internet principles. For example such research may illuminate how widely fixed and mobile networks observe the FCC’s open Internet principles or how advanced network services can be provided in a way that adheres to the spirit of the open Internet. Such research papers need to have been peer-reviewed by a recognized scientific conference or journal and must have been published since January 2007. (Dissertations, white papers and technical reports are not acceptable, but may be referenced for further details within the paper.) Research on Internet openness can improve policy making and advance Internet transparency, which helps to sustain a healthy Internet.
Will it take off? Another challenge, so to speak, might be the incentives. The winners will earn a free (up $500/person in travel expenses) trip to FCC headquarters in Washington, DC, where they’ll go to an FCC Chairman’s reception, present their work to the Commission, receive plaque and “have their apps and research featured on the FCC’s website and social media outlets.”
It’s also not clear how the development community will feel about the FCC after today’s hearing on somewhat controversial net neutrality rules, for which a public document still hasn’t been published online. Geeks and government have converged at the FCC before. If this challenge is going to take off, they’ll need to do a lot of outreach to encourage the development community to participate, which in turn will likely also mean exactly what the new open Internet principles will mean in practice. Stay tuned.
President Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry en route to the Oval Office, Dec. 13, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
White House photographer Pete Souza captured this striking nighttime silhouette of President Obama and his “ObamaBerry this week. Despite the connection this image implies, don’t expect to get a reply from questions directed to BHO44@whitehouse.gov answered any time soon. President Obama is less reachable than, say, Steve Jobs, as several people who have written to sjobs@apple.com have found. As Engadget reported earlier this year, after President Obama said that presidential BlackBerry ownership is no fun, he probably not exchanging email with more than a dozen other people on Earth.
If you’ll recall, Obama fought hard early on for the privilege of maintaining his prized BlackBerry, and while he eventually won out, we learned today that a grand total of ten individuals are authorized to ping it. Yeah, ten. Needless to say, he described that depressing fact as “no fun,” and even the folks that are cleared to make contact with it won’t send over anything juicy. Why? They know that messages sent to it “will probably be subject to the presidential records act,” so those lucky enough to have the digits are also smart enough to divert their ramblings to Texts From Last Night.
Despite the potential IT security risks for the president and other government workers that smartphones present, as Chris Soghioan pointed out last year at CNET, that hasn’t stopped them from making their way into the hands of tens of thousands of Washingtonians in the District of Columbia. Last night, I watched and smiled as new hires at the local startup agency poked and prodded at their new BlackBerrys, getting comfortable with the functions of one what has become an important communication tools for their trade.
President Barack Obama answers questions about the economy from local families as, from left, Senior Advisor David Axelrod, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, Director of Speechwriting Jon Favreau, and Trip Director Marvin Nicholson wait in a hallway of the Southhampton Recreation Association in Richmond, Va., Sept. 29, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Instead of 2:1 ratio of BlackBerry to iPhone users, it’s more like 106 to 1. As a recent story in the Washington Post that explored whether iPhones will edge out BlackBerrys in Washington reported, there are currently 86 iPhone users at work amongst the aides, staff and officials in the House of Representatives, versus some 9,140 BlackBerry users. There are tens of thousands more spread among the other federal agencies.
That’s changing, albeit more slowly in official Washington than it is in the rest of the country. “This quarter saw Apple and Android drive record smartphone sales. Apple’s share of the smartphone market surpassed Research In Motion (RIM) in North America to put it second behind Android while Android volumes also grew rapidly making it the No. 2 operating system worldwide,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.
Over the course of the past year, this correspondent has seen many more iPhones in evidence here in Washington, along with a surge of Android devices in the falll. As Politico reported earlier this month, a tech overhaul may allow both iPads, iPhones and BlackBerrys on to the floor of the Senate. This summer, Rep. Charles Djou made history when he tweeted that “The House Parliamentarian told me that I’m the first Member of Congress to ever use an iPad” during a floor speech.” There are reports that the iPad is popular with White House staff and in the Cabinet is using iPads. In the judicial branch of government, the competition is between iPad and the Kindle in the Supreme Court, with Justice Kagan leaning Kindle and Justice Scalia leaning iPad for reading their briefs.
One point of clarity exists with respect to Washington and smartphones: it’s generally not an “either/or” proposition in this city. Most of official Washington travels with both a work BlackBerry and another device for personal use, for any number of pragmatic records and security reasons.
It’s likely that a paperless Congress is still a few years away, but who knows: maybe the increase of smartphones will be a boon to get more Washingtonians shifting their thinking from “there’s a form for that” to “there’s an app for that” in 2011.
[Hat tip to Nancy Scola for the image and caption. This may have been one the most apt finds ever for at blog named “techPresident.”]
This week, I was proud to be one of two speakers for a session on social media and government at the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) conference in Washington, D.C. I delivered an adapted version of the talk on social media and government I gave the Social Security Administration’s Open Government Awareness Day earlier this year, focusing on the elements that would be of greatest interest to a group of lawyers, regulators and academics. The presentation is embedded below:
The speaker that followed me, however, was able to share a fascinating view of what social media looks like from inside of government, specifically in the District of Columbia. Alysoun McLaughlin, the public affairs manager for the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics. Here’s her bio, from the COGEL session description:
She joined the District last year, just in time to implement a long list of reforms for the 2010 election including new voting equipment, early voting and same-day registration. Prior to becoming an election official, she was a project manager for Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States. She previously spent a decade as a Washington lobbyist, focusing on election issues for the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of Counties. She is here today to share her experience with social media during the 2010 election.
And share she did. Over the course of half an hour, she talked about Facebook, Twitter, local media, citizen engagement and much more. I captured most of her presentation on my iPhone (sorry about the unsteady hand) and have embedded her presentation, “To Tweet or not to Tweet: Engaging the Public through Social Media,” below.
If you want an excellent, practical perspective of the local government side of social media, these are worth watching. A couple of key takeaways from her presentation:
How can governments get insights from Twitter without using it? “Just type in the name of your agency and see what they’re saying.”
On D.C. elections: “We know there are going to be lines. Come to the website to see what they are.”
Don’t trust this to an intern. You “need someone skilled in crisis communications.”
“The days that I’m heavy on Twitter are the days my phone rings less.”
Viral tweets can raise awareness: “…and we just confirmed that a voter used a write-in stamp. on a touch screen.”
Part 1: Introductions
Part 2: Reflections on Twitter and Facebook
Part 3: Twitter and the 2010 DC Election
Part 4: Who follows @DCBOEE
Part 5: Listening and using social media in government
E Pluribus Unum 