Yearly Archives: 2011

Canada Joins the Open Government Partnership

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I’m in New York today for the launch of the Open Government Partnership and it looks as the Canada is now a signatory (or at least has signed a letter of intent).

No commitments are outlined, but I will link to them when they are posted.

The Open Government Partnership was launched by the White House and the State Department earlier this year with 8 founding countries. The goal is to get a coalition of governments around the world to commit to implementing a series of initiatives to improve government transparency, effectiveness and accountability. You can read more here.

For those interested, the launch of the event will be livestreamed here. If you’re at the event, I’ll be hosting the lunch on “How to identify and prioritize core classes of information for public disclosure.”

Updated: here’s a video…

Neo-Progressive Watch: Rahm Emanuel vs. Teachers Union

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Anyone who read Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope will have been struck with the amount of time the then aspiring presidential candidate spent writing about public education policy. More notably, he seemed to acknowledge that any effort at education reform was, at some point, going to butt heads with teachers unions and that new approaches were either going to have to be negotiated or imposed. It was a point of tension that wasn’t much talked about in the reviews I read. But it always struck me as interesting that here was Obama, a next generation progressive, railing against the conservatism of what is possible the original pillar of the progressive movement: public education.

All of this has, of course, been decidedly forgotten given both the bigger problems the president has faced and by the fact that he’s been basically disinterested in monkeying around in public education policy since taking office. That’s why it is still more fascinating to see what his disciples are doing as they get involved in levels of government that are in more direct contact with this policy area. Here, none is more interesting to watch than Rahm Emanuel.

This Saturday my friend Amy L. pointed me to a New York Times article outlining the most recent battle between Rahm Emanuel and the teacher’s union. My own take is that the specifics of the article are irrelevant, what matters is the broad theme. In short, Rahm Emanuel is on a short timeline. He needs to produce results immediately since local elections both happen more frequently and one is much, much closer to the citizen. That said, he doesn’t have to deliver uniform results, progress, in of itself may be sufficient. Indeed, a little experimentation is profoundly good given it can tease out faster and cheaper ways to deliver said results.

In contrast, the teacher’s union faces few of the pressures experienced by Rahm. It can afford to move at a slower pace and, more importantly, wants a uniform level of treatment across the entire system. Indeed, its entire structure is built around the guarantee of uniform treatment for its members. This uniformity is a value that evolved parallel to but not of progressive thinking. It is an artifact of industrial production that gets confused with progressive thought because of the common temporal lineage.

This skirmish offers a window into the major battle that is going to dominate the our politics in about a decade. I increasingly suspect we are moving into a world where the possibilities for education, thanks to the web and social networks, is going to be completely altered. What we deem is possible, what parents demand, and the skills that are seen as essential, are all going to shift. Our educational system, its schools, the school boards and, of course, the unions, are still bound in a world of mass production – shifting students from room to room to prepare them for the labour and production jobs of the 20th century. No matter how gifted the teachers (and there are many who are exceedingly gifted) they remain bound by the structure of the system the education system, the school boards, and the unions, have built and enforce.

Of course, what is going to be in demand are students that can thrive in the world of mass collaboration and peer production in the 21st century -behaviours that are generally viewed as “cheating” in the current model. And parents who are successful in 21st century jobs are going to be the first to ensure their children get the “right” kind of education. Which is going to put them at odds with the current education system.

This is all this is to say that the real question crisis is: how quickly will educational systems be able to adapt? Here both the school boards and the unions play an enormous role, but it is the unions that, it would appear, may be a constraining factor. If they find that having Rahm engage schools directly feels like a threat, I suspect they are going to find the next 20 years a rough, rough ride. Something akin to how the newspapers have felt regarding the arrival of the internet and craigslist.

What terrifies me most, is that unless we can devise a system where teachers are measured and so good results can be both rewarded and shared… and where parents and students have more choices around education, then families (that can afford to) are going to vote with their feet. In fact, you already see it in my home town.

The myth in Vancouver is that high property values are driving families – and thus children – out of the city. But this is patently not true. The fantastic guys over at Bing Thom Architects wrote a report on student populations in Vancouver. According to their research, in the last 10 years the estimated number of elementary and secondary aged children in Vancouver has risen by 3% (around 2,513 new students). And yet, the number of students enrolled in public education facilities has declined by 5.46%. (around 3,092 students). In fact, the Vancouver School Boards numbers seem to indicate the decline may be more pronounced.

In the meantime the number of private/independent schools has exploded by 43% going from 39 to 68 with enrollment increases of 13.8%. (Yes that does leave a surplus of students unaccounted for, I suspect they are also in private/independent schools, but outside of the City of Vancouver’s boundaries). As a public school graduate myself, one who had truly fantastic teachers but who also benefited from enormous choice (IB, French Immersion) the numbers of the past decade are very interesting to immerse oneself in.

Correct or incorrect, it would seem parents are opting for schools that offer a range of choices around education. Of course, it is only the parents who can afford to do this that are doing it. But that makes the outcome worse, not better. With or without the unions, education is going to get radically rethought. It would be nice if it was the public sector that lead that revolution, or at least was on the vanguard of it. But if our public sector managers and teachers are caught arguing over how to adjust the status quo by increments, it is hard to see how our education policy is going to make a quantum leap into the 21st century.

Interview with Charles Leadbeater – Monday September 19th

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I’m excited to share that I’ll be interviewing British public policy and open innovation expert Charles Leadbeater on September 19th as part of a SIG’s webinar series. For readers not familiar with Charles Leadbeater, he is the author of We-Think and numerous other chapters, pamphlets and articles, ranging in focus from social innovation, to entrepreneurship to public sector reform. He served as an adviser to Tony Blair and has a long standing relationship with the British think tank Demos.

Our conversation will initially focus on open innovation, but I’m sure will range all over, touching on the impact of open source methodologies on the private, non-profit and public sector, the future of government services and, of course, the challenges and opportunities around open data.

If you are interested in participating in the webinar you can register here. There is a small fee I’m told is being charged to recover some of the costs for running the event.

If you are participating and have a question you’d like to see asked, or a theme or topic you’d like to see covered, please feel free to comment below or, if you prefer more discretion, send me an email.

Research Request – Transit Study

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After writing yesterday’s post on the economics of opendata and transit I’ve really been reflecting on a research question that emerged in the piece: Does having transit data embedded in Google Maps increase ridership?

My hypothesis is that it would… but I did some googling on the topic and couldn’t find anything written on the subject, not to mention something that had been rigorously researched and would stand up to peer review. This leads me to believe it could be a great research project. I willing to bet that some transit authorities, and Google would be of enormously interested in the results.

Obviously there are a number of variables that might impact public transit ridership: budgets, fleet size growth or cutbacks, the economy, population growth, etc… That said, I’m sure there is someone out there who could think of a methodology that would account for these factors and still allow us to tell if becoming available in Google Maps impact’s a city’s ridership levels.

The helpful thing is that there are lots of data points to play with. A brief scan of the public transit feed lists suggests that there are roughly 150 cities that provide Google with GTFS data of the transit schedule. That’s a lot of cities to play with and would allow a study to offset regional variations. I’m also confident that each of the transit authorities mentioned in the list publicly publish their ridership levels (or they could be FOIAed/ATIPed)

If anyone has done this study, please let me know, I’d love to know more. If no, and someone is interested in doing this study, please go for it! I’m definitely happy to offer whatever support I can.

The Economics of Open Data – Mini-Case, Transit Data & TransLink

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TransLink, the company that runs public transit in the region where I live (Vancouver/Lower Mainland) has launched a real time bus tracking app that uses GPS data to figure out how far away the next the bus you are waiting for really is. This is great news for everyone.

Of course for those interested in government innovation and public policy it also leads to another question. Will this GPS data be open data?

Presently TransLink does make its transit schedule “open” under a non-commercial license (you can download it here). I can imagine a number of senior TransLink officials (and the board) scratching their head asking: “Why, when we are short of money, would we make our data freely available?”

The answer is that TransLink should make its current data, as well as its upcoming GPS data, open and available under a license that allows for both non-commercial and commercial re-use, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because the economics of it make WAY MORE SENSE FOR TRANSLINK.

Let me explain.

First, there are not a lot of obvious ways TransLink could generate wealth directly from its data. But let’s take two possible opportunities: the first involves selling a transit app to the public (or advertising in such an app), the second is through selling a “next bus” service to companies (say coffee shops or organizations) that believe showing this information might be a convenience to their employees or customers.

TransLink has already abandoned doing paid apps – instead it maintains a mobile website at m.translink.ca – but even if it created an app and charged $1 per download, the revenue would be pitiful. Assuming a very generous customer base of 100,000 users, TransLink would generate maybe $85,000 dollars (once Apple takes its cut from the iPhone downloads, assuming zero cut for Androids). But remember, this is not a yearly revenue stream, it is one time. Maybe, 10-20,000 people upgrade their phone, arrive in Vancouver and decide to download every year. So your year on year revenue is maybe $15K? So over a 5 year period, TransLink ends up with an extra, say $145,000 dollars. Nothing to sneeze at, but not notable.

In contrast a free application encourages use. So there is also a cost to not giving it away. It could be that, having transit data more readily available might cause some people to choose taking transit over say, walking, or taking a taxi or driving. Last year TransLink handled 211.3 million trips. Let’s assume that more accessible data from wider access to the data meant there was a .1% increase in the number of trips. An infinitesimally small increase – but it means 211,300 more trips. Assuming each rider pays a one zone $2.50 fare that would still translate in an additional revenue of $528,250. Over the same five year period cited above… that’s revenue of $2.641M, much better than $145,000. And this is just calculating money. Let’s say nothing of less congested roads, less smog and a lower carbon footprint for the region…

When the this analysis is applied to licensing data it produces the same result. Will UBC pay to have TransLink’s real time data on terminals in the Student Union building? I doubt it. Would some strategically placed coffee shops… possibly. Obviously organizations would have to pay for the signs, but adding on annual “data license fee” to display’s cost would cause some to opt out. And once you take into account managing the signs, legal fees, dealing with the contract and going through the sales process, it is almost inconceivable that TransLink would make more money from these agreements than it would from simply having more signs everywhere created by other people that generated more customers for its actual core business: moving people from A to B for a fee. Just to show you the numbers, if shops that weren’t willing to pay for the data put up “next bus” screens that generated a mere 1000 new regular bus users who did only 40 one way trips a year (or 40,000 new trips), this would equal revenue of $100,000 every year at no cost to translink. Someone else could install and maintain the signs, no contracts or licenses would need to be managed.

From a cost recovery perspective it is almost impossible to imagine a scenario where TransLink is better off not allowing commercial re-use of its data.

My point is that TransLink should not be focused on creating a few bucks from licensing its data (which it doesn’t do right now anyway). It should be focused on shifting the competitive value in the marketplace from access to accessibility.

Being the monopoly holder of transit data does not benefit TransLink. All it means is that fewer people see and engage with its data. When it makes the data open and available “access” no longer becomes the defining advantage. When anybody (e.g. TransLink, Google, independent developers) can access the data, the market place shifts to competing on access to competing on accessibility. Consumers don’t turn to who has the data, they turn to who makes the data easiest to use.

For example, Translink has noted that in 2011 it will have a record number of trips. Part of me wonders to what degree the increase in trips over the past few years is a result of making transit data accessible in Google Maps. (Has anyone done a study on this in any jurisdiction?) The simple fact is that Google maps is radically easier to use for planning transit journeys than Translink’s own website AND THAT IS A GOOD THING FOR TRANSLINK. Now imagine if lots of companies were sharing translink’s data? The local Starbucks and Blenz Coffee, to colleges and universities and busy buildings downtown. Indeed, the real crime right now is that Translink has handed Google a defacto monopoly. It is allowed to use the data for commercial re-use. Local tax-paying developers…? Not so according to the license they have to click through.

Translink, you want a world where everyone is competing (including against you) on accessibility. In the end… you win with greater use and revenue.

But let me go further. There are other benefits to having Translink share its data for commercial re-use.

Procurement

Some riders will note that there are already bus stops in Vancouver which display “next bus” data (e.g. how many minutes away the next bus is). If TransLink made its next bus data freely available via an API it could conceivably alter the procurement process for buying and maintaining these signs. Any vendor could see how the data is structured and so take over the management of the signs, and/or experiment with creating more innovative or cheaper ways of manufacturing them.

The same is true of creating the RFP for TransLink’s website. With the data publicly available, TransLink could simple ask developers to mock up what they think is the most effective way of displaying the data. More development houses might be enticed to respond to the RFP increasing the likelihood of innovations and putting downward pressure of fees.

Analysis

Of course, making GPS data free could have an additional benefit. Local news companies might be able to use the bus’s GPS data to calculate traffic flow rates and so predict traffic jams. Might they be willing to pay TransLink for the data? Maybe, but again probably not enough to justify the legal and sales overhead. Moreover, TransLink would benefit from this analysis – as it could use the reports to adjust its schedule and notify its drivers of problems beforehand. Of course everyone would benefit as well as better informed commuters might change their behaviour (including taking transit!) reducing congestion, smog, carbon footprint, etc…

Indeed, the analysis opportunities using GPS data are potentially endless – much of which might be done by bloggers and university students. One could imagine correlating actual bus/subway times with any other number of data sets (crime, commute times, weather) that could yield interesting information that could help TransLink with its planning. There is no world where TransLink has the resources to do all this analysis, so enabling others to do it, can only benefit it.

Conclusion

So if you are at TransLink/Coast Mountain Bus Company (or any transit authority in the world), this post is for you. Here’s what I suggest as next steps:

1) Add GPS bus tracking API to your open data portal.

2) Change your license. Drop the non-commercial part. It hurts your business more than you realize and is anti competitive (why does can Google use the data for a commercial application while residents of the lower mainland cannot?). My suggestion, adopt the BC Government Open Government License or the PDDL.

3) Add an RSS feed to your GTFS data. Like Google, we’d all like to know when you update your data. Given we live here and are users, it be nice to extend the same service to us as you do them.

4) Maybe hold a Transit Data Camp where you could invite local developers and entrepreneurs to meet your staff and encourage people to find ways to get transit data into the hands of more Lower Mainlanders and drive up ridership!

 

 

What Re-Releases of Star Wars can Teach Us About Art and Product Management

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The other day I noticed this tweet fly by in the twittersphere

 

 

 

Was this a complaint? In light of the fact the internet was rife with complaints about changes to the movies in the Blue Ray release of the original trilogy, I suspect so. While I do harbor Lucas a small amount of ill will for the disaster that was Star Wars Episodes I, II and III the more I think about his re-releases the more I think he is doing something rather interesting by adopting ideas from the software world, challenging notions of art in Hollywood and striving to constantly keep an old asset relevant. Considering all this, I also think there are lesson here for all of us. So, accepting the fact that half the world out there will think I’m wrong, and the other half will think this is just about extracting money from fans… here are nonetheless some thoughts.

Keeping an old asset relevant

Unlike the rest of Hollywood, I think Lucas should be applauded. Whether you think his updates are good or bad, he is, at least, trying to add value to his products long after they leave the theater. I actually remember enjoying watching one of the updated re-releases and trying to see if I could spot all the differences between the original Star Wars Episode IV (v1.0) and the newer Star Wars Episode IV (v1.1), it was fun…

But Lucas’s updates feel all the more interesting and relevant an experiment given the movie’s genre. There is a real risk that at some point the special effects in Star Wars are simply going to become so dated that the whole things will feel massively campy (some might argue that’s already happened – maybe I’m blinded by nostalgia), but integrating in newer effects might help prolong the movie’s relevance. I’m quite confident that there are lots of children out there who, despite their parents fanatic devotion to original Star Wars trilogy, can’t get over the fact that the special effects feel out of date. Maybe it’s easier for them to engage the movie when they see a little CGI? I’m not saying these releases are necessarily successful in hitting this target, but at least he is trying. There are lots of products (not to mention websites) that I wish the creators had gone back and updated… Sometimes the changes make it worse, but often the product was headed for obsolescence anyway, so the changes kept it relevant.

Learning from the Software World

Of course, if you don’t like the new versions one thing I think Lucas has done that is savvy (and frankly, helps line his pockets) is borrow from the software world and  functionally “version” the first Star Wars Trilogy. Yes, once again the initial release of the Blue Ray dvd will only have changes he is made (maybe it will include the original version as well) but eventually the original “classic” version will be released on DVD. As I outlined above, all this means is that there will be Star Wars Episode IV (v1.0), the late 1990’s Star Wars Episode IV (v1.1) and now the 2011 Star Wars Episode IV (v1.2). However, unlike many software vendors, Lucas is not ultimately forcing anyone to use v1.2. If you want to stick to v1.0, I’m confident it will be released on the format of your choice eventually. It’s like playing some of your favourite video games. Sure Civ V will come along, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play Civ III (or, obviously the best of them all, Alpha Centauri) anymore.

Of course the benefit of this is twofold. First, maybe everybody hates v1.1 and v1.2 (although I bet young fans really don’t care) and so sit around talking about it and cursing Lucas. Of course, this is still a coup. Imagine 30 years later, people are still sitting around talking passionately about your movie? That’s a pretty good outcome. Better still maybe there are Star Wars camps! The v1.0 camp is obviously largest, but I bet you’ll find v1.1 and v1.2 defenders. Now we have hours of endless debate! The fan base continues to be energized! Genius.

Challenging Notions of Art

But I also love that Lucas challenges peoples’ notion movies as art. The danger with the non-oral mediums is that the art itself becomes stale. Why can’t, or shouldn’t a movie evolve in the same way a spoken story might evolve as it is passed down? Why is it that a movie has to stay frozen in time just because it can?

There is a lot of art that we don’t treat that way.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (v1.0) can, frankly, no longer be seen, all we watch now are derivative works based on the text we happened to have captured, and even then, who knows how Shakespeare himself actually wanted it to be acted and directed (I’m sure someone is about to tell me I’m wrong on that front). But regardless, none of this has stopped us from enjoying the literally 1000s of Romeo and Juliet remakes that have been made since the bard wrote the “original” (which we all concede was itself derivative).

Even in the movie world we don’t let things lie. Endless remakes are made – sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. Isn’t Lucase fundamentally doing the same thing? I’d rather watch a remake with the original Han Solo than without…

Part of the joy of a great story is the ability to retell it. To re-interpret it and to make it relevant to new people. Maybe that is all Lucas wants to do. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to the original. But maybe by evolving his art, Lucas is creating a bigger audience and enabling his story to touch more, or at least new, people. Thinking of George Lucas the artist, I think I respect that.

Upcoming talks, events and other activities

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So despite the fact that I only left Vancouver once(!) in August, things have been quite busy. Lots of work.

September and onwards is going to be a bear however. Lots of travel so I thought I would lay everything out in case their is overlap with readers, friends and/or clients who might be interested in catching up. Friends and colleagues who don’t already should definitely connect with me on Tripit. Awesome service. Like Dopplr, but on steroids.

So what’s on tap?

DjangoCon Keynote – Portland, Oregon, September 6th

I’ll be giving the keynote on the opening day of DjangoCon in Portland. I’ll be talking about open source community management and in particular the use of metrics and negotiation theory to rethink how communities self organize, engage new contributors and resolve differences.

Panelist, Transparency: Towards a New Generation – Mexico City, September 9th

In Mexico I’ll be doing a panel, for Mexico National Transparency Week, on the future of open government and open data, along with Andres Hoffmann, the General Director of Revista Politica Digital and Jose Eduardo Romão, the Ombudsman for Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General. Mrs. Maria Marvan, IFAI Commissioner, will be moderating.

Negotiation and Collaborating in Open Source Communities, Mozilla All-Hands – San Diego, September 12-15

This is a event for Mozilla community members only – providing training on negotiating skills.

Interview with Charles Leadbeater (to be confirmed) – Toronto, September 19th

Obviously I’m a big admirer of Charles Leadbeater’s work. SIG is organizing an event in Toronto and Vancouver that week and if you are able I strongly encourage you to check them out.

Open Government Partnership Launch – New York, September 20th

No talk here, just excited to have been invited to the launch of the Open Government Partnership to serve as an expert. With luck, the Canadian Government will sign on and I won’t be only Canadian in room.

Fraser Valley Real Estate Board Speech – Vancouver, September 21st

The Real Estate Industry is changing. I’ve done some thinking on this subject and will be sharing how I think some emerging trends, along with open data and the competition bureau’s decision will alter the real estate landscape.

Breakfast talk on Net Neutrality and the Digital Economy in Canada – Vancouver, September 23rd

Joyce Murray, the MP for Vancouver Quadra holds regular gatherings where people like Dr. Julio Montaner (AIDS expert) and Dr. Karen Bakker (water expert) come and give brief talks. She’s asked me to come and talk on the internet, government surveillance and the digital economy. I’ll be talking around 8am at the Enigma Restaurant at W10th and Trimble.

Negotiation Work – San Francisco, September 28-29th

Some negotiation consulting for a client, but I’ll be in the Bay Area.

Panel on Open Data: A World of Possibilities – Ottawa, October 5th

I’ll be doing a panel at the 7th International Conference of Information Commissioners on “Open data: A world of possibilities” with Elizabeth Denham British Columbia’s Information and Privacy Commissioner (who, surprisingly, I’ve never met). We’ll be talking about how open data can generate innovation and economic opportunities as well as stimulate citizen engagement.

British Columbia Real Estate Association Speech– Vancouver, October 6th

Co-Chair, the Code For America Summit – San Francisco, October 13-14th

Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit – Portland, October 15-16th

I may be giving a talk at the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit as well – waiting to hear the full plan. Definitely going to be working on some cool community management stuff with some of some Drupal community members. Promises to be fun.

Opening Keynote, Open Government Data Camp (tentative)- Warsaw, Poland, October 21st

 

Okay, so that’s about it. There’s a few things in there that are missing, some for personal travel, some for other clients. I have of course, also updated my public speaking page, so you can catch all of this, and other emerging things, there.

 

 

 

 

Smarter Ways to Have School Boards Update Parents

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Earlier this month the Vancouver School Board (VSB) released an iPhone app that – helpfully – will use push notifications to inform parents about school holidays, parent interviews, and scheduling disruptions such as snow days. The app is okay, it’s a little clunky to use, and a lot of the data – such as professional days – while helpful in an app, would be even more helpful as an iCal feed parents could subscribe to in their calendars.

That said, the VSB deserves credit for having the vision of developing an app. Positively, the VSB app team hopes to add new features, such as letting parents know about after school activities like concerts, plays and sporting events.

This is a great innovation and without a doubt, other school boards will want apps of their own. The problem is, this is very likely to lead to an enormous amount of waste and duplication. The last thing citizens want is for every school board to be spending $15-50K developing iPhone apps.

Which leads to a broader opportunity for the Minister of Education.

Were I the Education Minister, I’d have my technology team recreate the specs of the VSB app and propose an RFP for it but under an open source license and using phonegap so it would work on both iPhone and Android. In addition, I’d ensure it could offer reminders – like we do at recollect.net – so that people could get email or text messages without a smart phone at all.

I would then propose the ministry cover %60 percent of the development and yearly upkeep costs. The other 40% would be covered by the school boards interested in joining the project. Thus, assuming the app had a development cost of $40K and a yearly upkeep of $5K, if only one school board signed up it would have to pay $16K for the app (a pretty good deal) and $2K a year in upkeep. But if 5 school districts signed up, each would only pay $3.2K in development costs and $400 dollars a year in upkeep costs. Better still, the more that sign up, the cheaper it gets for each of them. I’d also propose a governance model in which those who contribute money for develop would have the right to elect a sub-group to oversee the feature roadmap.

Since the code would be open source other provinces, school districts and private schools could also use the app (although not participate in the development roadmap), and any improvements they made to the code base would be shared back to the benefit of BC school districts.

Of course by signing up to the app project school boards would be committing to ensure their schools shared up to date notifications about the relevant information – probably a best practice that they should be doing anyways. This process work is where the real work lies. However, a simple webform (included in the price) would cover much of the technical side of that problem. Better still the Ministry of Education could offer its infrastructure for hosting and managing any data the school boards wish to collect and share, further reducing costs and, equally important, ensuring the data was standardized across the participating school boards.

So why should the Ministry of Education care?

First, creating new ways to update parents about important events – like when report cards are issued so that parents know to ask for them – helps improve education outcomes. That should probably reason enough, but there are other reasons as well.

Second, it would allow the ministry, and the school boards, to collect some new data: professional day dates, average number of snow days, frequency of emergency disruptions, number of parents in a district interested in these types of notifications. Over time, this data could reveal important information about educational outcomes and be helpful.

But the real benefit would be in both cost savings and in enabling less well resourced school districts to benefit from technological innovation wealthier school districts will likely pursue if left to their own devices. Given there are 59 english school districts in BC, if even half of them spent 30K developing their own iPhone apps, then almost $1M dollars would be collectively spent on software development. By spending $24K, the ministry ensures that this $1M dollars instead gets spent on teachers, resources and schools. Equally important, less tech savvy or well equipped school districts would be able to participate and benefit.

Of course, if the City of Vancouver school district was smart, they’d open source their app, approach the Ministry of Education and offer it as the basis of such a venture. Doing that wouldn’t just make them head of the class, it’d be helping everyone get smarter, faster.

Open Data and New Public Management

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This morning I got an email thread pointing to an article by Justin Longo on #Opendata: Digital-Era Governance Thoroughbred or New Public Management Trojan Horse? I’m still digesting it all but wanted to share some initial thoughts.

The article begins with discussion about the benefits of open data but its real goal is to argue how open data is a pawn in a game to revive the New Public Management Reform Agenda:

My hypothesis, based on a small but growing number of examples highlighting political support for open data, is that some advocates—particularly politicians, but not exclusively—are motivated by beliefs (both explicit and unconscious) forged in the New Public Management (NPM) reform agenda.

From this perspective, support for more open data aims at building coalitions of citizen consumers who are encouraged to use open data to expose public service decisions, highlight perceived performance issues, increase competition within the public sector, and strengthen the hand of the citizen as customer.

What I found disappointing is the article’s one dimensional approach to the problem: open data may support a theory/approach to public management disliked by the author, consequently (inferring from the article’s title and tone) it must be bad. This is akin to saying any technology that could be used to advance an approach I don’t support, must be opposed.

In addition, I’d say that the idea of exposing public service decisions, highlighting perceived performance issues, increasing competition within the public sector, and strengthening the hand of the citizen as customer are goals I don’t necessarily oppose, certainly not categorically. Moreover, I would hope such goals are not exclusively the domain of NPM. Do we want a society where government’s performance issues are not highlighted? Or where public service decisions are kept secret?

These are not binary choices. You can support the outcomes highlighted above and simultaneously believe in other approaches to public sector management and/or be agnostic about the size of government. Could open data be used to advance NPM? Possibly (although I’m doubtful). But it definitely can also be used to accomplish a lot of other good and potentially advance other approaches as well. Let’s not conflate a small subset of ways open data can be used or a small subset of its supporters with the entire project and then to lump them all into a single school of thought around public service management.

Moreover, I’ve always argued that the biggest users and benefactors of open data would be government – and in particular the public service. While open data could be used to build “coalitions of citizen consumers who are encouraged to use open data to expose public service decisions” it will also be used by public servants to better understand citizens needs, be more responsive and allocate resources more effectively. Moreover, those “citizen consumers” will probably be effective in helping them achieve this task. The alternative is to have better shared data internally (which will eventually happen), an outcome that might allow the government to achieve these efficiencies but will also radically increase the asymmetry in the relationship between the government and its citizens and worse, between the elites that do have privileged access to this data, and the citizenry (See Taggart below).

So ignoring tangible benefits because of a potential fear feels very problematic. It all takes me back to Kevin Kelly and What Technology Wants… this is an attempt to prevent an incredibly powerful technology because of a threat it poses to how the public sector works. Of course, it presumes that a) you can prevent the technology and b) that not acting will allow the status quo or some other preferred approach to prevail. Again, there are outcomes much, much worse the NPM that are possible (again, I don’t believe that open data leads directly to NPM) and I would argue, indeed likely, given evolving public expectations, demographics, and fiscal constraints.

In this regard, the article sets of up a false choice. Open data is going to reshape all theories of public management. To claim it supports or biases in favour of one outcome is, I think beyond premature. But more importantly, it is to miss the trees for the forest and the much bigger fish we need to fry. The always thoughtful Chris Taggart summed much of this up beautifully in an email thread:

I think the title — making it out to be a choice between a thoroughbred or Trojan Horse — says it all. It’s a false dichotomy, as neither of those are what the open data advocates are suggesting it is, nor do most of us believe that open data is solution to all our problems (far from it — see some of my presentations[1]).

It also seems to offer a choice between New Public Management (which I think Emer Coleman does a fairly good job of illuminating in her paper[2]) and the brave new world of Digital Era Governance, which is also to misunderstand the changes being brought about in society, with or without open government data.
The point is not that open data is the answer to our problem but society’s chance to stay in the game (and even then, the odds are arguably against it). We already have ever increasing numbers of huge closed databases, many made up of largely government data, available to small number of people and companies.
This leads to an asymmetry of power and friction that completely undermines democracy; open data is not a sufficiency to counteract that, but I think it is a requirement.

It’s possible I’ve misunderstood Longo’s article and he is just across the straights at the University of Victoria, so hopefully we can grab a beer and talk it through. But my sense is this article is much more about a political battle between New Public Management and Digital Era Governance in which open data is being used as a pawn. As an advocate, I’m not wholly comfortable with that, as I think it risks misrepresenting it.

DataBC Hackathon this Saturday – inviting the public.

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This Saturday, August 27, 2011 the Province of British Columbia is partnering with the Mozilla Foundation and OpenDataBC to host a open data hackathon.

The hackathon will be taking place at Mozilla Labs Vancouver. Their address is:
163 West Hastings Street, suite-200
Vancouver, BC V6B 1H5
(in the very beautiful Flack Building)

So three things:

First, as many of you are probably aware the province recently launched a data portal and so there is a lot of new data to play with. In addition the City of Vancouver continues to update its open data portal, so there is new data there as well. Will be interesting to see what people want to work on.

Second, please do not fret if you are not a developer. As we pointed out last year in the lead up to the open data day international hackathon, there are lots of ways non-developers can contribute – the easiest being… having ideas! So please come on by. I’m definitely going to be there (and I’m no coder) and look forward to seeing familiar and new faces.

Finally, and more to the point, if you are a company, non-profit, or citizen who is has a mashup, analysis, research paper, product, app or pretty much anything else you’d like to create but need data from the province, definitely swing by. I’m sure the staff on hand will be very keen to hear about what you want to do and see if they can make the data available in the near future.

The organizers are hoping that people will RVSP through their contact form (use the ‘other’ subject line) but if you decide last minute to come join, don’t be shy.

Hope to see you there!