Category Archives: technology

Covid-19: Lessons from and for Government Digital Service Groups

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This article was written by David Eaves, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, Tom Loosemore, Partner at Public Digital, with Tommaso Cariati and Blanka Soulava, students at the Harvard Kennedy School. It first appeared in Apolitical.

Government digital services have proven critical to the pandemic response. As a result, the operational pace of launching new services has been intense: standing up new services to provide emergency funds, helping people stay healthy by making critical information accessible online, reducing the strain on hospitals with web and mobile based self-assessment tools and laying the groundwork for a gradual reopening of society by developing contact tracing solutions.

To share best practices and discuss emerging challenges Public Digital and the Harvard Kennedy School co-hosted a gathering of over 60 individuals from digital teams from over 20 national and regional governments. On the agenda were two mini-case studies: an example of collaboration and code-sharing across Canadian governments and the privacy and interoperability challenges involved in launching contract tracing apps.

We were cautious about convening teams involved in critical work, as we’re aware of how much depends on them. However, due to the positive feedback and engaging learnings from this session we plan additional meetings for the coming weeks. These will lead up to the annual Harvard / Public Digital virtual convening of global digital services taking place this June. (If you are part of a national or regional government digital service team and interested in learning more please contact us here.)

Case 1: sharing code for rapid response

In early March as the Covid-19 crisis gained steam across Canada, the province of Alberta’s non-emergency healthcare information service became overwhelmed with phone calls.

Some calls came from individuals with Covid-19 like symptoms or people who had been exposed to someone who had tested positive. But many calls also came from individuals who wanted to know whether it was prudent to go outside, who were anxious, or had symptoms unrelated to Covid-19 but were unaware of which symptoms to look out for. As the call center became overwhelmed it impeded their ability to help those most at risk.

Enter the Innovation and Digital Solutions from Alberta Health Services, led by Kass Rafih and Ammneh Azeim. In two days, they interviewed medical professionals, built a prototype self-assessment tool and conducted user-testing. On the third day, exhausted but cautiously confident, they launched the province of Alberta’s Covid-19 Self Assessment tool. With a ministerial announcement and a lucky dose of Twitter virality, they had 300k hits in the first 24h, rising to more than 3 million today. This is in a province with a total population of 4.3 million residents.

But the transformative story begins five days later, when the Ontario Digital Service called and asked if the team from Alberta would share their code. In a move filled with Canadian reasonableness, Alberta was happy to oblige and uploaded their code to GitHub.

Armed with Alberta’s code, the Ontario team also moved quickly, launching a localised version of the self-assessment tool in three days on Ontario.ca. Anticipating high demand, a few days later they stood up and migrated it to a new domain — Covid-19.ontario.ca — which has since evolved into a comprehensive information source for citizens, hosting information such as advice on social distancing or explanations about how the virus works with easy to understand answers.

The evolution of the Ontario Covid-19 portal information page, revised for ease of understanding and use

The Ontario team, led in part by Spencer Daniels, quickly iterated on the site, leveraging usage data and user feedback to almost entirely rewrite the government’s Covid-19 advice in simpler and accessible language. This helped reduce unwarranted calls to the province’s help lines.

Our feeling is that governments should share code more often. This case is a wonderful example of the benefits it can create. We’ve mostly focused on how code sharing allowed Ontario to move more quickly. But posting the code publicly also resulted in helpful feedback from the developer community and wider adoption. In addition, several large private sector organisations have repurpose that code to create similar applications for their employees and numerous governments on our call expressed interest in localising it in their jurisdiction. Sharing can radically increase the impact of a public good.

The key lesson. Sharing code allows:

  • Good practices and tools to be adopted more widely — in days, not weeks
  • Leveraging existing code allows a government team to focus on user experience, deploying and scaling
  • The crisis is a good opportunity to overcome policy inertia around sharing or adopting open source solutions
  • Both digital services still have their code on GitHub (Ontario’s can be found here and Alberta’s here).

The amazing outcome of this case is also a result of the usual recommendations for digital services that both Alberta and Ontario executed so well: user-centered design, agile working and thinking, working in cross-functional teams, embedding security and privacy by design and using simple language.

Case 2: Contact tracing and data interoperability

Many countries hit hard by the coronavirus are arriving at the end of the beginning.

The original surge of patients is beginning to wane. And then begins a complicated next phase. A growing number of politicians will be turning to digital teams (or vendors) hoping that contact tracing apps will help re-open societies sooner. Government digital teams need to understand the key issues to ensure these apps are deployed in ways that are effective, or to push back against decision makers if these apps will compromise citizens’ trust and safety.

To explore the challenges contact tracing apps might create, the team from Safe Paths, an open source, privacy by design contact tracing app built by an MIT led team of epidemiologists, engineers, data scientists and researchers, shared some early lessons. On our call, the Safe Paths team outlined two core thoughts behind their work on the app: privacy and interoperability between applications.

The first challenge is the issue of data interoperability. For large countries like the United States, or regions like Europe where borders are porous, contact tracing will be difficult if data cannot be scaled or made interoperable. Presently, many governments are exploring developing their own contact tracing apps. If each has a unique approach to collecting and structuring data it will be difficult to do contact tracing effectively, particularly as societies re-open.

Apple and Google’s recent announcement on a common Bluetooth standard to enable interoperability may give governments and a false sense of security that this issue will resolve itself. This is not the case. While helpful, this standard will not solve the problem of data portability so that a user could choose to share their data with multiple organisations. Governments will need to come together and use their collective weight to drive vendors and their internal development teams towards a smaller set of standards quickly.

The second issue is privacy. Poor choices around privacy and data ownership — enabled by the crisis of a pandemic — will have unintended consequences both in the short and long term. In the short term, if the most vulnerable users, such as migrants, do not trust a contact app they will not use it or worse, attempt to fool it, degrading data collection and undermining the health goals. Over the long term, decisions made today could normalise privacy standards that run counter to the values and norms of free liberal societies, undermining freedoms and the public’s long term trust in government. This is already of growing concern to civil liberties groups.

One way Safepaths has tried to address the privacy issue is by storing users data on their device and giving the user control over how and when data is shared in a de-identified manner. There are significant design and policy challenges in contact apps. This discussion is hardly exhaustive, but they need to start happening now, as decisions about how to implement these tools are already starting to be made.

Finally, the Safepaths team noted that governments have a responsibility in ensuring access to contact tracing infrastructure. For example, they struck agreements to zero-rate — e.g. make the mobile data needed to download and run the app free of charge — in a partner Caribbean country to minimise any potential cost to the users. Without such agreements, some of the most vulnerable won’t have access to these tools.

Conclusions and takeaways

This virtual conversation was the first in a series that will be held between now and the annual June Harvard / Public Digital convening of global digital services. We’ll be hosting more in the coming weeks and months.

Takeaways:

  • The importance of collaboration and sharing code within and between countries. This was exemplified by code sharing between the Canadian provinces and by the hope that this can become an international effort.
  • Importance of maintaining user-centered focus despite of the time pressure and fast-changing environment that requires quick implementation and iteration. Another resource here is California’s recently published crisis digital standard.
  • Privacy and security must be central to solutions that help countries deal with Covid-19. The technology exists to make private and secure self-assessment forms and contact tracing apps. The challenge is setting those standards early and driving global adoption of them.
  • Interoperability of contact tracing solutions will be pivotal to tackle a pandemic that doesn’t borders, cultures, or nationality. As the SafePaths team highlighted, this is a global standard-setting challenge.

Harvard and Public Digital are planning to host another event on this series on the digital response to Covid-19, sign up here if you’d like to participate in future gatherings! — David Eaves and Tom Loosemore with Tommaso Cariati and Blanka Soulava

This piece was originally published on Apolitical.

The Future of USDS: Trump, civic tech and the lesson of GDS

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Across Washington, the country, and the world, the assumptions people have about various programs, policies and roles have been radically altered in the last 12 hours with the victory of President-Elect Trump. Many of my students and colleagues have asked me — what does this mean for the future of United States Digital Service and 18F? What should it mean?

This is not the most important question facing the administration. But for those of us in this space the question matters. Intensely. And we need a response. USDS and 18F improve how Americans interact with their government while saving significant amounts of money. Democrats and Republicans may disagree over the size of government, but there is often less disagreement over whether a service should be effectively and efficiently delivered. Few in either party believe a veteran should confront a maze of forms or confusing webpages to receive a service. And, the fact is, massive IT failures do not have a party preference. They have and will continue to burn any government without a clear approach of how to address them.

So what will happen now?

The first risk is that the progress made to date will get blown up. That anything attributed to the previous administration will be deemed bad and have to go. I’ve spent much of the morning reaching out to Republican colleagues, and encouraging those I know in the community to do the same. What I’ve heard back is that the most plausible scenario is nothing happens. Tech policy sits pretty low on the priority list. There will be status quo for likely a year while the administration figures out what is next.

That said, if you are a Republican who cares about technology and government, please reach out. I can connect you with Jen Pahlka who would be happy to share her understanding of the current challenges and how the administration can use USDS to ensure this important work continues. There are real challenges here that could save billions and ensure Americans everywhere are better served.

The second risk is implosion. Uncertainty about what will happen to USDS and 18F could lead to a loss of the extraordinary talent that make the organizations so important.

Each employee must decide for themselves what they will do next. Those I’ve had the privilege to engage with at USDS, 18F or who served as Presidential Innovation Fellows have often displayed a sense of duty and service. The divisive nature of the campaign has created real wounds for some people. I don’t want to pretend that that is not the case. And, the need to push governments to focus on users, like Dominic, is no less diminished. Across Washington, there are public servants who did not vote Republican who are returning to their jobs to serve the best they can. The current administration has been effective in issuing a call to arms to civic technologists to help government. Now, having created a critical mass of civic technologists in DC, can it hold to continue to have the influence and grow the capabilities a 21st century government needs? Maintaining this critical mass is a test that any effort to institutionalize change must clear.

If you work for USDS or 18F, there are maps. The Government Digital Service was created by a partnership between a Conservative Minister (Francis Maude) and a group of liberal technologists (Mike Bracken et al). I doubt either party was naturally comfortable with the other at first, but an alliance was made and both its strengths and its flaws could serve as one template for a way to move forward.

My own sense is the work of USDS and 18F must be bigger than any one administration or party. For some this is a painful conversation, for others it is an easy conclusion. I understand both perspectives.

But in either case, there must be a dialogue around this work. So please, both sides. Find a way to talk. There is certainly a need for that in the country.

If there is anything we can do at Harvard Kennedy School to convene actors on either side of the aisle to help find a path forward for this work, please let me know. This work is important, and I hope it will not be lost.

Addendum: Just saw Naoh Kunin’s piece on why he is staying. Again, everyone has to make their choice, but believe in the conversation.

Improvising a Digital Curriculum at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

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Since arriving as a Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to integrate digital into the curriculum. I have a course on Digital Government and will be teaching modules next term on what we’ve learned from Digital Services (like USDS and GDS) as well as one dissecting why Healthcare.gov failed and what we learned.

However, many students ask me what else they should be taking. And while I have broader thoughts on what policy schools and schools of government should be doing (more on that in another piece), carving out a digitally oriented curriculum based on assets the school already has is both a good exercise and can provide some instant advice to interested students. And the good news is, there more that touches digital at the Kennedy School than people realize — it just isn’t always framed that way.

So, for students looking at this space there are two ways I would look for courses.

The first is to identify courses that zero in on some areas of knowledge that are core to understanding digital. I’ve identified 5 that I think every school should focus on (and would love feedback on these): User Needs, Design Thinking, Data, Privacy and Security (and yes, privacy and security are separated for good reason!). I have more thoughts on why I’ve chosen these 5, but will save that for another piece so we can stay focused.

Having a grounding in each of these topics is critical. They touch pretty much every other topic, concept and idea in the digital space. I cover each of these in my DPI-662 to provide students with such a grounding, but ideally there are (or should be) more courses that would allow students to delve even deeper into them.

With that in mind, the chart below outlines some courses I know, or suspect, would accomplish this goal. The dark blue courses are explicitly about digital/technology in government, while the light blue ones cover relevant subject matter, but may require the student to make linkages to the digital (perhaps by choosing their assignments or the cases they focus on strategically).

The second way to identify courses is by the type of job or role you hope to pursue after graduation. Here, broadly see three types of career paths:

  • Politics: For students who intend to be politicians, or a staffer
  • Administration/Operations: For students who intend to run large organizations or oversee the delivery of services
  • Policy and Regulation: For students who want to write and/or advocate policy

Again, a basic grounding in the five disciplines outlined previously is an essential prerequisite. This is because this second batch of courses draws on all 5 in varying degrees. The courses may emphasize some — like say security or data — more than others, but having a grounding all five will both make these courses more enjoyable and enable students to learn more from them.

A few additional thoughts:

  • I’m still relatively new and so not intimately familiar with all the courses at HKS, so would love feedback if anyone thinks these are wrong or am missing some
  • I’ve limited myself to courses at HKS. I’m confident there are courses elsewhere on campus that could be helpful. Will start to look at those next
  • Would love feedback and thoughts on anything in the piece. It forms part of a much broader piece I’m working on
  • Part of the exercise here is to identify gaps where further courses could be helpful — so would also love thoughts on that
  • There are lots of non-courses (e.g. reading groups, projects at the Ash, Belfer or Shorenstein Centers that touch on this material — I’ve not included those here
  • Finally, would like to thank Glynis Startz — second year student here at HKS — for helping me sort through the catalogue

The Empire Strikes Back: How the death of GDS puts all government innovators at risk

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The UK Government Digital Service(GDS) is dead. I’m sure it will continue to exist in some form, but from what I’ve read it appears to have been gutted of its culture, power and mandate. As a innovator and force for pulling the UK government into the 21st century, it’s over.

The UK government comms people, and the new head of GDS himself will say otherwise, but read between the lines of the stories as well as what former GDS people are saying, and it’s clear: GDS is dead.

These narratives are also aligned as to why. GDS was killed by what the Brits call “Whitehall.” This is short form for the inner and elite circles of the UK public service somewhat cruelly depicted in “Yes, Minister.” Their motive? GDS represented a centralization of IT control, and the departments — for whom GDS frequently found savings of tens of millions of pounds and provided effective online services on behalf of— didn’t like seeing their autonomy and budget sucked away by a group of IT geeks.

Losing GDS is a tragedy for the UK. But the downside isn’t limited to just the UK. It represents a blow to efforts to rethink and digitize governments around the world.

Why?

Because the debates over how governments work are not domestic (they haven’t been for a long time). GDS inspired innovators and politicians everywhere who were hungry for models of how governments could function in a digital age. Copycats sprang up around the world, such as the Digital Transformation Office in Australia and the United States Digital Service in the US at the national level, as well as others at the regional and local level. (For example, the Province of Ontario, which has a fantastic digital team, is currently hiring a Chief Digital Officer to lead a similar type of org.)

While working independently, these organizations share a common sense of mission and so trade best practices and lessons. More importantly, a few years ago they benefited from a massive asymmetry in information. They understood just how disruptive the innovation they were seeking to implement could be. And not from a technology perspective, but to the organizational structure and distribution of power within the public service.

As it became clearer to the rest of the public service in the UK just how far-reaching GDS’s vision was, and how much thinking digitally challenges the way senior public servants in places like Whitehall think… that asymmetry in knowledge and capacity didn’t diminish, but the asymmetry in awarenessand implications did. And so the center fought back. And it has far more power than any GDS might.

But it isn’t just in the UK. I suspect the existence of GDS and its global network has activated a global counter-movement among senior mandarins. Public servants are connected across international borders by shared alma maters, common international organizations and professional groups, cross-border projects, etc.… don’t think for a second that that global network hasn’t been activated (particularly among Treasury Board officials) to what some see as a new threat.

To be clear, this isn’t a GDS good, Whitehall bad piece. For anything to fail there is probably some shared responsibility. And assigning blame doesn’t really matter. What I care about it preserving what I and many others believe are important efforts to modernize governments so that the effectiveness of government, and trust in its institutions, are maintained.

So what does matter is, if you work for a digital service outside the UK, it is time to go double down on political cover and/or to reach out to the senior public servants around you and build some alliances. Because your Whitehall equivalent definitely has relationships with the UK Whitehall, and they are asking them what they think and know about GDS, and their story probably isn’t a good one.

The empire of traditional siloed bureaucracy is fighting back. You probably won’t beat it. So how are you going to engage it?

Canada’s Draft Open Government Plan — The Promise and Problems Reviewed

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Backdrop

On Friday the Canadian Government released its draft national action plan. Although not mentioned overtly in the document, these plans are mandated by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), in which member countries must draft National Action Plans every two years where they lay out tangible goals.

I’ve both written reviews about these plans before and offered suggestions about what should be in them. So this is not my first rodeo, nor is it for the people drafting them.

Purpose of this piece

In the very niche world of open government there are basically two types of people. Those who know about the OGP and Canada’s participation (hello 0.01%!), and those who don’t (hello overwhelming majority of people — excited you are reading this).

If you are a journalist, parliamentarian, hill staffer, academic, public servant, consultant, vendor, or everyday interested citizen already following this topic, here are thoughts and ideas to help shape your criticisms and/or focus your support and advice to government. If you are new to this world, this post can provide context about the work the Canadian Government is doing around transparency to help facilitate your entrance into this world. I’ll be succinct — as the plan is long, and your time is finite.

That said, if you want more details about thoughts, please email me — happy to share more.

The Good

First off, there is lots of good in the plan. The level of ambition is quite high, a number of notable past problems have been engaged, and the goals are tangible.

While there are worries about wording, there are nonetheless a ton of things that have been prioritized in the document that both myself and many people in the community have sought to be included in past plans. Please note, that “prioritized” is distinct from “this is the right approach/answer.” Among these are:

  • Opening up the Access to Information Act so we can update it for the 21st century. (Commitment 1)
  • Providing stronger guarantees that Government scientists — and the content they produce — is made available to the public, including access to reporters (Commitment 14)
  • Finding ways to bake transparency and openness more firmly into the culture and processes of the public service (Commitment 6 and Commitment 7)
  • Ensuring better access to budget and fiscal data (Commitment 9, Commitment 10 and Commitment 11)
  • Coordinating different levels of government around common data standards to enable Canadians to better compare information across jurisdictions (Commitment 16)
  • In addition, the publishing of Mandate Letters (something that was part of the Ontario Open by Default report I helped co-author) is a great step. If nothing else, it helps public servants understand how to better steer their work. And the establishment of Cabinet Committee on Open Government is worth watching.

Lots of people, including myself, will find things to nit pick about the above. And it is always nice to remember:

a) It is great to have a plan we can hold the government accountable to, it is better than the alternative of no plan

b) I don’t envy the people working on this plan. There is a great deal to do, and not a lot of time. We should find ways to be constructive, even when being critical

Three Big Ideas the Plan Gets Right

Encouragingly, there are three ideas that run across several commitments in the plan that feel thematically right.

Changing Norms and Rules

For many of the commitments, the plan seeks to not simply get tactical wins but find ways to bake changes into the fabric of how things get done. Unlike previous plans, one reads a real intent to shift culture and make changes that are permanent and sustainable.

Executing on this is exceedingly difficult. Changing culture is both hard to achieve and measure. And implementing reforms that are difficult or impossible to reverse is no cake walk either, but the document suggests the intent is there. I hope we can all find ways to support that.

User Centric

While I’m not a fan of all the metrics of success, there is a clear focus on making life easier for citizens and users. Many of the goals have an underlying interest of creating simplicity for users (e.g. a single place to find “x” or “y”). This matters. An effective government is one that meets the needs of its citizens. Figuring out how to make things accessible and desirable to use, particularly with information technology, has not been a strength of governments in the past. This emphasis is encouraging.

There is also intriguing talk of a “Client-First” service strategy… More on that below.

Data Standards

There is lots of focus on data standards. Data standards matter because it is hard to use data — particularly across government, or from different governments and organizations — if they have different standards. Imagine trying if every airline used a different standard to their tickets, so to book a trip involving more than one airline would be impossible as their computers wouldn’t be able to share information with one another, or you. That challenging scenario is what government looks like today. So finding standards can help make government more legible.

So seeing efforts like piloting the Open Contracting Data Standard in Commitment 9, getting provincial and local governments to harmonize data with the feds in Commitment 16 and “Support Openness and Transparency Initiatives around the World” in Commitment Commitment 18 are nice…

… and it also makes it glaring when it is not there. Commitment 17 — Implement the Extractives Sector Transparency Measures Act — is still silent about implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative standard and so feels inconsistent with the other commitments. More on this below.

The Big Concerns

While there are some good themes, there are also some concerning ones. Three in particular stand out:

Right Goal, Wrong Strategy

At the risk of alienating some colleagues, I’m worried about the number of goals that are about transparency for transparency’s sake. While I’m broadly in favour of such goals… they often risk leading nowhere.

I’d much rather see specific problems the government wants to focus its resources on open data or sharing scientific materials on. When no focus is defined and the goal is to just “make things transparent” what tends to get made transparent is what’s easy, not what’s important.

So several commitments, like numbers 3, 13, 14, 15, essentially say “we are going to put more data sets or more information on our portals.” I’m not opposed to this… but I’m not sure it will build support and alignment because doing that won’t be shaped to help people solve today’s problems.

A worse recommendation in this vein is “establish a national network of open data users within industry to collaborate on the development of standards and practices in support of data commercialization.” There is nothing that will hold these people together. People don’t come together to create open data standards, they come together to solve a problem. So don’t congregate open data users — they have nothing in common — this is like congregating “readers.” They may all read, but their expertise will span a wide variety of interests. Bring people together around a problem and then get focused on the data that will help them solve it.

To get really tangible, on Friday the Prime Minister had a round table with local housing experts in Vancouver. One outcome of that meeting might have been the Prime Minister stating, “this is a big priority, I’m going to task someone with finding all the data the federal government has that is relevant to this area so that all involved have the most up to date and relevant information we can provide to improve all our analyses.”

Now maybe the feds have no interesting data on this topic. Maybe they do. Maybe this is one of the PMOs top 6 priorities, maybe it isn’t. Regardless, the government should pick 3–8 policy areas they care deeply about and focus sharing data and information on those. Not to the exclusion of others, but to provide some focus. Both to public servants internally, so they can focus their efforts, and to the public. That way, experts, the public and anyone can, if they are able, grab the data to help contribute to the public discourse on the topic.

There is one place where the plan comes close to taking this approach, in Commitment 22: Engage Canadians to Improve Key Canada Revenue Agency Services. It talks a lot about public consultations to engage on charitable giving, tax data, and improving access to benefits. This section identifies some relatively specific problem the government wants to solve. If the government said it was going to disclose all data it could around these problems and work with stakeholders to help develop new research and analysis… then they would have nailed it.

Approaches like those suggested above might result in new and innovative policy solutions from both traditional and non-traditional sources. But equally important, such an approach to a “transparency” effort will have more weight from Ministers and the PMO behind it, rather than just the OGP plan. It might also show governments how transparency — while always a source of challenges— is also a tool that can help advance their agenda by promoting conversations and providing feedback. Above all it would create some models, initially well supported politically, that could then be scaled to other areas.

Funding

I’m not sure if I read this correctly but the funding, with $11.5M in additional funds over 5 years (or is that the total funding?) is feeling like not a ton to work with given all the commitments. I suspect many of the commitments have their own funding in various departments… but it makes it hard to assess how much support there is for everything in the plan.

Architecture

This is pretty nerdy… but there are several points in the plan where it talks about “a single online window” or “single, common search tool.” This is a real grey area. There are times when a single access point is truly transformative… it creates a user experience that is intuitive and easy. And then there are times when a single online window is a Yahoo! portal when what you really want is to just go to google and do your search.

The point to this work is the assumption that the main problem to access is that things can’t be found. So far, however, I’d say that’s an assumption, I’d prefer the government test that assumption before making it a plan. Why Because a LOT of resources can be expended creating “single online windows.”

I mean, if all these recommendations are just about creating common schemas that allow multiple data sources to be accessed by a single search tool then… good? (I mean please provide the schema and API as well so others can create their own search engines). But if this involves merging databases and doing lots of backend work… ugh, we are in for a heap of pain. And if we are in for a heap of pain… it better be because we are solving a real need, not an imaginary one.

The Bad

There are a few things that I think have many people nervous.

Access to Information Act Review

While there is lots of good in that section, there is also some troubling language. Such as:

  • A lot of people will be worried about the $5 billing fee for FOIA requests. If you are requesting a number of documents, this could represent a real barrier. I also think it creates the wrong incentives. Governments should be procuring systems and designing processes that make sharing documents frictionless — this implies that costs are okay and that there should be friction in performing this task.
  • The fact that Government institutions can determine a FOIA request is “frivolous” or “vexatious” so can thus be denied. Very worried about the language here.
  • I’m definitely worried about having mandatory legislative review of the Access to Information Act every five years. I’d rather get it right once every 15–30 years and have it locked in stone than give governments a regular opportunity to tinker with and dilute it.

Commitment 12: Improve Public Information on Canadian Corporations

Having a common place for looking up information about Canadian Corporations is good… However, there is nothing in this about making available the trustees or… more importantly… the beneficial owners. The Economist still has the best article about why this matters.

Commitment 14: Increase Openness of Federal Science Activities (Open Science)

Please don’t call it “open” science. Science, by definition, is open. If others can’t see the results or have enough information to replicate the experiment, then it isn’t science. Thus, there is no such thing as “open” vs. “closed” science. There is just science, and something else. Maybe it’s called alchemy or bullshit. I don’t know. But don’t succumb to the open science wording because we lose a much bigger battle when you do.

It’s a small thing. But it matters.

Commitment 15: Stimulate Innovation through Canada’s Open Data Exchange (ODX)

I already talked about about how I think bringing together “open data” users is a big mistake. Again, I’d focus on problems, and congregate people around those.

I also suspect that incubating 15 new data-driven companies by June 2018 is not a good idea. I’m not persuaded that there are open data businesses, just businesses that, by chance, use open data.

Commitment 17: Implement the Extractives Sector Transparency Measures Act

If the Extractives Sector Transparency Measures Act is that same as it was before then… this whole section is a gong show. Again, no EITI standard in this. Worse, the act doesn’t require extractive industries to publish payments to foreign governments in a common standard (so it will be a nightmare to do analysis across companies or industry wide). Nor does it require that companies submit their information to a central repository, so aggregating the data about the industry will be nigh high impossible (you’ll have to search across hundreds of websites).

So this recommendation: “Establish processes for reporting entities to publish their reports and create means for the public to access the reports” is fairly infuriating as it a terrible non-solution to a problem in the legislation.

Maybe the legislation has been fixed. But I don’t think so.

The Missing

Not in the plan is any reference to the use of open source software or shares that software across jurisdictions. I’ve heard rumours of some very interesting efforts of sharing software between Ontario and the federal government that potentially saves tax payers millions of dollars. In addition, by making the software code open, the government could employ security bug bounties to try to make it more secure. Lots of opportunity here.

The Intriguing

The one thing that really caught my eye, however, was this (I mentioned it earlier):

The government is developing a Service Strategy that will transform service design and delivery across the public service, putting clients at the centre.

Now that is SUPER interesting. A “Service Strategy”? Does this mean something like the Government Digital Service in the UK? Because that would require some real resources. Done right it wouldn’t just be about improving how people get services, but a rethink of how government organizes services and service data. Very exciting. Watch that space.

How the Media Should have Responded to Peter Thiel

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Much ink has been spilled about Peter Thiel’s funding of various cases against Gawker. However, the discussion of whether he should or shouldn’t mostly miss the point. Nor do the responses give me much confidence in the media, who seem focused on playing victim, rather than focused on the incredible power they have.

Let me lay some groundwork, before articulating what I wish someone in the media would do.

First, Peter Thiel had every right to do what he did.

Second, if Gawker is guilty it suggests they did violated an individuals right and should pay. (I suspect they will win on appeal). There is such a thing as harassment and bullying. Being a “journalist” doesn’t give you a pass to print or say anything. Figuring out the balance is a debate we should continue to have in society.

Third, having third parties pay for lawsuits doesn’t strike me as an issue. There are real benefits to this and, it should not affect the material facts of the case and thus the outcome.

Fourth, everybody seems to dump on Gawker. I don’t read them, but can see why many people don’t like them. That said, they are important. I remember them for being the only media company willing to print a story about how Rob Ford, the former Mayor of Toronto, was smoking crack. This was very much in the public interest and it appears the Canadian media was too cautious to print it. There is value in this type of journalism.

Finally, while Peter Thiel had the right to fund these lawsuits, I think he’ll come to regret it. We may look back on May 25th as the moment the broader media began to recognize the powerful people in Silicon Valley are the elites of a new Gilded Age who increasingly shape and influence our lives.

So rather than bemoan and write articles questioning the ethics of Peter Thiel’s actions here’s what I wish the media would say:

“We agree with Peter Thiel, there should be smart, thoughtful and professional reporting. In addition, it is also clear that Silicon Valley is one, if not the, new centre of economic power in the world. Given its prominence in shaping our world and the power its elites have, we, the undersigned editors, are each assigning one of our most veteran news reporters to a news beat which will critically examine the people and companies reshaping the lives of America and the world. We look forward to the debate and conversations this reporting sparks about the direction of our economy, and its impact on our lives and democracy.”

At least the Guardian made the commitment before all this happened.

Moving to Harvard

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Hi friends.

Just a brief note to say that I’ve been invited to come to the Kennedy School of Government to be a Research Fellow in the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program (STPP) at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  I’ve also been invited to be an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School and to teach on Technology, Policy and Government.

A number of other changes flow out of this news!

  1. I’ll be moving to be Boston in the New Year. Looking forward to reconnecting with old friends from a previous life there, and making new friends. There’s a wonderful community of people there that includes the likes of Nigel Jacobs, Debbie Chachra, Nick Sinai, Susan Crawford, Nick Grossman, Colin Maclay, Mitchell Weiss and many others that I hope I get to see more of.
  2. As I’ll be teaching, please send me any ideas, cases, readings you think I should include as course materials. I’m working on my initial course – an introduction to technology and government – which will focus on how technology can and is changing the ways we deliver services, organize government and make policy. Opportunities and challenges around user-centric design, collaboration vs. cooperation, influence and power, and open data/methodologies will all figure prominently. It is also about bringing what I tried to impart on fellows during the boot camps at Code for America and the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program.
  3. Finally, with my children (only somewhat, but nonetheless…) a little older and these new academic responsibilities, I hope to write more again. Or maybe, more precisely, I hope to write more here again. This blog enables me to organize and structure thoughts (and, on occasion, is a place to get things off my chest). With luck it, along with the classroom, will be that again. While I’ve been silent and busy, the last few years have been an incredible time of learning – particularly in the civic startup space, but also vis-a-vis technology and government more generally – and I look forward to sharing more of what I’ve gleaned.

Leaving Vancouver is hard; I’ve got wonderful roots, family and friends here, and a community and city I care about enormously. But I’m also excited about engaging with colleagues and students at the Kennedy School.

Looking forward to it all.

Government Procurement Failure: BC Ministry of Education Case Study

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Apologies for the lack of posts. I’ve been in business mode – both helping a number of organizations I’m proud of and working on my own business.

For those interested in a frightening tale of inept procurement, poor judgement and downright dirty tactics when it comes to software procurement and government, there is a wonderfully sad and disturbing case study emerging in British Columbia that shows the lengths a government is willing to go to shut out open source alternatives and ensure that large, expensive suppliers win the day.

The story revolves around a pickle that the province of British Columbia found itself in after a previous procurement disaster. The province had bought a student record management system – software that records elementary and secondary students’ grades and other records. Sadly, the system never worked well. For example, student records generally all get entered at the end of the term, so any system must be prepared to manage significant episodic spikes in usage. The original British Columbia Electronic Student Information System (BCeSIS) was not up to the task and frequently crashed and/or locked out teachers.

To make matters worse, after spending $86M over 6 years it was ultimately determined that BCeSIS was unrecoverably flawed and, as the vendor was ending support, a new system needed to be created.

Interestingly, one of the Province’s school districts – the District of Saanich – decided it would self-fund an open source project to create an alternative to BCeSIS. Called OpenStudent, the system would have an open source license, would be created using locally paid open source developers, could be implemented in a decentralized way but still meet the requirements of the province and… would cost a fraction of that proposed by large government vendors.  The Times Colonist has a simple article that covers the launch of OpenStudent here.

Rather than engage Saanich, the province decided to take another swing at hiring a multinational to engage in a IT mega-project. An RFP was issued to which only companies with $100M in sales could apply. Fujitsu was awarded a 12 year contract with costs of up to $9.4M a year.

And here are the kickers:

So in other words, the province sprung some surprise requirements on the District of Saanich that forced it to kill an open source solution that could have saved tax payers millions and employed British Columbians, all while exempting a multinational from meeting the same requirements. It would appear that the province was essentially engaged in a strategy to kill OpenStudent, likely because any success it enjoyed would have created an ongoing PR challenge for the province and threatened its ongoing contract with Fujitsu.

While I don’t believe that any BC government official personally profited from this outcome, it is hard – very hard indeed – not to feel like the procurement system is deeply suspect or, at worst, corrupted. I have no idea if it is possible, but I do hope that these documents can serve as the basis for legal action by the District of Saanich against the Province of British Columbia to recapture some of their lost expenses. The province has clearly used its purchasing power to alter the marketplace and destroy competitors; whether this is in violation of a law, I don’t know. I do know, however, that it is in violation of good governance, effective procurement and general ethics. As a result, all BC tax payers have suffered.

Addendum: It has been suggested to me that that one reason the BC government may be so keen to support Fujitsu and destroy competing suppliers is because it needs to generate a certain amount of business for the company in order for it to maintain headcount in the province. Had OpenStudent proved viable and cheaper (it was estimated to cost $7-10 per student versus $20 for Fujistu’s service), Fujistu might have threatened to scale back operations which might have hurt service levels for other contracts. Unclear to me if this is true or not. To be clear I don’t hold Fujistu responsible for anything here – they are just a company trying to sell their product and offer the best service they can. The disaster described above has nothing to do with them (they may or may not offer amazing products, I don’t know); rather, it has everything to do with the province using its power to eliminate competition and choice.

Great Hacks from the Open Data in Vancouver

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Last weekend I helped host an Open Data Day in Vancouver. With the generous support of Domain7, who gave us a place to host talks and hack, over 30 Vancouverites braved the sleet and snow to spend the day sharing ideas and working on projects.

We had opening comments from Andy Yan – whose may be the most prolific user of Open Data in Vancouver, possibly Canada. I encourage you to check out his work here. We were also incredibly lucky to have Jeni Tennison – the Technical Director of the Open Data Institute – onsite to talk to participants about the ODI.

After the opening talks, people simply shared what they hoped to work on and people just found projects to contribute to. Minimal organization was involved… and here a taste of the awesome projects that got worked on! Lots of ideas here for other communities.

1. Open Data Licenses Resource: JSON + search + compatibility check = Awesome.

Kent Mewhort, who recently moved to Vancouver from Ottawa (via the Congo) updated his ongoing CLIPol project by adding some of the recently published licenses. If you’ve not seen CLIPol it is… awesome. It allows you to easily understand and compare the restrictions and rights of many open government licenses.

CLIPol Data

Better still CLIPol also lets you to see how compatible a license is (see example here). Possibly the best tool of all is one that allows you to determine what license you can apply to your re-mixed work in a way that is compliant with the original licenses (check out that tool here – screenshot below).

CLIPol compatibility

CLIPol is just such a fantastic tool – can’t recommend it enough and encourage people to add more licenses to it.

2. Vancouver in MineCraft

I have previously written about how Minecraft is being used to help in public consultations and urban planning – I love how the game becomes a simple tool that enables anyone to shape the environment.

So I was crazy excited I heard that Ryan Smith (aka Goldfish) had used the City of Vancouver’s open elevation data to recreate much of the city in Minecraft.

Below is a photo of Ryan presenting at the end of the day. The projection behind him shows Stanley park, near Siwash Rock. The flat feature at the bottom is the sea wall. Indeed Ryan notes that the sea wall makes for one of the clearest features since it creates almost perfectly flat structure along the city’s coast.

Mincraft Data

3. Vancouver’s Capital Budget Visualized in Where Does my Money Go

It is hard to imagine a project going better. I’m going to do a separate blog post on it.

This is a project I’ve always wanted to do – create a bubble tree visualization with Where Does my Money Go. Fortunately two developers – Alexandre Dufournet and Luc Lussier – who had never hacked on open data jumped on the idea. With help from City of Vancouver’s staff who were on site, I found a PDF of the capital budget which we then scraped.

WDMYG Data

The site is not actually live, but for developers who are interested in seeing this work (hint, hint City of Vancouver staff) you can grab their code from github here.

4. Monitoring Vancouver’s Bike Accident Data – Year 3

Eric Promislow has been coming to Open Data Hack-a-thons ever since Luke Closs and I started organizing them in 2009. During the first Open Data Day in 2011 you can read in my wrap up post about a bike accident monitoring website Eric created that day which Eric would eventual name Bent Frame. Well, Bent Frame has been live ever since and getting bigger. (Eric blogs about it here)

Each open data day, Eric updates Bent Frame with new data from ICBC – the province’s insurance monopoly. With over 6 years of data now in Eric is starting to be able to analyze trends – particularly around the decline of bike accidents along many roads with bike lanes, and an increase in accidents where the bike lanes end.


Bike Data

I initially had conversations with ICBC to persuade them to share their data with Eric and they’ve been in touch with him ever since, passing along the data on a regular basis. It is a real example of how an active citizen can change an organization’s policies around sharing important data that can help inform public policy debates.

5. ProactiveDisclosure.ca – Making government information easier to search

Kevin McArthur is the kind of security guy most governments dreads having around but should actually love (example his recent post on e-voting).  He continued to hack on one of his side projects: proactivedisclosure.ca. The site is a sort of front end for open data sets, making it easier to do searches based on people or companies. Thus, want to find all the open data about a specific minister… proactive disclosure organizes it for you.

Proactive Data

Kevin and a small team of players uploaded more data into their site and allowed it to consume unstructured data. Very cool stuff.

6. Better Open Data Search

Herb Lainchbury – another fantastic open data advocate – worked on a project in which he tried to rethink what an open data search engine would look like. This is a topic that I think matters A LOT. There is simply not a lot of good ways to find data that you are interested in.

Herb’s awesome insight was invert the traditional way of thinking about data search. He created a search engine that didn’t search for the data set keywords or titles, but rather searched the meta data exclusively.

One interesting side outcome of this approach is that it made related data sets easier and, made locating identical data sets but from different years a snap. As Herb notes the meta data becomes a sort of “finger print” that makes it easy to see when it has been duplicated. (Quick aside rant: I loath it when governments releases 20 data files of the same data set – say crime data – with each file representing a different year and then claiming that it is 20 unique data sets in their catalogue. No. It is one data set. You just have 20 years of it. Sigh).

7. School Performance Chart

Two local video game programers – Louie Dinh and Raymond Huang – with no experience in open data looked around the BC Government Open Data catalogue and noticed the data on test scores. Since they attended school here in British Columbia they thought it might be interesting to chart the test scores to see how their own schools had preformed over time.

They were able to set up a site which graphed how a number of elementary schools had performed over time by looking at the standardized test scores.

Test SCore Data

This is just a great example of data as a gateway to learning. Here a simple hackathon project become a bridge for two citizens to dive into a area of public policy and learn more about it. No one is claiming that there chart is definitive, rather it is the start of a learning process around what matters and what doesn’t and what can be measured and what can’t in education.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the day – thank you for making it such an amazing success!

The dangerous mystique of the “open data” business

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I’m frequently asked by people about how they can start an “open data business.” Let me first say that I love that the question gets asked. I love that people are interested in Open Data. I love that people want to learn more, they want to play, they want to think of ways of creating a company. These are, in part, signs of how far the open data discussion has come – people see it as a resource that they would like to leverage.

It is, also, the wrong question.

This is not to say there are not businesses that use open data. Indeed, a vast number of companies use open data (anyone company using census data for even a tiny part of their business qualifies). Nor am I denying there aren’t businesses built primarily with open data – the Open Data 500 list demonstrates there are. Plus I get introduced almost daily to businesses that are: both Ajah and OpenCorporates come to mind (I have donated advice, but have no financial connection, with either).

The Trap

But from a founder (or, I suppose, investor) perspective there are dangers to thinking about “open data” as a unique business space.

The danger is in failing to understand there is virtually nothing that distinguishes an open data business from any other business. Any business needs to solve a real (or sadly, at times imagined) problem, it needs to find clients (e.g. people willing to pay for that solution), and it needs to execute on a number of other things at least competently (HR, marketing, management, cashflow, etc…).

The danger with putting the words “open data” before the word “business” is that it risks making people think Open Data businesses are somehow unique. They are not. If there is a gapping chasm between the question of “what can I do with software” and “how can I create a viable software company” there is an equally large gap between “what can I do with open data” and “how can I create a viable company using open data.” And the questions you need to ask yourself to figure out that latter question (many of which are nicely laid out in this book) are independent of whether it is a software, hardware, crafts or open data business.

Indeed open source software space gives us a nice analogy. I suspect few people decide to create an open source software company – they decide to create a company and the software license is a reflection of their strategic options. I think it is the same with open data. You don’t start a company saying “let’s use open data.” You start a company to solve a problem, of which using or publishing open data may be the only, or the most strategic, way of doing this.

The Opportunity 

Some readers may be surprised to see me write this. I am, and continue to be an advocate of open data. But open data is not some magic pixie dust that causes normal business logic to disappear. And it is not that I think people are saying that per se, it is just that I want them to understand that the 99% of the problems that needs to be solved in an “open data business” lie in the third word of that string, and that while the first two do confer some unique advantages and disadvantages, these are relatively trivial.

The real opportunity of open data lies not in the way it creates a new unique type of business, but that it offers a new set of cheap building blocks by which to try to solve problems. In other words it increases the diversity and, lowers the cost of, inputs.

Here again the world of software is instructive. The Economist’s recent survey on Tech Start Ups talks of a Cambrian Explosion because of the availability of “Cheap and ubiquitous building blocks for digital products…” many of which are (and many of which are not) open source. The cheap availability of these building blocks is allowing for a range of experimentation that was previously not possible, or at least, prohibitively expensive.

Open data – whether as an input for software products and services, for analysis (journalistic or corporate) or for scientific research – is cheap (in theory free) and increasingly plentiful. It has the possibility of thus being the equivalent of the cheap code that is powering a great deal of experimentation in the world of software. As an open data advocate the possibility of this increased experimentation has me excited.

Conclusion

So if you are thinking about starting an open data business – that is great! I’m excited to hear that and I am keen to help and be supportive. But focus on that third word – business. That’s the one that really matters.

From a data perspective you should be asking yourself – what real tangible pain does doing something with this data set help me solve that was previously only possible with a more expensive input (e.g. proprietary data) or not possible at all. The second is to think of the impact of using open data on your strategy. Where does it leave you more vulnerable (too copy cats or the whims of the data publisher) and where does it leave you stronger (if the data is commoditized then the axis of competition will lie in other parts of the business).

I hope this is a helpful nuance to the issue of open data businesses, and some helpful input for those looking at open data and thinking about to find business opportunities in it.