Category Archives: vancouver

How Open Data even makes Garbage collection sexier, easier and cheaper

So presently the City of Vancouver only shares its garbage schedule (which it divides into north and south) as a PDF file. This is a pity as it means that no one can build any apps around it. Imagine a website or Iphone app that mashed up google maps with a constantly up to date city garbage pick up schedule. With such a application one could:

  • Simply punch in your address and find out your garbage zone (no more guessing if you live on the border of a zone)
  • Get an email or SMS notification 15 minutes, 1 hour, 12 hours (whenever!) before pick up
  • Download the garbage schedule into your calendar using XML, HTML or ICAL

Garbage-App

Let’s face it, everyone could do with a garbage day reminder. I can imagine that there are 1000’s of Vancouverites who’d sign up for an email notification.

Maybe this seems all very simply, nice but unimportant. But this is more than just creating convenience. What are the implications for such an application?

For citizens:

  • Let’s face it, for many of us, it would be a convenient and nice to get a reminder of when the garbage is going to be picked up
  • It would improve citizen’s appreciation for city services
  • It might also increase the likelihood citizen will recycle as the notification would enable them to better plan and prepare for garbage pick up

For the city & taxpayers

  • Every day 100s of Vancouverites forget to put out there garbage out for pick up. If garbage isn’t picked up, it piles up. This creates several new risks and costs to the city including: increasing likelihood of rodents and health hazards and an increased risk that some residents will dispose of their garbage inappropriately/illegally
  • When garbage is not put out an expensive city asset (the garbage truck, fuel, garbage men) all pass by unused. This means that taxpayers money is not used as efficiently as it could.
  • Moreover,  when garbage isn’t put out there will be twice as much at the house the next week. Multiply that by 100’s of houses and the very quickly the city must deploy extra garbage trucks to deal with this unusually large volume of garbage – costing city taxpayers.

What would be the total value/savings of such an application? Hard to gauge. But add up, time saved by citizens better able to plan around garbage pick up, a small reduction in illegal garbage disposal, a small increase in recycling, slight increase in garbage pick up efficiency and I’m sure the total value would be in the low millions, and the direct savings for the city in the low $100,000 per year. That is not insignificant – especially if all the city had to do was free the data and allow an intrepid hacker to code up the website.

Of course it doesn’t end there. A reliable source tells me the city collects far more data about garbage collection. For example when the driver can’t pick up the garbage can, they make an entry on their device as to why (e.g., it is under a tree). This entry is sent via a wireless connection back to a City database, and includes the highly precise coordinates of the truck at that moment. Then when a resident calls in to find out why the crew did not pick up the garbage can from their residence, the operator can bring up the address on a map and pinpoint the problem.

Such data could also be on the website in an option with something like “Why didn’t my garbage get picked up?” By sharing this data the city could reduce its call volume (and thus costs). With open data, the possibilities, savings and convenience is endless.

ChangeCamp Vancouver

This weekend ChangeCamp comes to Vancouver. If you are interested definitely sign up early.

I’ll be there of course. But better still Shari Wallace (Director of IT for the City of Vancouver) and I will be running a session together from 3-4 pm to brainstorm what data the City of Vancouver should prioritize on opening up. It’s an opportunity for coders to suggest what might help them build the local apps they’ve always wanted to build.

That, and numerous other sessions will try to help us dive deeper into The Long Tail of Public Policy…

So what is ChangeCamp and where will it be?

Saturday June 20th 2009 |  8:30 am – 5:30 pm

555 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC (BCIT Downtown Campus)

$20 in advance | $25 at the door

Vancouver ChangeCamp is a participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, political players, change-makers and government employees to answer these questions:

  • How can we help government become more open and responsive?
  • How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

The event is a partly structured unconference. One track of the conference will introduce the kinds of projects that harness new ideas and tools for social change. Other tracks at the conference will be participant-driven, with the agenda created collaboratively at the start of the event, allowing participants to share their experiences and expertise.

Hope to see you there!

Open Cities: Popularity lessons for municipal politicians

Last Thursday I posted the Vancouver City motion that is being introduced today.

Prior to the posting the motion several of my friends wondered if the subject of open data, open cities and open source were niche issues, ones that wouldn’t attract the attention or care of the media, not to mention citizens. I’m not sure that this is, as of yet, a mainstream issue, but there is clear, vocal, engaged and growing constituency – that is surprisingly broad – supporting it.

For politicians (who are often looking for media attention), open-advocates (who are looking for ways to get politicians attention) and others (who usually care about and want access to, some of the data the city collects) there are real wins to be had by putting forward a motion such as this.

To begin with, let’s look at the media and broader attention this motion has garnered to date:

First, a search of twitter for the terms Vancouver and Open shows hundreds upon hundreds of tweet from around the world celebrating the proposal. Over the weekends, I tried to track down the various tweets relating to the motion and they number at least 500, and possibly even exceed 1000. What is most interesting is that some tweets included people saying – “that they wished they lived in Vancouver.”

As an aside, have no doubt, City Hall sees this initiative in part as an effort to attract and retain talent. Paul Graham, who created a multimillion dollar software company and is now a venture capitalist summed it up best “Great [programmers] also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it’s better, but because it gives them more control… This is part of what makes them good: when something’s broken, they need to fix it. You want them to feel this way about the software they’re writing for you.” Vancouver is not broken – but it could always be improved, and  twitter confirms a suspicion I have: that programmers and creative workers in all industries are attracted to places that are open because it allows them to participate in improving where they live. Having a city that is attractive to great software programmers is a strategic imperative for Vancouver. Where there are great software programmers there will be big software companies and start ups.

Blogs, of course, have also started to get active. As sampling includes locals in the tech sector, such as David Asher of Mozilla, Duane Nickull of Adobe, as well as others interested in geographic data. Academics/public thinkers also took note on their blogs.

Then, the online tech magazines began to write about it too. ReadWriteWeb wrote this piece, ZDnet had this piece and my original blog post went to orange on Slashdot (a popular tech news aggregator).

Of course, traditional media was in the mix too. The Straight’s tech blog was onto the story very early with this piece, a national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, had this piece by Frances Bula (which has an unfortunate sensationalist title which has nothing to do with the content) and finally, today, the Vancouver Sun published this piece.

Still more interesting will be to see the number of supportive letters/emails and the diversity of their sources. I’ve already heard supportive letters coming from local technology companies, large international tech companies, local gardening groups and a real estate consulting firm. Each of these diverse actors sees ways to use city data to help lower the costs of their business, conduct better analysis or facilitate their charitable work.

In short, issues surrounding the open city – open data, open source software and open standards – are less and less restricted to the domain of a few technology enthusiasts. There is a growing and increasingly vocal constituency in support.

Update May 20th, 2009 more media links:

The Libertarian Western Standard wrote this positive piece (apparently this is the Vancouver City only good initiative).

I did a CBC radio interview on the afternoon of May 19th during the show On the Coast with Stephen Quinn. The CBC also published this piece on its news site.

Vancouver enters the age of the open city

A few hours ago, Vancouver’s city government posted the agenda to a council meeting next week in which this motion will be read:

MOTION ON NOTICE

Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source
MOVER: Councillor Andrea Reimer
SECONDER: Councillor

WHEREAS the City of Vancouver is committed to bringing the community into City Hall by engaging citizens, and soliciting their ideas, input and creative energy;

WHEREAS municipalities across Canada have an opportunity to dramatically lower their costs by collectively sharing and supporting software they use and create;

WHEREAS the total value of public data is maximized when provided for free or where necessary only a minimal cost of distribution;

WHEREAS when data is shared freely, citizens are enabled to use and re-purpose it to help create a more economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable city;

WHEREAS Vancouver needs to look for opportunities for creating economic activity and partnership with the creative tech sector;

WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to city information by citizens and businesses and improved coordination and efficiencies across municipal boundaries and with federal and provincial partners;

WHEREAS the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) is a not-for-profit society created as a partnership between local government, provincial government and major utility companies in British Columbia to share and integrate spatial data to which 94% of BC local governments are members but Vancouver is not;

WHEREAS digital innovation can enhance citizen communications, support the brand of the city as creative and innovative, improve service delivery, support citizens to self-organize and solve their own problems, and create a stronger sense of civic engagement, community, and pride;

WHEREAS the City of Vancouver has incredible resources of data and information, and has recently been awarded the Best City Archive of the World.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:

  • Open and Accessible Data – the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;
  • Open Standards – the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
  • Open Source Software – the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT in pursuit of open data the City of Vancouver will:

  • Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data;
  • Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats;
  • Develop appropriate agreements to share its data with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) and encourage the ICIS to in turn share its data with the public at large
  • Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public;
  • Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations;
  • License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED THAT the City Manager be tasked with developing an action plan for implementation of the above.

A number of us having been working hard getting this motion into place. While several cities, like Portland, Washington DC, and Toronto, have pursued some of the ideas outlined in this motion, none have codified or been as comprehensive and explicit in their intention.

I certainly see this motion as the cornerstone to transforming Vancouver into a open city, or as my friend Surman puts it, a city that thinks like the web.

At a high level, the goal behind this motion is to enable citizens to create, grow and control the virtual manifestation of their city so that they can in turn better influence the real physical city.

In practice, I believe this motion will foster several outcomes, including:

1. New services and applications: That as data is opened up, shared and has  APIs published for it, our citizen coders will create web based applications that will make their lives – and the lives of other citizens – easier, more efficient, and more pleasant.

2. Tapping into the long tail of public policy analysis: As more and more Vancouverites look over the city’s data, maps and other pieces of information citizens will notice inefficiencies, problems and other issues that could save money, improve services and generally make for a stronger better city.

3. Create new businesses and attract talent: As the city shares more data and uses more open source software new businesses that create services out of this data and that support this software will spring up. More generally, I think this motion, over time could attract talent to Vancouver. Paul Graham once said that great programmers want great tools and interesting challenges. We are giving them both. The challenge of improving the community in which they live and the tools and data to help make it better.

For those interested in appearing before City Council to support this motion, details can be found here. The council meeting is this Tuesday, May 19th at 2pm, PST. You can also watch the proceedings live.

For those interested in writing a letter in support of the motion, send your letter here.

I’m voting no to BC-STV

For those outside of British Columbia we have a referendum on May 12th to determine if the province should shift from its current voting system, called First Past the Post (FPTP), to Single Transferable Vote (BC-STV).

Watching the back and forth over the referendum on BC-STV has, I sense, left most citizens of British Columbia exasperated and confused. On both sides, people pronounce that a change will either bring political nirvana to the province, or utter disaster. It’s all a little over dramatic.

The truth is, the current system is not a disaster nor is the proposed change a nirvana. Both have strengths and weaknesses – this is because fundamentally, they are seeking to accomplish different things.

At present, our system favours geographic representation. In BC we don’t have a single election, we have 85 individual elections – one in each riding. Consequently, a party that wins 34% in each individual race could win every seat. This means that ideologically – a single perspective get represented. It is rare, but it is possible.

BC-STV is an attempt to create electoral outcomes that better reflect not how individual ridings voted, but how people voted across the province. In short, it seeks to enhance ideological representation by enabling voters who are distributed across ridings to elect representatives whose ideas resonate with them.

The challenge is, one cannot have it both ways. You cannot strengthen province wide ideological representation without weakening local representation. And herein lies the central trade off between the two systems: Local accountability versus great ideological representation at the provincial level.

Both are noble objectives. They just happen to be incompatible, one comes at the expense of the other. For me, this reduces any assessment of BC-STV to this question: do the benefits of improved ideological representation outweigh the costs of reduced local accountability? I think the answer is no.

In part, this is because I happen to place a high value on local representation. Others who think geography is less important than ideology will likely disagree (these are legitimate, and likely irreconcilable perspectives).

However, I’m also concerned about BC-STV because to achieve better ideological representation, I believe it makes some significant and problematic trade-offs (listed below). That, and there are the infamous unknown unknowns involved in adopting a new system.

Incomprehensible

The biggest problem with BC-STV is that, to achieve a balance between ideological and local representation, it presents votes with a system that is almost impossible to understand. I’m a policy wonk and a political junkie, as such I’m genuinely interested in these things and like to think I know a little about them. I’ve just gone through the literature umpteenth times and while I understand how it works, it is grossly complicated. I have not ideas of what its implications will be nor am I sure that the manner and order by which votes get weighted is fair.

One thing you want from an electoral system is that it be easily understood. This is important so that people know exactly who they are voting for and what their vote means. BC-STV is so complicated that the Vote No campaign websites directs readers to the explanatory video developed by the Citizens Assembly (their opponents). Even its advocates can’t explain it simply.

Opaque

In order to create greater ideological representation BC-STV has to weaken local representation. It does this by making ridings (districts for Americans) larger. Consequently, in BC-STV we would end up with mega ridings, the largest being 372,000 sq km. But the ratio of elected officials to votes would however, remain the same meaning that each “riding” would be served by somewhere between 2 and 7 MPs. This has several problematic implications.

First, who’s accountable? When there is a problem in your riding who do you complain to? Who is your elected official? Do you complain to all seven? The one you voted for? The member who is part of the government? All of them? A 7 member riding dilutes the connection between the voter and their representatives.

Second, it can create problematic feedback loops. If voters who vote for the Green Party only ever contact the Green Party representative and Liberal Party voters only contact the Liberal Party member in their riding we run the risk of creating a selection bias driven echo chambers. Party’s actually become more ideological and partisan.

Finally, individual MPs voices are diminished. In our current system, MPs influence derives from the fact that they have a machine on the ground and that they know their riding better than anyone. Large ridings make this harder to sustain. More importantly, when there are multiple candidates from a single party in the riding, the party can choose to deploy more resources towards candidates that will not challenge the party or its leader. The outcome is that BC-STV actually weakens the independence of elected officials.

Small Parties, Big Voices

I’m not opposed to coalition governments per se but, unlike many BC-STV supporters, I do not think they are inherently good either. BC-STV supporters are correct in asserting that smaller parties will have a greater voice. What often isn’t explained is that that voice won’t be proportional to the number of seats they elect – it can end up being disproportionately influential. Imagine a small party that garnered 8% of the provincial vote holds the balance of power in the legislature. It can effectively make any demand it wants to prop up the government. As a result, a platform supported by just 8% of voters suddenly becomes dominant. I know many of my environmentalist friends are excited by the prospect of the Green Party holding that balance of power… but there is no guarantee that this would be the outcome. What if the nascent Conservative Party were to be that force? They would almost certainly force the Liberals – arguable the most progressive party on the environment and First Nations issues – to move backwards on issues like the Carbon Tax and the New Relationship.

For these and other reasons, I’m ultimately opposed to BC-STV. Is FPTP perfect? Hardly, but BC-STV is still less so.

I now there are a lot of readers out there who are supporters so feel free to vent below in the comments section. I’ll try to respond to counter arguments as best I can.

For those who want to know more and educate themselves before tomorrow’s vote, here is a link to the BC-STV site and to the No STV site.

who is going to cover city hall? we will…

More follow up on the future of democracy and the media. In the comments one reader – Karen – commented:

So….which of you brilliant Gen Y bloggers is going to sit at local park board meetings to find out how they are spending your tax money? Just wondering.

I don’t care whether newspapers live or die. It’s just a medium. (Yes, the singular of “media.”) It may well be it’s an outdated medium. It’s certainly a wasteful, expensive and environmentally harmful medium.

However, when newspapers die (so what? good riddance) the services that newspapers have traditionally supplied – such as serving as watchdogs for even the smallest municipalities, taxing bodies and so on – remain necessary to a functioning democracy. What happens when governments make decisions with no one watching?

And it’s tedious, people. Maybe some of you are experienced with this. Sitting through three-hour meeting of county commissioners, poring through stacks of facts and figures, following up to ask questions, finding alternate points of view – this is time consuming and not a whole lot of fun. When there are no reporters at these meetings, who will do this? Do you think it is no longer necessary? Will citizen journalists spend hours – unpaid – going line by line over the police board’s budget?

Well, according to Frances Bula, one of Vancouver’s finest journalist’s focused on local politics (she used to work at the Vancouver Sun, and now freelances for several publications, including the Globe and Mail) it is us who are covering this “small” stories. In a recent post entitled “When did civic politics get so interesting?” she states:

It’s hard to remember, but in those days, no one cared about city hall. It used to be me and a couple of Chinese-language-media reporters who would hang out in the pews at city council chambers on Tuesdays. When I went to the committee meetings on Thursday, I was usually the only reporter there. People coming to speak to council issues sometimes thought I was the recording secretary. And it was like that for quite a long time. Years and years, really, although Allen Garr started writing for the Courier after a while so then there was, thankfully, one more person.

This week in Vancouver, when city hall was stuffed like a turkey with news — the budget, cracking down on crummy SROs, whether to allow mixed martial arts events, police budgets being wrecked by gang investigations, Councillor Suzanne Anton grilling the mayor like he was a naughty boy about campaign financing — there were as many reporters and outlets covering the events as at any session of the provincial legislature…

…So, even though I now can’t get a seat at the media table these days if I come late to council, and it feels sometimes like everyone is falling over each other to get the latest little tidbit from the city, it’s okay — and even kind of fun — that it’s crowded.

But then this is what Shirly predicted would happen once the we understood the size of the cognitive surplus that is out there…

Why Insite Matters

insiteFor those who have not seen it there is a stunning piece on the 5th Estate about Insite – the Supervised Injection Site in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver – where TV cameras are allowed inside the facility for the first time.

I wish I could embed the video in this blog post and walk you through it, but sadly the CBC doesn’t allow me to do this. To view the piece you have to go to the 5th Estate’s website.

The piece is long, so below I recommend some specifics point that touched me. You can scroll directly to them:

02:20 – A basic video walk through of Insite that explains, plainly how it works.

04:15 –  Interview with Darwin Fisher – the Insite intake manager – who shares with us the logic of Insite. In short, the facility connects some of the most marginalized citizens with society, giving us an opportunity to provide them with services, develop relationships, and keep the door open to the possibility of getting into detox programs.

09:58 – An interview with a user – David Brodrick – who talks about why he uses Insite and his desire to respect his community. Insite’s critics sometimes want us to forget these people are humans – living in our own backyard – this clip makes that impossible to do.

25:09 – A discussion about how the Federal Government is trying to shut Insite down and how four successive Vancouver Mayors – from across the political spectrum – are supportive, along with the community, local business and the BC Government (who funds it).

31:00 – It is hard not to be blunt here. But for those who don’t support Insite, are you prepared to tell this person, their friends, and their family, that you believe their addiction comes from a moral failing and that they should either go into detox right now, or die on the streets of Vancouver? Without Insite, this is essentially the choice we are putting before people like David. Insite is not the solution, but it is a step in the process that helps us address the problem.

My only critique of the piece is that it opens by stating Insite is experimental and controversial. This language that perpetuates a false story. Insite is no longer experimental. It is a piece of the healthcare system in Vancouver that is proven – in peer reviewed medical journals – to be an effective way to save lives. Moreover, it is proven, by a federal government report, to save taxpayers’ money. Finally, in Vancouver, Insite is not controversial. It enjoys overwhelming support, among business leaders, community groups, within conservative and liberal political parties and among the public at large. Insite – and harm reduction strategies – are about as controversial in the lower mainland as public transit. The debate isn’t about whether it should exist, but how we can do more of it.

If you are intersted in supporting Insite – consider visiting this website.

Shootings in Vancouver – how our definition of success leads us to failure

After a rash of shootings in Vancouver last week (which continues) I was completely astounded to read this quote by the RCMP in the Globe and Mai:

Violence between competing Mexican cartels is squeezing the flow of drugs from source countries such as Mexico and Colombia through cities such as Los Angeles, one of the major sources for Vancouver-based groups that buy and sell illegal drugs, says Pat Fogarty, RCMP superintendent with the combined forces special enforcement unit. Gangs in the Lower Mainland are now fighting over the dwindling supply.

“The distribution lines have been disrupted,” Supt. Fogarty said yesterday in an interview. “It’s like in any marketplace – the demand stays high, but there’s not as many distributors out there because the little guys get knocked off.”

“The bigger ones survive, the other ones don’t. And these guys don’t resolve things through a court process. It’s ‘I want my piece of the pie’ – well, there’s none left for you.”

Essentially, the RCMP is admitting that the more successful it becomes – the more capable it gets at limiting the flow of drugs – the more violence we can expect from drug dealers on our streets.

Why? Because when demand remains constant and fewer drugs are available, their value will increase making it more tempting to use violence to hold on to, or increase, your share of the marketplace. In essence, the RCMP is admitting that attacking the supply side of the drug trade is an ineffective approach. (The irony of course, is that the reduction has nothing to do with RCMP strategy or tactics but, as the Center for Strategic International Studies notes, everything to do with the geopolitics of the drug trade).

So, the RCMP has inadvertently admitted that the key to managing the War on Drugs is not to reduce supply, but to reduce demand.

This is precisely what makes projects like the NAOMI trial and the Insite injection site so important – they help to both reduce demand for drugs and, in the case of NAOMI, eliminate the demand from illegal sources altogether. This is what makes the RCMP’s opposition to Insite and NAOMI even more puzzling. If – by their own admission – reducing demand is the only way to effectively reduce the crime associated with the drug trade, why are they trying to shut down our most effective tools?

Some of my favourite Vancouverites on Net Neutrality

A couple of Vancouverites can be seen below talking about the danger currently facing the future of the internet here in Canada as our government allows the telco’s to determine who will be the winners and losers of the digital age.

If you haven’t already I’d strongly encourage you to head over to the “SaveourNet.ca” facebook group and become a member.

Upcoming talks

Starting next week things are going to get busy for a few days. I’ve a number of upcoming talks and would be interested in feedback, stories, ideas for any and/or all of them.

Future of the Public Service: I will be doing a series of lectures/seminars on the future of the public service for Health Canada in Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton and possibly Montreal or Toronto in mid-march. I’ve got a number of ideas and themes I intend to talk on – technology, generational change, and open source – but am of course always looking for others.

If you have a story or an article suggestion please do pass them along. Personal stories of frustration and angst, or conversely success and empowerment, in the public service are always deeply appreciated.

US NOW panel:  I’ll be part of a panel discussion at a screening of Us Now, a documentary that tells the stories of online networks that are challenging the existing notion of hierarchy.

When: FEB 20th 2009 — 7pm
Where: SFU Harbour Centre — Room 1900
You can register (for free!) here.

Northern Voice: Finally, I’ll be doing a presentation with Rebecca Bollwitt on Dealing with angry comments, Trolls, Spammers, and Sock Puppets at this year’s Northern Voice.

Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging and social media conference held annually in Vancouver.

When: February 20th and 21st
Where: Forestry Sciences Centre, 2424 Main Mall, UBC main campus
You can register for Northern Voice here.

Thoughts, ideas, articles and other inspirations on any or all of these are always welcome!