Neo-Progressive Alert: The NDP as risk-averse conservatives

As some of my readers know, I’m always interested in articles that highlight how all the political parties in Canada (and the US?) have become conservative. Not necessarily in the sense that they want to roll back government, but in the sense that they cannot not imagine some new future.

I think the classic example of that in Canada is the NDP which seems stuck in trying to remake the country as it was in the 1950s. This opinion piece in the Star by McMaster Assistant Professor David Goutor touches on the theme of a conservative NDP party, to scared to take a stand.

At the most basic level, today’s NDP is a truly remarkable phenomenon: it is a fourth-place party, usually stuck in the teens in the polls, and purporting to represent the most marginalized groups in society – yet it has become stubbornly risk-averse, acting as if it has too much to lose to speak out strongly on many key issues facing the country.

When it comes to strategy, the NDP was certainly bold in lunging for power through the coalition. It also has a notable amount of talent in its parliamentary caucus, with even right-wing commentators praising NDP MPs for being knowledgeable and performing effectively in parliamentary committees.

But when it comes to the party’s main policies, a mind-numbing blandness has set in. There are few instances where the NDP has boldly taken a controversial position on a key issue.

If you have visited the NDP’s website frequently in the last couple of years, you were much more likely to read about credit card rates, bank fees, and insurance premiums than central economic, social, or foreign-policy questions.

A particularly deep part of the NDP’s rut is that avoiding controversy has become to be seen as the “pragmatic” approach. Standing out on major issues, meanwhile, is viewed as the “radical” approach that will keep the NDP on the fringes. But if pragmatism means anything, it is paying attention to results. The results of the recent “pragmatic” approach are in, and they are dispiriting.

I suspect (but could be wrong) that Goutor would disagree with my and Taylor’s neo-progressive thesis and that our understanding of why we believe the NDP are conservative are markedly different. My assumption(potentially deeply flawed) is that I’m sure Goutor wishes the NDP was more aggressive in re-invoking the 1950’s (a more planned economy, closed off from the world with labour forming a bigger part of the pie) But the fact is, for many Canadians going back isn’t desirable, moreover the party doesn’t know what going forward means and so is flailing around in the present, going after small wins without a grand vision appears to be the order of the day.

This isn’t to say the other parties are significantly better off, the challenge is just more noticeable with the NDP.

Postscript – I notice the NDP never got around to debating the motion about the name change. My sense is that this means it got killed… in the way you’d expect from a democratic party, by procedural means.

Eat the Young!

There was a fair amount of chatter among my friends last week as a result of Lawrence Martin’s column If there’s an inspiration deficit in our politics, blame it on the young. My friend Alison Loat wrote an excellent, albeit polite, response, pointing out that blame could be spread across sectors and generations. She’s right. There is lots of blame to go around. And I don’t think Martin should get off so lightly. Here’s why:

The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and entitlements. Not much turns them on except the Idol shows, movies with smut humour and the latest hand-held instruments. Their disillusionment with the political class is understood. Their complacency isn’t. It will soon be their country. You’d think they’d want to take the reins.

The problem with Martin’s piece is that he’s looking in the wrong place. He’s not looking at what young people are doing. He’s looking at what he thinks they should be doing… or more specifically, what he would have done when he was 25. To say an entire generation has given up because they don’t vote or participate in party politics is farcical.

Yes, young people reject the status quo, but it is deeper than that. They eschew the tools that Martin wants them to use – not just party politics but traditional media as well. They reject the whole system. But this isn’t out of juvenile laziness, but for the very opposite reason. In a world filled with choice, one that fragments our attention, they seek to focus their energy where they will be most effective and efficient – at the moment, that frequently means they are uninterested in the slow and byzantine machinations of politics (why engage when every party, even the NDP, are conservative?), the snobbishness of traditional media (when’s the last time a columnist on the Globe actually responded to a reader’s comment on the website?) or a hierarchical and risk-averse public service (held hostage by the country’s auditor general).

Indeed, Martin’s example around voting is perfect starting point. Here is a system that has not changed over 60 years. By and large one must still vote at the local church, community centre, or school, places that may or may not be near public transit and are not frequently visited by young people. In a world where shareholder proxy votes are regularly done over the web (not to mention credit card transactions), how are young people supposed to have confidence in a system that still cannot manage electronic voting? Complaining that an Elections Canada campaign targeting young people didn’t work is akin to wondering why a marketing campaign on Facebook didn’t generate a bigger youth audience for a cable TV Matlock marathon. Why didn’t young people watch TV any more? Can’t they see that Matlock is a classic?

Nor can they find much comfort in the media. If newspapers are the gathering places for political discussion, how inspiring might they be to young people? Since Martin writes for the Globe and Mail, let’s start there. Its opinion page’s most frequent columnists include Rick Salutin (68), Rex Murphy (62), Lawrence Martin (61), Roy McGregor (61), Jeffrey Simpson (60), Margaret Wente (59), Christie Blarchford (58), John Ibbitson (54) and the one young voice, Jim Stanford (43?). It’s not just political parties that have boring old guys (or BOGs, to use Martin’s term). I think it is safe to say that the hegemony of the boomers isn’t limited to the polling station. (No wonder so many of us prefer blogs – we at least get to hear what our peers think.) I wish the Globe would take a risk and hire some young and smart columnist for their opinion page – someone like Andrew Potter. The New York Times did; they replaced the relatively young William Kristol (56)with 29 year-old Ross Douthat. It would appear there’s an inspiration deficit in our newspaper too…

But above all, just because someone doesn’t vote, prefers blogs to the Globe, or doesn’t find Ottawa engaging doesn’t mean they are either inactive or a bad citizen.

Take my friends over at Mozilla (some who vote, some who don’t – but all of whom are young): they are part of a worldwide movement that broke Microsoft’s monopoly over control of the web (probably the single most important act to preserve freedom of speech and expression in the world as well as democratizing innovation online) and now, through a combination of technology (Firefox) and advocacy (the Mozilla Foundation) are continuing to innovate and find ways to preserve the freedom of the internet. This is something no political party or government initially cared to do or was willing to do something about. Should they have devoted their time and energy to get involved in politics? Should they have instead lobbied the government to regulate Microsoft (for all the good that ended up doing)?

Or take ForestEthics – another organizations started and staffed by young people. Canadians may consistently rank the environment as one of Canada’s top priorities and yet inaction consistently wins out. So ForestEthics bypasses government altogether and combines the power protesters with that of market forces to improve logging practices and save forests. It identifies corporations — such as Victoria’s Secret, with its vast catalogue distribution — whose consumption shapes the paper industry. It then offers these corporations a choice: cooperate and reform their practices or face painful protests and boycotts. For those that cooperate, ForestEthics works with the multinational’s procurement department to help it adopt more sustainable practices. This has given ForestEthics direct influence over the forestry industry practices, since logging companies pay attention to their largest customers. Would the staff of ForestEthics be more effective running for office or working for Environment Canada?

The key is, young people (and many Canadians in general) are engaged and more exciting still, are innovating in new and transformative ways. It just happens that most of it isn’t seen by today’s BOGs. Moreover, even when it is happening right in front of us it is hard to spot, such as within the Globe (where it feels like Mathew Ingram is almost singlehandedly fighting to save the newspaper), within political parties (where a community here in Vancouver has been excited and rewarded by our work with Vision Vancouver around Open Data) or within the public service (where a small and and amazing team within Treasury Board has been creating tools like GCPEDIA in an effort to pull the government into the 21st century).

But because the efforts are often invisible, herein lies the real dangers: not to young people — they are going to be just fine — but for the institutions Lawrence Martin and Alison Loat worry about. To many of my friends, today’s newspapers, political parties and public service look a lot more like General Motors than they do Google, Facebook, or better still, Mozilla, ForestEthics, or Teach For America. As they look at the institutions Martin assumes they should engage, they’re still evaluating: should we bail them out or should we just let them go bankrupt and start from scratch?

And that’s why Martin is looking in the wrong place. His misidentifies where the real innovation gap lies. The fact is that these institutions simply aren’t places where new thinking or experimentation can easily take place. They may have been at one point – perhaps when Martin was young, I don’t know – but they aren’t today. So those young people he believes are wallowing in their vanities and entitlements… they aren’t apathetic, they’ve simply opted to deploy their social capital elsewhere, places Martin chooses not look, or don’t know where to look.

So is there an innovation gap? Absolutely. Just not as Martin describes it. There is a gap between where it is actually taking place, and where he thinks it should be taking place. But let’s be clear, there’s plenty of innovation taking place, if you know where to look. Will it manifest itself in some political revolution? I don’t know. But more importantly, will it change Canada, or the world? Definitely. It already has.

As an aside, one friend suggested that Lawrence Martin and I should debate: “Be it resolved there is an inspiration deficit in our politics and young people are to blame.” If Martin is up for it, I’d accept the debate whenever and where ever he wishes. Perhaps we could rope Alison in to moderate.

eaves.ca Around the Web

In the past couple of weeks I’ve done a few interviews and been cited in a few articles. Don’t want to dwell on these so thought I’d just bundle them into one quick post.

First up, eaves.ca held its position as the 5th highest ranked political blog in Canada. While the methodology of the ranking system is probably not perfect and I doubt that I generate the 5th most web traffic in the country it is still nice to be ranked so well.

On August 3rd Michael Geist published ‘Crowdsourcing’ puts many extra hands to work in his regular column. In it he cites my work in Vancouver around open data and the upcoming release of a garbage reminder service I blogged about as examples (more on the Garbage reminder service soon).

Speaking of open data, on August 2nd Cloud of Data podcaster Paul Miller released an interview with me on Vancouver’s Open Motion and the future of open data in government. (Also available here.)

More locally, Jeffrey Simpson ran a piece on August 6th entitled Open Web advocates say social media needs reform in the Georgia Straight where Zak Greant, Mark Surman and I comment on privacy and data ownership in social networks.

Finally, Steve Anderson, the man running the saveournet.ca campaign to preserve internet neutrality in Canada penned these important pieces on the current CRTC hearings and process around the future of the internet regulation in Canada.

Also, a number of my posts have been ending up in themarknews.com a website I recommend checking out…

Two More Examples of Why Your Canadian Citizenship Means Nothing

A reader from the other week’s post on Why Your Canadian Citizenship Means Nothing linked to this story in the Toronto Star.

Apparently another Canadian, Suaad Mohamud Haj, who is of Somali descent has been trapped in a foreign land. However, this time around it was Canadian officials who stripped her of her passport effectively stranding her in Kenya and leaving her at risk of being deported to Somalia (not, as you can imagine, the safest country in the world).

Is she a Canadian citizen? I don’t know. However, she does have numerous other documents attesting to her citizenship as well as an ex-husband, a 12-year old son in Toronto, and former Federal Minister willing to state that she is indeed Canadian. Still more striking, she has offered to be fingerprinted so that her prints can be matched against those she provided to the government back in 1999 when she first immigrated to Canada.

None of these facts however have prompted the Canadian government to act either swiftly or compassionately. After preventing Suaad from retuning home on May 17th, Ottawa released a statement in the last week of June stating: “Following an extensive investigation, officials at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi have determined that the individual arrested by Kenyan authorities is not Ms. Suaad Mohamud Hagi.”

No evidence is cited, no reason is given. Apparently, if you end up in front of a Canadian official abroad and they don’t believe you are Canadian, not only should you expect to wait months before hearing why your passport was stripped from you but when you finally do get an explanation, don’t expect to hear any reasoning. To be fair, why should they have to explain themselves to you… you aren’t Canadian.

So in summary, after marooning someone who very much appears to be Canadian in a foreign country (on May 17th) our government took weeks to find confirm they hadn’t made a mistake (last week of June), then took another two weeks to accept a two month old offer the accused themselves made to submit their fingerprints to prove their identity. This is the treatment Canadians can expect from their own government. Again, if this is how our government will treat some citizens, this is how they could treat any citizen. That includes you.

Sadly, this is treatment you can expect if you are still alive. I don’t even want to begin to talk about what happens if you happen to be tortured and killed for political reasons in a foreign jail. Even if our government says it wants those responsible actively brought to justice it will do pretty much everything it can to ignore the issue, even when it has access to witnesses. Indeed, it will become more concerned about the negative press its inaction might generate then about ensuring justice and safety for Canadians abroad.

The more I read about these cases the angrier I become. One of the most basic roles of government is to protect its citizens and here we have two recent cases (I’m not even counting Arar) where our government has actually put its own citizens in grave danger, in one case tacitly encouraging their torture. And what message does this send? Why should other governments care about how they treat Canadians when our own government doesn’t seem to care. These are dark times.

It isn’t easy to say and I despise typing the words, but it is hard to draw any other conclusion: if you travel abroad your Canadian Citizenship means nothing.

Why the Internet Will Shape Social Values (and not the other way around)

The biggest problem in predicting the future isn’t envisaging what technologies will emerge – it is forecasting how individuals and communities will respond to these technologies. In other words I often find people treat technology as a variable, but social values as a constant. Consequently, as they peer into tomorrow, technology is examined only in terms of how it will change (and make easier) tasks – and not on how it will cause social values and relationships to shift. By treating social values as a constant we assume that technology will conform to today’s values. In truth, it is often the reverse that is the case – social values change and come to reflect the technology we use.

For example, I find people ask me if I’m nervous about blogging since, 20 years hence, someone may dig up a post and use to demonstrate how my thinking or values were flawed. Conversely, a friend suggested that social networks will eventually “auto-delete” photos so that any embarrassing pictures that might have ended up online will not be searchable. (Let’s put aside the fact that a truly embarrassing picture will likely get copied to several places.) In short, these friends cannot imagine a future where your past is accessible and visible to a wider group of people. In their view an archived personal history is anathema as it violates some basic expectations of anonymity (not to be confused with privacy) they are accustomed to. In their minds our mistakes, misadventures or even poor fashion choices need to be forgotten (or hidden in the vast grayness of history) in order for us to be successful. If not, we will somehow become social pariahs or certain doors may forever be closed to us.

To put it another way, it presumes that our future employers, social circles and even society in general will punish people who’ve ever had a thought others disagree with or will refuse to hire someone who’s ever had a embarrassing photo of themselves posted to the internet.

Really? If this is the case then the jobs of tomorrow are going to be filled by either the most conservative and/or timid people or (more troubling, but less surprising) by those best able to cover their tracks. I’m not sure either of these traits are what I’m want in a prospective employee. Should I hire someone who is afraid to publicly share independent thoughts? Do I want to work with someone too risk-averse to push a boundary or have fun? Or worse, should I contract someone who is highly adept at covering up their mistakes? If the jobs of the future are going to require creativity, originality and integrity why would I hire for the opposite traits?

Perhaps those whose lives are more visible online will be discriminated against. But it is also possible the inverse could be true. Those who have no online history have no discernible, verifiable track record, no narrative about how their values and thinking has evolved over time. While such a history will be filled with flaws and mistakes, it will at least be open and visible, whereas those who have lived offline will have a history that is opaque and verifiable only by their own handpicked references.

If anything, I suspect the internet is going to create a society that is more honest and forgiving. We will be returning to a world of thin anonymity – a world where it is difficult to escape from the choices you’ve made in the past. But the result won’t be a world where fewer people take risks, it will be a world that recognizes those risks were necessary and expected.

What would such a world look like? Well naturally it is going to be hard to imagine, because it is a world that would likely make you deeply uncomfortable (think of how hard it would have been 25 years ago to imagine a large swath of the population being comfortable with online dating). But there are perhaps microcosm we can look at. While dysfunctional in many ways the culture of Silicon Valley – in how it treats failure – may be a good example. While I’ve not lived in the valley, everything I’ve read about it suggests that it is hard to be taken seriously unless you’ve taken risks and have failed – it demonstrates your willingness to try and learn. It is a community where it is easy to look into everyone else’s past – either by searching online or simply asking around. In this regard Silicon Valley is deeply honest – people own their successes and their failures – and it is a place that, in regards to business, is forgiving. Compared to many places on the planet, past failures (depending of course on the nature of depth of the error) are forgivable and even seen as a necessary right of passage.

All this isn’t to say that we should be limiting people’s ability for anonymity or privacy online. If someone wants their photos auto-deleted after 5 years, please let them do it. But let us at least always preserve choice – let us not architect our technology to solely conform to today’s social norms as we may discover we will be willing to make different choices in a few years.

The Canadian Government's War on Science

For those who did not catch this excellent piece in the Toronto Star I encourage you to take a look.

During the Bush era the Canadian war on science was an embarrassing side show to that of its more wildly offensive southern neighbour which regularly silenced scientists, withheld reports, or simply appointed “expert” panels whose credentials were dubious but whose members could be counted on to produce the “right” answer. Indeed, these sad events are well chronicled in Politics And Science In The Bush Administration drafted for Representative Henry Waxman. (This, as an aside, is what happens when you give elected representatives real research budgets – they look into all sorts of issues to keep the government of the day honest. A similar study by a Canadian MP would have stretched their resources beyond their limit).

But just in case you think the Canadian context is radically different, remember that our government has installed unqualified dependents of the oil industry to government scientific bodies. It has censored government scientists, preventing them from talking about their research at scientific conferences. It has barred officials from talking about climate change or harm reduction strategies for drug users. (It even banned one public servant from talking about a fictional book he”d written on climate change). It also disingenuously claims “more research is needed” on issues and then either cuts research programs that look into these questions or attempt to manipulate the process to produce outcomes that align with what they already believe (see the above Toronto Star piece).

This is the sad state of science and policy development in Canada. We alone in the world retain a government that is not interested in uncovering what is actually happening, but in fabricating a reality that conforms to an ideologically pre-determined world view. Our government’s two great allies, the Bush administration in the United States and the John Howard’s government in Australia, have moved on.

Today science is regaining its rightful place in the policy development process as evidenced by Obama’s inauguration speech:

The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act—not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

The mention is short and quick, but it was a powerful signal that, for scientists, the Bush era was over. Suddenly science mattered again in the United States. For the Canadian government this line is still more ominous. Their war on science can no longer hide in the shadow of Bush. And none to soon. As a believer in the power of effective public policy the undermining of science has been an attack on the effectiveness of good government. If our government doesn’t believe in science, how are we then to measure success, on what basis are we to decide which policies are more effective?

Oh, and don’t think the world isn’t noticing. You really have to work extra hard to prompt the world’s preeminent scientific journal – Nature – to write a special oped about how your government has become anti-science.

A couple of other fun links regarding our government’s war on science:

Tony Clement, who happily is not longer the Canadian Minister of Health received a swift rebuke for accusing doctors that work at Insite of being unethical.

Gary Goodyear Canada’s Scientific Minister is a creationist. Best response to this sad state of affairs is the incredulous Brian Alters, founder and director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill University in Montreal. He noted this is akin to asking someone “‘Do you believe the world is flat?’ and he doesn’t answer on religious grounds…”

Millennium Scholarship Foundation: A Case Study in Sustaining a Network

For those who haven’t heard, one of the worst decisions of the current government has been to not renew the Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

The foundation, created by Chretien in 2000 had a 10 years of funding to pursue three goals: 1) improve access to post-secondary education, particularly for students facing economic or social barriers; 2) encourage a high level of student achievement and engagement in Canadian society; and 3) to build a national alliance of organizations and individuals around a shared post-secondary agenda.

After 10 years of dispensing scholarships and bursaries there is now a large alumni group of Millennium scholars, many of whom have met one another as a result of an annual conference the foundation which brought scholars from across the country together to learn from external speakers and one another. In short, the Millennium alumni network is a relatively vibrant community composed of some very compelling people.

But now the organization that created that community is ending. So one question the foundation has been asking itself is: how does the community continue to have impact once both its funding has stopped and the alumni network ceases to grow? This is a challenge common to many groups. For example, I’ve frequently heard conference organizers ask how can the participants can continue to grow and learn from one another once the conference ends. In theory, new social networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook should make this easier. In practise, it is not always the case.

As I look at Millennium and reflect on its strengths, its community and the tools it has available, a couple of thoughts come to mind.

First, neither overestimate nor underestimate the power of one’s brand.

Firstly, in relation to not underestimating the power of brands, try to think about what it is that your brand has enabled, and why people might be grateful or interested in it. In the case of Millennium, it has helped make a post-secondary education possible for thousands of people. But it did more than that, it found people who were creative, smart, interesting and passionate about life and their communities. It also brought them together to meet and engage one another. If its alumni network did nothing more than serve as brand that allowed people to connect to on another over the next 40 years that would be in of itself a powerful outcome. It may sound trite but in my own life I’m always willing to meet with someone who participated in either Action Canada or Canada25 (two other discontinued program with a fixed alumni group). Both those groups consisted of people who I know want to make the world a better place, and if I can help them, I’ll try. Same with the Sauve Scholars. The fact that I can call on people in these networks and ask for their help, thoughts or advice is one of the most important legacies of these projects.

On the overestimate side, people should recognize that just because it is easy for people to connect, doesn’t mean that they will. Getting a broad network of people to sustain action on a given subject matter (especially if that subject matter didn’t bring them together in the first place) is very, very, difficult. In the case of the Millennium Foundation, it could encourage its network of alumni to tackle global poverty. This is a laudable goal, but it is not the issue that initially brought the group together so attachment to this issue is likely to be highly varied. This is a group with diverse interests. Some may want to focus on technology start-up, others on the environment, others on surviving grad-school. Trying to shoehorn a large group into a single goal is hard, especially if the group make up is now fixed and can no longer grow/evolve to focus on it. A powerful and/or well regarded brand does not mean you can do anything.

My hope is that the alumni are trying to figure out what it is that they, as a group, do have in common. In the case of Millennium, my sense is that one thing everybody in the network can agree on is that education is important. The very fact that they are Millennium Alumni means they have benefited from access to high quality education. So if the network was, from time to time, going to focus its energy, something related to this issue area might have the greatest resonance. Activities, actions or an annual event that attempted to do something simple around promoting education might be a good place to start. This could sustain the network’s relevance in the lives of its alumni as well as maintain connectivity among a certain percentage of its members. I’d also argue that the country could stand to have a 5000+ army of smart, engaged, interesting and increasingly powerful people who continuously champion the importance of education.

5 Ways to get to the Next Million Mozillians

Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation has been ruminating on:

“how Mozilla can actively encourage large numbers of people to participate on making the web more open and awesome.”

For a long time I’ve been a supporter of the idea that supporters of an Open Web are part of a social movement and that mobilizing these supporters could be a helpful part of a strategy for preserving and promoting the openness of the web. More importantly, I think the rise of open source, and in particular the rise of Mozilla tracks shockingly well against the structure of a social movement.

So if we are interested in increasing interest in the openness of the web and believe that recruiting the next million Mozillians can helps us accomplish that, then I think there are 3 things any strategy must do:

1. Increase the range of stake holders involved (this is part of why I write about women in open source so much) as this gives open web supporters more leverage when negotiating with those who threaten the web’s openness or who influence its development

2. Connect nebulous ideas like “security” and “openness” to tangible experiences people (users?) can relate to and to core values they believe in. (This is why Mark’s “seatbelt moment” narrative is awesome in this regard)

3. Outline actions that stakeholders and supporters can take.

So with the (not always successful) intent to focus on these 3 objectives here are five ideas I think could help us:

Idea 1: Partner with Consumer Reports and help shape the criteria by which they evaluate ISPs

One key to ensuring an open web is ensuring that people’s connection to the web is itself open. ISPs are a critical component in this ecosystem. As some observers have noted, ISPs engage in all sorts of nefarious activities such as bandwidth shaping, throttling, etc… Ensure that the net stays neutral feels like a critical part of ensuring it stays open.

One small way to address this would be make the neutrality of a network part of the evaluation criteria for Consumer Report reviews of ISPs. This would help make the openness of an ISP a competitive, would increase the profile of this problem and would engage a group of people (Consumer Report users) that are probably not generally part of the Mozilla Community.

Idea 2: Invest in an enterprise level support company for Firefox & Thunderbird.

Having a million citizens supporting Firefox and Mozilla is great, but if each of those supporters looks and acts the same then their impact is limited. Successful movements are not just large they are also diverse. This means having a range of stakeholders to help advocate for the open web. One powerful group of stakeholders are large enterprises & governments. They have money, they have clout and they have large user bases. They are also – as far as I can tell – one of the groups that Firefox has had the hardest time achieving market share with.

From my limited experience working with governments, adopting Firefox is difficult. There is no one to sign an SLA with, no dedicated support desk and no assurances problems will be escalated to the right developer within a fixed time period. Many of these challenges are highlighted by Tauvix in the comment section of this post). We could spend our time arguing about whether these issues are legitimate or if those large organizations simply need a culture shift. But such a shift will take a LONG time to materialize, if it ever does.

Finding a way to satisfy the concerns of large organizations – perhaps through a Redhat type model – might be a good way to invest Mozilla Foundation money. Not only could there be a solid return on this investment, but it could bring a number of large powerful companies and governments into the Mozilla camp. These would be important allies in the quest for an open web.

Idea 3: Promote add-ons that increase security, privacy and control in the cloud.

One reason behind Mozilla’s enormous success is that the community has always provided innovative technical solutions to policy/privacy/openness problems. Don’t like they way Microsoft is trying to shape the internet? Here, use a better browser. Don’t want to receive target advertising on website? Here, download this plug-in. Don’t want to see any advertising? Here, download this plug-in. Not sure if a website is safe? Here, use this plug-in. In short, Mozilla has allowed its software to serve as a laboratory to experiment with new and interesting ways to allow users to control their browsing experience.

While not a complete solution, it might be interesting to push the community to explore how Greasemonkey scripts, Jetpack plug-ins, or ordinary plug-ins might provide users with greater control over the cloud. For example, could a plug-in create automatic local backups of google docs on your computer? Could a Thunderbird plugin scan facebook messages and allow users a choice of mediums to respond with (say email). Fostering a “product-line” of cloud specific plug-ins that increase user control over their experience might be an interesting place to start.

Idea 4: Create and brand the idea of an openness audit

As more and more personal data ends up in servers controlled by companies, governments and non-profits there are real concerns around how secure and private this information is. Does anyone know that Google isn’t peeking at your Google docs every once in a while? Do you know if you’ll ever be able to delete your personal information from facebook?

These are legitimate questions. Outlining some guidelines around how companies manage privacy and security and then creating an audit system might be an interesting way to nudge companies towards adopting stronger standards and policies in the cloud. This might also increase public awareness and encourage a upwards spiral among competing service providers. Working with companies like KPMG and Deloitte Mozilla and others could help foster a new type of audit, one that would allow consumers to easily discriminate against cloud service providers that respect their rights, and those that don’t.

Idea 5: Let’s use that Firefox launch screen to create the next million Mozillians

At the moment, when you download and install Firefox the first website you see when you load the program congratulates you on downloading the program, tells you that you are helping keep the internet open and outlines some of Firefox’s new features. We could do more. Why not prompt people to join a “Mozillians” club where they will be kept up to date on threats and opportunities around the open web. Or maybe we should list 3 actions (with hyperlinks) they can take to increase the openness of the web (say, upgrade a friend, send a form letter to their member of congress and read an intro article on internet security?)

With maybe 300+ million people likely to download Firefox 3.5, that’s a lot of people we could be mobilizing to be more active, technically, socially and politically, around an open web.

There’s a start… I’ll keep brainstorming more ideas but in the interim, please feel free to let me know if you think any of these have real problems and/or are bunk.

A Case Study in Open Government: The Burrard Bridge Trial

Background

On Monday, July 13th the City of Vancouver began the Burrard Bridge lane trial. For those unfamiliar with the trial, the Burrard Bridge is a 6 lane bridge that connects the downtown core of Vancouver with one of the cities major suburban (but still relatively dense) neighbourhoods.

Historically bikers and pedestrians have shared the narrow sidewalks on either side of the bridge. This has resulted in a number of dangerous accidents (the Burrard bridge has more cyclist accidents than any other bridge in the city) and deters cyclists from using the bridge. During the trial the three vehicle lanes headed into downtown have remained unchanged. However, one lane headed out of downtown has been converted to a protected cycling lane.

Pre-trial: cyclists and pedestrians share a narrow sidewalk

Present: Southbound, Northbound cyclists and pedestrians each have their own sidewalk or lane.

A Case Study in Open Government

So what does this have to do with open government?

To access the trial’s impact the city began measuring traffic, cycling, and pedestrian levels 2 weeks prior to the trial started and has continued to measure them ever since. Traditionally, the data generated by a trial like this would kept hidden from the public until a certain date when a report is presented to council to determine if the trial should be made permanent.

Interestingly however, the City of Vancouver has opted to share the raw data on a regularly basis, as well as blog about the trial and give citizens an opportunity to leave comments and feedback. Indeed, the whole Burrard Street Lane Trial website – including twitter account and facebook page – is a well organized affair. Unsurprisingly, the data shows that the number of people cycling over the bridge has increased significantly.

The real story here isn’t about whether the Burrard Bridge Lane Trial becomes permanent or not. It’s about the process. For perhaps the first time in the history of the city citizens and interested groups can conduct their own analysis of the trials significance, in real time, using credible data. Better yet, the analysis won’t be limited to what public servants think. Anyone, in the city, or in the world for that matter, can take this data and mash it up with other data sets or simply analyze as it is. A debate grounded in fact, not emotions or anecdotes, can now take place.

This means cycling advocates or commuter/car advocacy groups can mash the data up with other data sets or take a crack at explaining why the trial is good or bad. I, for example, would love to see if the members of the cycling community who created this website might create a site that measures the reduction in carbon emissions made possible by the trial. Or if anti-cycle lane advocates can mash the data up with traffic reports to show if commuting times have been increased.

Regardless of the outcome however, the process, created by an open government, has ensured that Vancouver’s citizens are better equipped to see what is actually happening, to make suggestions for improvement and to explain to their fellow citizens the significance of the trial. That is the essence of what Open Government allows – it enables anyone who wants to become more engaged in their community by giving them more and better information.

Making it better

As great as the City’s website is, it could be better. To begin with, there is no RSS feed on the blog, so you’ve actually got to go to the website to get updates.

Much more important, there is no way for citizens to subscribe to or download the raw data. An RSS feed or XML feed for the data would allow other websites to automatically get updates. Creating such a feed would cost the city nothing and would vastly enhance the ability of news organizations and interested citizens to re-use, re-mix and re-purpose the data.

A final note. For full disclosure it should be known that I sit on the executive of Vision Vancouver, the political party that proposed and made possible, the Burrard Bridge Lane Trial.

Crowdsourcing Application to Stay Cool in Vancouver

My friend and open city collaborator Tim Wilson has come up with a genius idea for citizens of Vancouver to beat the heat. He’s asking everyone to help map all the free water fountains in the city as well as public air conditioned spaces.

To do this he’s created a public google map that anyone can edit – just on the aforementioned link and then on the “edit” button in the top right hand corner of the text box and in the map box editing tools will be made available to you.

With this map on your iphone and computer you can be sure to know where the closest cooling off point or free water fountain is. Anyone can add to the map and join the goal of helping Vancouverites stay cool, stay hydrated and healthy, and limit the waste created by disposable bottles. Please add to the map!