Tag Archives: open source

The Open Cities Blog on the Creative Exchange

Excited to let everyone know that I’ll be blogging at the Creative Exchange on Open Cities. I’ll continue to blog here 4 times a week and the pieces I post there I’ll cross-post here as well.

It’s an opportunity to talk about how openess and transparency can/will change our cities to a wider audience.

Wish me luck. Here was my first post.

Creating Open Cities

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

– Tim O’Reilly

To the popular press “hacker” means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To programmers, “hackers” connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants-whether the computer wants to or not.

– Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Welcome to the Open Cities blog on CCE. My name is David Eaves and I’ve been writing, speaking, and thinking about open, citizen engagement and public policy for a number of years. Most recently, I worked to help push forward the City of Vancouver motion that requires the city to share more data, adopt open standards, and treat open source and proprietary software equally.

Cities have always been platforms – geographic and legal platforms upon which people collaborate to create enterprises, exchange ideas, educate themselves, celebrate their culture, start families, found communities, and raise children. Today the power of information technology is extending this platform, granting us new ways to collaborate and be creative. As Clay Shirky notes in Here Comes Everybody, this new (dis)order is powerful. For the meaning and operation of cities, it will be transformative.

How transformative? The change created by information technology is driving what will perhaps be seen as the greatest citizen-led renewal of urban spaces in our history. Indeed, I believe it may even be creating a new type of city, one whose governance models, economies and notions of citizenship are still emerging, but different from their predecessors. These new cities are Open Cities: cities that, like the network of web 2.0, are architected for participation and so allow individuals to create self-organized solutions and allow governments to tap into the long-tail of public policy.

And just in the nick of time. To succeed in the 21st century, cities will have to simultaneously thrive in a global economy, adapt to climate change, integrate a tsunami of rural and/or foreign migrants, as well as deal with innumerable other challenges and opportunities. These issues go far beyond the capacity and scope of almost any government – not to mention the all-too-often under-resourced City Hall.

Open Cities address this capacity shortfall by drawing on the social capital of their citizens. Online, city dwellers are hacking the virtual manifestation of their city which, in turn, is giving them the power to shape the physical space. Google transit, DIYcity, Apps for Democracy are great urban hacks, they allow cities to work for citizens in ways that were previously impossible. And this is only the beginning.

Still more exciting, hacking is a positive sum game. The more people hack their city – not in the poorly misunderstood popular press meaning of breaking into computers but in (sometimes artful, sometimes amateur) way of making a system (read city) work for their benefit – the more useful data and services they create and remix. Ultimately, Open Cities will be increasingly vibrant and safe because they are hackable. This will allow their citizens to unleash their creativity, foster new services, find conveniences and efficiencies, notice safety problems, and build communities.

In short, the cities that harness the collective ingenuity, creativity, and energy of its citizenry will thrive. Those that don’t – those that remain closed – won’t. And this divide – open vs. closed – could become the new dividing line of our age. And it is through this lens that this blog will look at the challenges and opportunities facing cities, their citizens, and institutions. Let’s see who’s open, how they’re getting open, and what it will all mean.

Open data in local education: broader lessons for government, citizens and NGOs

Last months I remember reading a couple of news stories about a provincial government ministry in Canada that was forced to become less transparent.

Forced?

Yes, this was not a voluntary move. A specific group of people pressured the government, wanting it to remove data it had made public as well as make it harder for the public to repurpose and make use of the data. So what happened? And what lessons should governments, NGOs and citizens take away from this incident?

The story revolves around the Ontario Ministry of Education which earlier this year created a website that mashed up performance data (e.g. literacy and math scores) with demographic information (e.g. percentage of pupils from low-income households and percentage of gifted students). The real problem – according to a group representing teachers, parents and stakeholders – occurred when the Ministry enabled a feature that allowed the website’s users to compare up schools to one another.

The group, called People for Education, protested that the government was encouraging a “shopping-mentality” in the public school system.

Of course, many parents already shop for schools. I remember, as a kid, hearing about how houses on one side a street, but within the catchment area of my high school, were more expensive than houses on the other side of the same street, but within the catchment area of another school. Presently however, this type of shopping is reserved for the wealthy and connected (e.g. the privileged). Preventing people from comparing schools online won’t eliminate or even discourage this activity, it will simply preference those who are able to do it, further reinforcing inequity.

The real problem however, is that the skills and analysis involved in school shopping are the same as those required in accessing and being engaged in, the performance of one’s local school. Parents, and taxpayers in general, have a right to know their childrens school’s performance – especially in comparison to similar schools. If parents don’t have information to analyze and compare, how can they know what systemic issues they should ask their childrens teachers about? More importantly, how can they know what issues to press their local school board about?

Ironically, People for Education states on its “About Us” page that it works towards a vision of a strong public education system by a) doing research; b) providing clear, accessible information to the public and c) engaging people to become actively involved in education issues in their own community.

And yet, asking the government to remove the comparison feature runs counter to all three of its activities. Limiting how the Ministry’s data can be used (and as we’ll see later, suggesting that this data shouldn’t be shared):

  • prevents parents, and other analysts such as professors or politicians, from doing their own research
  • runs counter to the goal of providing clear and accessible information to the public. Indeed, it makes information harder to access.
  • makes it harder for parents to know how they should get involved and what issues they should champion to improve their local school

What is interesting about this story is that it reveals the core values and underlying motivation of different actors. In this case People for Education – which I believe to be a well intentioned a positive contributor to the issue of education – is nonetheless revealed to have a conservative side to it.

It fears a world where citizens and parents are equipped with information and knowledge about schools. On the one hand it may fear the types of behaviours this could foster (such as school shopping). However, it may also fear a weakening of its monopoly as “expert” and advocate on educational issues. If parents can look at the data directly, and form their own analysis and conclusions, they may find that they don’t agree with People for Education. Open data would allow those it represents to self-organize, challenging the hierarchy and authority of the organization.

For whatever reason, we see an NGO bending over backwards to advocate for an outcome that runs directly counter to the very vision and activities it was founded to serve. More ironically, this result in some paradoxical messaging as an organization that champions Ontario’s school system essentially arguing that it doesn’t trust the products of that system – the citizens of Ontario – to use the information and tools provided by the Ministry that was responsible for their education. It is an unsustainable position – particularly for a group that was originally founded as a bottom up, grass-roots organization.

So what lessons are there here?

For government:

A key mistake made by the Ontario Ministry of Education is that it didn’t open up the data enough. While the website allowed users to look at school performance data they could only do this on the Ministry’s website using the Ministry’s tools and interface. Had the data been available as an API or in downloadable format someone else could have taken the data and created the system for comparing schools. People for Education were mostly upset that the Ministry’s website encouraged a “shopping-mentality.” Had the Ministry simply shared the data then People for Education could build their own interface using criteria and tools they though relevant. The Fraser Institute or a multitude of other organizations could build their own as well, and people could have used the tools and websites they found most useful and relevant. Let People for Education go head to head with the Fraser Institute and whoever else. This is not a battle the government need fight.

Lesson: Always provide the data – a goal that is hard to argue against – but sometimes, leave it to others to conduct the analysis. A marketplace of ideas will emerge, and citizens can choose what works best for them.

For NGOs in general

First, understand what open data means for your cause. One of the news articles had this highly disturbing quote from the Executive Director of People for Education:

Among her complaints about the type of information available, Ms. Kidder took issue with the ministry’s contention the Web site merely consolidated information already available to the public. “You can’t walk into your child’s school and say ‘What’s the average income of parents at this school?’ ” she said. “It’s not true at all [that this is public information].”

This is a shocking statement. In actuality, all the data assembled by the Ministry is publically available. It was just that, until now, it had remained scattered and isolated. Just because it was hard to find (and thus reserved for an elite few) or located on the school property (and thus easy for parents to locate) does not mean it didn’t exist or wasn’t public.

Lesson: Transparency is the new objectivity. People increasingly don’t trust anyone – governments, the media, or even NGOs. They want to see the analysis themselves, not take your word for it. Be prepared for this world.

Second, be careful about taking positions that will deny your supporters – and those you represent – tools with which to educate themselves. Organizations that are perceived as trying to constrain the flow of information so as to retain influence and control risk imploding. I won’t repeat this lesson in detail but Clay Shirky’s case study about the Vatican, written up in Here Comes Everybody, is a powerful example.

For educators in particular

In the past, educators have been deeply concerned with ranking systems. This is understandable. Ranking systems are often a blunt tool. Comparing apples to oranges can be foolish – but then, sometimes it is helpful. The question is to know when it is helpful and ensure it is used accordingly.

The fact is, ranking is an outcome of data. The two simply cannot be separated. The moment there is data, there is ranking. A ranking by school size, number of teachers, or amount of gym equipment is not different than a ranking of class sizes, literacy rates, disciplinary trends, or graduation rates. What matters is not the rank, but the conclusions, meaning and significance we apply to these rankings. Here, the role for groups like People for Education could be profound.

This is because we can’t be in favour of transparency and accessible information on the one hand and against ranking on the other. The two come hand in hand. What we can be opposed to are poor ranking systems.

Every profession gets assessed, and teaching should be no different. The challenge is that there is much more to teaching than what gets reflected in the data collected. This means that groups like People for Education shouldn’t be against transparency and open data – they should be trying to complexify and nuance the discussion. Once the data is publicly available anyone can create a ranking system of their own choosing – but this gives us an opportunity to have a public discussion about it. One way to do this is to create one’s own tools for measuring schools. You don’t like the Ministry of Education’s system? Create your own. Use it to talk to parents about the right questions to ask and to promote the qualitative ways to evaluate their childrens’ schools performance. It’s an open world. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be feared – it is rife with opportunity.

PublicVoice Interview on "Open," Government and Citizen Engagement

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Maclean’s columnist Scott Feschuk for PublicVoice.tv on what the rise of “open” systems and the continuing evolution of information technology will mean for the future of both government and citizen engagement.

Cleverly, they’ve kept these videos nice and short – it’s all designed to be short and punchy. There will be five 1-3 minute videos in a all and so far the first two have been posted. You can see them here and here.

Sadly, the lighting isn’t all that flattering… consider yourself warned.

why collaborative skills matter in open source

For the past several years now I’ve been talking about how community management – broadly defined as enhancing a community’s collaborative skills, establishing and modeling behaviour/culture and embedding development tools and communications mediums with prompts that “nudge” us towards collaborative behaviour – is imperative to the success of open source communities. (For those interested in this, my FSOSS 2008 on the subject has been slidecasted here, and is on on google video here.

Re-reading Shirkly’s latest book, Here Comes Everybody, has re-affirmed my thinking. Indeed, it’s made me more aggressive. Why? Consider these two paragraphs:

This ability of the traditional management structure to simplify coordination helps answer one of the most famous questions in all of economics: If markets are such a good idea, why do we have organizations at all? Why can’t all exchanges of value happen in the market? This question originally was posed by Ronald Coase in 1937 in his famous paper “The Nature of the Firm,” wherein he also offered the first coherent explanation of the value of hierarchical organization. Coase realized that workers could simply contract with one another, selling their labor, and buying the labor of others in turn, in a market, without needing any managerial oversight. However, a completely open market for labor, reasoned Coase, would underperform labor in firms because of the transaction costs, and in particular the costs of discovering the options and making and enforcing agreements among the participating parties. The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs…

And later, Shirky essentially describes the thesis of his book:

But what if transaction costs don’t fall moderately? What if they collapse. This scenario is harder to predict from Coase’s original work, at it used to be purely academic. Now’s it not, because it is happening, or rather it has already happened, and we’re starting to see the results.

My conclusion: the lower the transaction costs, the greater the playing field will favour self-organizations systems like open source communities and the less it will favour large proprietary producers.

This is why open source communities should (and do) work collectively to reduce transaction costs among their members. Enabling the further collapse of transaction costs tilts the landscape in our favour. Sometimes, this can be down in the way we architect the software. Indeed, this is why – in Firefox – Add-Ons are so powerful. The Add-On functionality dramatically reduces transaction costs by creating a dependable and predictable platform, essentially allowing coders to work in isolation from one another (the difference between collaborative vs. cooperative). This strategy has been among the most successful. It is important and should be pursued, but it cannot help collapse transaction costs for all parts of a project – especially the base code.

But what more can be done? There are likely diminishing returns to re-architecting the software and in finding new, easier ways, to connect developers to one another. The areas I think offer real promise include:

  • fostering cultures within open source communities that reward collaborative (low transaction cost) behaviour,
  • promoting leaders who model collaborative (low transaction cost) behaviour
  • developing tools and communications mediums/methods that prompt participants to improve the noise to signal, minimize misunderstandings, limit unnecessary conflict, and help resolve differences quickly and effectively (the idea being that all of these outcomes lower transactions costs).

This is why I continue to think about how to port over the ideas, theories and tools from the negotiation/collaboration field, into the open source space.

For open source communities, eliminating transaction costs is a source of strategic advantage – one that we should find ways to exploit ruthlessly.

Neo-Progressivism watch: online collectivism as the 3rd way that works

Just finished reading Kevin Kelly’s piece The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online in Wired Magazine. It talks about the same themes Taylor and I were trying to surface Progressivism’s End and I suspect we agree with Kelly’s in many regards.

Taylor and I talked about how the left (now old left) killed progressive politics and how progressive politics is re-emerging in new forms (I had wanted to use Mozilla as a mini-case, but came to it too late). Kelly’s piece deals less with the past and focuses exclusively on the nascent politics that is emerging in the online space:

We’re not talking about your grandfather’s socialism. In fact, there is a long list of past movements this new socialism is not. It is not class warfare. It is not anti-American; indeed, digital socialism may be the newest American innovation. While old-school socialism was an arm of the state, digital socialism is socialism without the state. This new brand of socialism currently operates in the realm of culture and economics, rather than government—for now.

When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism.

Maybe. I think the socialism label takes the argument a bit far. Kelly’s piece portrays open source and collective online projects as disconnected from capitalism. Certainly in the case of open-source, this is a strained argument. While motivations vary, many people who fund and contribute to Firefox do so because having an open browser allows the web – and all the commerce conducted on it – to be open and competitive. Same with Linux, between 75%-90% of contributors are paid by their employers to contribute. As Amanda McPherson, director of marketing at the Linux Foundation notes: “They’re not the guys in the basements, the hobbyists.” Consequently, many open-source projects are about preserving an open platform so that value can shift to another part of the system. It is about allowing for better, more efficient and more open markets – not about ending them.

Still more difficult to believe is Kelly’s assertion that “The more we benefit from such collaboration, the more open we become to socialist institutions in government.” If there is one political philosophy that is emerging among the online coders and hackers it isn’t socialism – it is libertarianism. I see no evidence that socialism is making a comeback – this is where Kelly’s use of the term hurts him the most. If we are seeing anything it is the re-emergence of the values of progressive politics: a desire for meritocracy, openness, transparency, efficiency and equality of opportunity. The means of achieving this is shifting, but not back towards socialism of any form.

One area I strongly agree with Kelly is that neo-progressivism (or as he prefers, the new socialism) is strongly pragmatic:

On the face of it, one might expect a lot of political posturing from folks who are constructing an alternative to capitalism and corporatism. But the coders, hackers, and programmers who design sharing tools don’t think of themselves as revolutionaries. No new political party is being organized in conference rooms—at least, not in the US. (In Sweden, the Pirate Party formed on a platform of file-sharing. It won a paltry 0.63 percent of votes in the 2006 national election.)

Indeed, the leaders of the new socialism are extremely pragmatic. A survey of 2,784 open source developers explored their motivations. The most common was “to learn and develop new skills.” That’s practical. One academic put it this way (paraphrasing): The major reason for working on free stuff is to improve my own damn software. Basically, overt politics is not practical enough.

As we wrote in an early draft of Progressivism’s End:

Having lost, or never gained, hope in either partisan politics or the political institutions that underlie the modern state, much of this generation has tuned out.  Driven by outcomes, neo-progressive’s are tired of the malaise of New Deal institutions. Believing, but with a healthy dose of skepticism, in both the regulatory capacity of the state and the effectiveness of the market economy, they are put off by the absolutism of both the right and left.  And, valuing pragmatism over ideology, they are embarrassed by partisan bickering.

The simple fact is that in a world that moves quickly, it is easier than ever to quickly ascertain what works and what does not. This gives pragamatists a real advantage over theoretically driven ideologues who have a model of the world they want reality to conform to. Kelly may be right that, at some point, this neo-progressive (or new-socialist) movement will get political. But I suspect that will only be the case if a) their modes of production are threatened (hence the copyright was). I suspect they will simple (continue) ignore the political whenever possible – why get them involved if you can achieve results without them?

Cool Job in Open Source, Science and Engagement

My friend Rikia S. sent me the link to this cool job posting on the TED website.

Based on astronomer Jill Tarter’s TED Prize wish — to search for signs of intelligent life on other planets – the SETI Institute is hiring a project manager with the experience, qualifications and energy to run the TED Prize wish project for at least two years.

For those interested in Open Source Software, who love science and astronomy and who can engage a large community of citizen-scientists who are contributing to SETI’s efforts, this is a dream job.

The full job description and contact info is on their website:

This is a unique opportunity to work in both open-source software and social media, on a project whose ramifications are literally beyond global.

We are seeking someone with deep experience in managing open-source software projects and the communities that power them to drive a bold and agenda-setting initiative. The initiative will involve managing a traditional open-source software project, as well as a complex public-facing system that will enlist the general/nontechnical public’s assistance in conducting our search. To succeed, a candidate above all needs a history of success in managing major open-source projects. While it’s not essential that this person be a coding engineer, it is essential that s/he be comfortable enough with C++ code to have technically meaningful interactions with committers and the broader open-source community. It’s also essential that s/he be a strong evangelist — able to speak inspiringly in public, and to energize, recruit and maintain engagement with key influencers in the open source coding world.

The other part of the job will be governing a project that will in many ways resemble Galaxy Zoo (an intriguing “citizen scientist” system). This will involve managing a respected Web development company as it creates the site, and thereafter overseeing/”gardening” a large community of nontechnical contributors. We expect this community to be self-policing and self-monitoring, like Wikipedia’s editorial community. But it will need leadership and a baseline architecture, and our hire will be responsible for delivering this.

This is a unique opportunity to work in both open-source software and social media, on a project whose ramifications are literally beyond global.

This will be a full-time role at the SETI Institute for two years, funded by the money TED has allocated toward granting Jill’s wish. However, because this is a TED Prize wish, one in which many people and individuals are giving a lot to make happen, we do hope to find someone who will do this at a reduced rate. We have a large brainstorm taking place on June 1 and would love to have the right person chosen and at the table for that meeting.

Please send a resume and cover letter to tedprize1@ted.com if you are interested in the position.

And please forward this opportunity on to anyone you believe possess the right skills!

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.

Treating the web as an archive – or finding the financial crisis' ground zero online

Most often when people think of the web they think of it as a place to get new information. Companies are told they must constantly update their website while customers and citizens look for the latest updates. But because the web is relatively new, it is strongly biased towards digitally displaying and archiving “new” information.

What happens when the web gets older?

One possibility… it could change how we study history. Again, nothing is different per se – the same old research methods will be used – but what if it is 10 times easier to do, a 100 times faster and contains with a million time the quantity of information? With the archives of newspapers, blogs and other websites readily available to be searched the types of research once reserved for only the most diligent and patient might be more broadly accessible.

Consider this piece in the New York Times published on November 5th 1999. It essentially defines ground zero of the financial crisis:

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one anothers businesses.

The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.

”Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ”This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”

Here is what may be the defining starting point of the financial crisis. The moment when the tiny little snowball was gently pushed down the hill. It would take 10 years to gather the mass and momentum to destroy our economy, but it had a starting point. I sometimes wish that the New York Times had run this article again in the last few months, just so we could get reacquainted with the individuals – like Larry Summers – and political parties – both – that got Americans into this mess.

Indeed, as an aside, it’s worth noting the degree by which the legislation passed. 90 votes to 8 in the senate. 362 votes to 57 in the House. There was clearly a political price to pay to vote against this bill. Indeed, it fits in nicely with the thesis Simon Johnson outlined in his dark, but important, piece The Quiet Coup:

“…these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector”

Still more fascinating is how accurately the legislation’s detractors predicted it’s dire consequences. Check out Senator Dorgan’s comments at the time:

”I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ”I wasn’t around during the 1930’s or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980’s when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.”

Or Senator Wellstone’s:

‘Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,” Mr. Wellstone said. ”Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.”

And of course, it worth remembering what the legislation’s supporters said in response:

Supporters of the legislation rejected those arguments. They responded that historians and economists have concluded that the Glass-Steagall Act was not the correct response to the banking crisis because it was the failure of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy, not speculation in the stock market, that caused the collapse of 11,000 banks. If anything, the supporters said, the new law will give financial companies the ability to diversify and therefore reduce their risks. The new law, they said, will also give regulators new tools to supervise shaky institutions.

”The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,” said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska.”

What is most fascinating about this piece is that it shows us how the financial crisis wasn’t impossible to predict, that it didn’t come out of nowhere and that it could have been eminently preventable. We simply chose not to.

It also goes back to the type of journalism that I believe we are missing today and that I wrote about in my post on the Death of Journalism. Here is a slow moving crisis, one that is highly complex, but not impossible to see. And yet we chose not to “see it.”

This, I believe, has to do with the fact that today, much of our journalism is gotcha journalism (or what Gladwell refers to as mysteries). It looks to finding the insider or the smoking gun that will bust open the story. I suspect that in a networked world – one of increased complexity and interconnectedness – finding the smoking gun is irrelevant. For an increasing number of stories there simple is no smoking gun. There are whole series of cascading action that are what Galdwell calls open secrets. Our job is to “see them” and painstakingly connect the dots to show how our decisions are allowing for the scary and unpredictable event – the black swan event – to become a near certainty.

What the above article shows me is that while the very tools and forces that make these scary events more likely – the internet, globalization our interconnectedness – they may also make the the open secrets easier to identify.

Surviving in a changing, networked world

signpostsI am repeatedly floored by how lucky I am to be alive today. Here, in an era of complete turmoil, where things previously unimaginable are now normal, where old systems are dying and new ones are emerging that enable us to connect and cooperate in fascinating ways. All this, with our planet on the brink — it is all rather heady.

Sometimes, it is important to remind myself of this since there are moments when, confronted by all this turmoil, I slip into feeling frustrated and lost. When I reflect on why, I’m struck by the fact that never in my short lifetime — or, I suspect, in the lifetimes of my parents — have the way points, the path, or even the destinations for our lives been less clear, more uncharted, or simply completely unknown.

For confusing or unknown destinations, I think of my friends who wanted to get into news media, or a close friend who recently confessed that they’d love to sit on the board of the CBC (I can’t think of a better candidate), or colleagues who would like to be a Deputy Minister or even a bank executive. And yet, if you aspired to be the editor of the Globe and Mail when you hit your 40’s or 50’s I’m not sure you should be holding your breath… There may not be a Globe and Mail in 15 years, or a CBC, or even media companies. The role of a deputy minister may be radically altered beyond recognition — and do any of us really want to be bank executives? Worse, still, it’s not even clear what the equivalent of the editor of the Globe will be – it is fine to accept that the job you wanted may not exist, but what do you do when it isn’t even clear how to fulfill the underlying desire or interest?

If your dream was to contribute to national conversations, then the path has rarely been less clear. But it isn’t just the media. No matter what it is you want to do, the steps that were supposed to take you there… the education you are supposed to get, the jobs you were supposed to hold, they are less obvious, occasionally discredited and sometimes not longer in existence. This isn’t to say that newer, different, and I would argue better opportunities are not arising. They are. But they are hidden — hidden among a thousand blind alleys and dead ends. And yes, I even think the career paths of lawyers, doctors and accountants – the safest of professions – could change radically over the next few decades.

And the way points along these thousand paths are also harder to identify. What is progress? How do you know you are moving forward? I struggle with this question constantly: am I doing the right thing with my life? Am I making the world a better place? Am I growing? Developing?

In a bygone era I could have looked at the money I made, or the size of my office, my title, or any number of other things… but I find these metrics less and less helpful or meaningful. We all want to do more, be better, help with the next challenge.

What’s it all this mean? That remains to be seen. But here are two possibilities:

First, when you really don’t know what’s going to happen next you’d better grab that one thing you believe in. Because that value is a guiding light that allows you to keep marching on, even if you don’t know if you are marching forward, backward, up or down. Ultimately it is a leap of faith.

For me, that value is “share.” It’s why I got into negotiating – to enable people (self foremost) to be more effective at playing with others and learn to share ideas, possibilities, resources, anything… more effectively and fairly. It is why I believe in Open Source – that when we share, and build off each others contributions, we build faster, better and more cheaply, to the benefit of all. It’s the value that is at the core of my work in Public Service Sector Renewal – that a government that shares – shares its ideas, its data, in the process – both internally and externally, is a government that will be more responsive, more effective and more efficient.

The second piece is that we need peers. I suspect we are all (me especially) going to fail more than our parents. It is just a simple fact. There are more paths, and the right ones are less clear. So more of us are going to take risks, are going to try the unknown; and many or us, indeed the majority of us, will and should fail at some point. That’s why we need peers. We need friends and colleagues to help us, to pick us up when we fall down, to nurture us intellectually and help us emotionally.

When I look around at my friends I sense that we are blessed and cursed. We live in interesting times. The good news though, is that we are legion. Together, sharing and supporting one another, we are crafting a new world. I don’t know if my contribution is helping. It may all be one big failure – this alley I’m running down may be a dead end. That’s a frustrating, sometimes lonely, and scary reality to face down. But I know if I’m feeling it, someone else out there probably is too, and you should know you are not alone.