Earlier this month I attended GovCamp, a conference for open government and open data enthusiasts and practitioners. A good breadth of speakers and panelists were loosely organized around three streams: gov tech & open data, public involvement & communications, and public service innovation. Dreamy!
The well attended conference did lose some of the free wheeling intimacy of the first evening GovCamp that met at the Toronto Reference Library in the summer of 2010. That event, dubbed an “unconference” for its organic approach to the sessions, had every presenter introduce their topic for 1 minute on stage. Attendees got a great preview of both the topic and the speakers themselves. This approach beat deciding to attend a session based on a 4 or 5 word title by a long shot. In the organizers’ defence, they had planned this but some opening speakers went over their time and the session introductions had to be cut. Also owing to its smaller size, the previous GovCamp was more interactive. Participants gathered to discuss particular topics at tables rather than listening to panelists and speakers in larger rooms. That being said, there were many interesting speakers this year, and the unexpected conversations were equally enjoyable. On to the sessions:
The well attended conference did lose some of the free wheeling intimacy of the first evening GovCamp that met at the Toronto Reference Library in the summer of 2010. That event, dubbed an “unconference” for its organic approach to the sessions, had every presenter introduce their topic for 1 minute on stage. Attendees got a great preview of both the topic and the speakers themselves. This approach beat deciding to attend a session based on a 4 or 5 word title by a long shot. In the organizers’ defence, they had planned this but some opening speakers went over their time and the session introductions had to be cut. Also owing to its smaller size, the previous GovCamp was more interactive. Participants gathered to discuss particular topics at tables rather than listening to panelists and speakers in larger rooms. That being said, there were many interesting speakers this year, and the unexpected conversations were equally enjoyable. On to the sessions:
The City of Toronto’s own Denis Carr gave a fun talk on how to free data, titled “The Great Escape”. Without a specific mandate from City Council and no official budget, the City’s open data program staff are stealthily working with divisions to release open data.
Joey Coleman, representing Open Hamilton, was a great panelist. A journalist and former (recovering?) programmer, this guy’s enthusiasm for open data was wonderful. He described how the first release of Hamilton public transit schedule information was not that accurate or useful for planning travel times. End to end, one particular route was listed as 22 minutes for the express bus, but only 23 minutes for the bus making every local stop, which would probably require some impressive high speed passenger boarding and exiting. While transit data will always be popular among developers, Joey made a case for the value of other kinds of data. For instance, creating a walking map of crossing guards would be good for new families in a neighbourhood. Swim time information locked up in individual recreation center documents is not that useful, but an enterprising developer could easily reuse this data to answer questions like “I want to go swimming at 7:30pm on a Wednesday. Where do I go?” I liked Joey’s discussion a lot. He closed emphasizing that open data is not just a nerd thing.... it is about making services more accessible.
All this leads me to ask, just what is up with City of Toronto recreational information being locked away in the Toronto Fun Guide and this Parks, Forestry and Recreation online registration database ? It’s mainly organized by program areas like “arts & heritage” and “swimming”, with no easy way to see which programs are nearby unless I already know the name of my local recreation centre. For a city like Toronto with large numbers of newcomers and a growing, ever changing population, it’s not hard to see how this might be a problem. Show me a listing of programs based on my current location! We’re sitting on an open data gold mine here. Let’s unlock that data and see what happens.
Ashley Casovan from the City of Edmonton discussed issues around open data that demonstrated the growing maturity and complexity of the movement. She moved beyond simple idealism and into questions of how to support a community of developers. For instance, Edmonton is considering the economics of open data: how can the City of Edmonton support developers selling their applications? How can apps be sustained after an app contest? How can they keep the local tech community from moving away? It will be helpful to see what policies and approaches Edmonton adopts to address these issues.
Momoko Price from Buzzdata looked at how to make data social from tech perspective. She noted that political leaders are always excited yet baffled that anyone would build apps for free. She compared politicians’ confusion with those who ask why anyone in their right mind would climb Mount Everest. The answer is the same for climbers or developers: because it is there and fun to do. She referenced one of Toronto’s most successful open data developers, Kevin Branigan of myttc.ca fame. Incidentally I randomly met Kevin at the conference, and ended up having a good chat about our respective work. More on that in another post.
Momoko discussed her work at Buzzdata and their goal to make data more social. The worst case scenario for encouraging interaction and development of a developer community is what she calls “the wall”, most recently demonstrated by the the Government of Canada’s Open Data portal, which has no way to for developers to interact or provide community feedback beyond an email address. Good hubs should engage the developer community, and current tools such as Facebook and Twitter, while fine for talking and discussing, do not get at the actual data. Buzzdata hopes to meet that need.
My favourite presenter of the day by far, Peter McLeod delivered a thoughtful, almost poetic exploration of how to improve democracy, citizen engagement and collective decision making in a large and diverse society. I know this was my favourite talk because I took the fewest notes, and just focused on listening and thinking. Essentially, he questioned the underlying premise that technology can improve democracy. Rather, he asked us all to think about how members of a community can collectively solve problems and consider the needs of strangers. People are yearning to participate and engage deeply with issues if given the opportunity. Peter noted that the Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform sent out 100 000 requests for volunteers to spend 15 Saturdays exploring, debating and recommending an approach to electoral reform for Ontario. 7 000 responded that they would be willing, a huge number considering they would essentially be giving up the freedom of 15 weekends to contribute. Peter asked us to imagine if we asked for even half that time commitment, how many more would have been willing? People want to learn and be involved societal decision making in a way that no Facebook “like” button or online poll could ever deliver. I highly recommend watching the archived webcast.
I also attended a session titled “The future of municipal performance reporting” with Morgan Peers. Seemingly obscure but incredibly relevant in our current political climate, this topic is a long standing interest of mine. Morgan looked at ways to improve how cities and towns report and communicate information about spending and delivery of public services. Good reporting requires different disciplines working together, including plain language and usability professionals, presenting information in ways that can be easily absorbed. Furthermore, how do we enable common comparisons between towns of different sizes, measure aspects of spending, understand regional prosperity, and return on investment in public services and the community? If you are interested in this area, you might also like to read my previous post on how municipal services can be classified and modeled. In some ways, Morgan’s talk was almost too ambitious, as he discussed a number of different frameworks and models that didn’t leave quite enough time to do them justice. Nonetheless, I enjoyed hearing the perspectives of someone from a different background than me explore these issues. Sadly, it seems that too often politicians are unwilling to support careful evaluation of program and service value, resorting instead to slogan and ideology to justify decision making.
Big thanks to the organizers and sponsors for organizing a conference with such great perspectives on ways to rethink and improve government.
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