Sunlight Foundation

CityCamp Honolulu: Advancing open government in Hawaii

Joining us today as our guest blogger is Jason Hibbets. Jason is the project manager at Red Hat and lead administrator for opensource.com. Sunlight is a great supporter of the CityCamp initiative and continues to highlight efforts in City and State open government.

The theme that emerged from the first CityCamp Honolulu, held on December 3 (the 17th CityCamp held worldwide), was restoring citizen confidence in their government. In a very collaborative and participatory atmosphere, organizers looked to citizens to generate ideas for the City of Honolulu's upcoming Code for America project and to harness the power of design thinking to rapidly prototype ten topics generated during the unconference.

Government panel and first break out sessions

Burt Lum, a CityCamp Honolulu organizer, kicked off the day and kept participants on track during the event. Lum provided a brief introduction about what to expect. The day started with a government panel to provide an update on current and future initiatives in the City and County of Honolulu. The panel included Gordon Bruce, CIO at City and County of Honolulu, Forest Frizzell, Deputy Director at City and County of Honolulu, and Doug Chin, Managing Director, City of Honolulu.

Forest Frizzell, also an organizer for the CityCamp, shared a timeline that highlighted initiatives that have already happened, such as Can Do Honolulu, an online portal for citizens. The timeline then showed the CityCamp event and a 24-hour hackathon scheduled for January 2012. The momentum from these events will feed the Code for America kickoff in February 2012 and an anticipated Open 311 project also in 2012. Bruce talked about the vision to create a smarter citizen. He said if government IT can present a clear vision that improves services, saves money, and manages IT costs, the results will lead to engaged citizens who participate in their government. Bruce also touched on the Office of Information Practices open data policy. If they get a request for open data, they produce the data set and open it to the public. "If media X comes in and asks for data, instead of just giving it to the media, we're going to give it to the public. We'll get it on the Can Do site," Bruce stated.

"It's a real change in how we think and how we do things," he said. It's this type of shift in mentality that is making real progress in open government. More IT departments should take note and look to establish similar policies to provide open data to citizens in this manner. After the panel, attendees transitioned into unconference mode. Voting for the day's sessions concluded, and the first five sessions were announced. Participants moved to the breakout rooms and started to collaborate on their chosen topics. I attended and participated in a session about S.W.E.E.T.S.: Surf, Weather, Emergencies, Events, Traffic, and Services. The idea was to create one platform that brings all of the city and county departments together. It would leverage real-time, location-based data to keep citizens informed on what's happening right now.

Business panel and second break out sessions

After a short lunch break, the second panel of the day provided perspectives from outside of Hawaii. I joined the panel with Alissa Black, Government Relations Director at Code for America and Steve Bretches, a consultant at IBM. Our goal was to provide insight to the audience from what we're seeing around the rest of North America and beyond. Black highlighted Code for America projects like Change By Us, Classtalk, and Where's My School Bus. Bretches helped to draw comparisons between technology and the people who use it. "It's not about technology, it's about the cooperation with the government, community, and businesses," claimed Bretches.

I added lessons we could learn from the open source world, such as creating a participatory and inviting environment that would lead to a culture of transparency and accountability. I also provided examples of what's happening at other CityCamps. In Colorado, they are looking to advance adoption of the Open Government Directive. In Raleigh, we are continuing the CityCamp movement with quarterly meetups and project follow-up. The second round of sessions started. I jumped in and moderated a session on making the City of Honolulu's budget more transparent. The participants and I made an outline of what is currently available from the city and drafted action steps to explore how an open budget would be citizen-friendly by prototyping several use cases and scenarios.

Design thinking

The final charge for the day was to begin prototyping the top ten ideas that had been generated. The organizers prepared a brief introduction by showing a video from NYU Wagner on design thinking for public policy and social impact. Participants then broke into ten different groups began to rapid prototype the ideas from the day that included:

  •  S.W.E.E.T.S.: Surf, Weather, Emergencies, Events , Traffic, and Services (real-time city information)
  • Adopt-a-node (wifi)
  • Real-time bus arrival
  • Standard API
  • Expand online service
  • Trash to treasure
  • Pay for parking/find a parking spot application
  • Map a bike lane/find a bike route application
  • City tax revenue/spending trends (transparent budget)
  • City reminders
Each team drilled down into its topic. Some came up with action plans; others developed design mock-ups. All the teams shared their prototypes by presenting to the larger group.

Inspired by CityCamp

CityCamp Honolulu was a huge success. Frizzell reacted at the end of the day, "I'm overwhelmed. I can't believe how many people showed. Today was a huge success. We got a ton of ideas that we could act on—that we could develop in-house or in partnership with the local development community. Citycamp was so useful, and we inspired a lot of people." I was inspired by the attendees, ideas, and the participants at CityCamp Honolulu. And I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one. In closing, organizer Frizzell charged CityCampers with a mission. He challenged the community to help transition the CityCamp event from an emotional movement into a reality. "How do we inspire people to become involved?" he asked.

Frizzell proclaimed, "It's not about the app; it's not about the open data; it's about people taking a more active roll in their community." What can a CityCamp can do for your community? As Frizzell pointed out, it's a movement that can engage your local community. I'll add that CityCamp can restore trust in government. The activities and projects from the CityCamp movement are re-engaging citizens who think they don't have a voice in government. It's giving people a reason to participate and not just the latest hot topic of debate.

From the event

 

Empowering Citizens to become better Watchdogs

Our trip to Utah last month to deliver your letters to the National Governors Association (NGA) -- asking our governors to support open government -- was a first in many ways. As Laurenellen mentioned in her descriptive recap of the trip, the energetic press conference that culminated in a march to the conference venue may have ended with rejection from the NGA staffers, but not before we saw the power in real citizen engagement.

The day before, as a prelude to the press conference, we had a round-table chat with some of the key open government advocates in a session that had initially been designed to be a “watchdog training” but in fact turned out to be an intimate discussion on the issues surrounding transparency in Utah government. Nearly 20 leaders representing groups like the Utah Foundation for Open Government, Alliance for Better Utah, League of Women Voters, Common Cause and journalists came out to meet us. Over the course of our discussion it became clear that all seemed to agree on the need to increase the level of citizen engagement while involving legislators in partisan issues.

However, when it comes to engagement of lawmakers things get complicated when party lines are involved. We often say at Sunlight that the party out of power is the biggest supporter of transparency, and as Utah is primarily a one-party state, the incentives are low to implement open reforms. But this should not be the case. Parties in the majority should still be transparency supporters, and citizens have the power to remind folks on both sides of line that open government is a virtue. Though most of the legislators in Utah were noted to not be the most technology savvy (thus affecting their concept of electronic government), a suggestion to find a way to get modern (even) partisan leaders to support technology in government was well received. When incorporated with resources such as Facebook and Google Groups that help facilitate personal conversations to build understanding of otherwise complex issues like civic hacking and government data mashups, technology adaptation by both legislators and up-and-coming open government organizations can be made easier. Forming a common interest group provides a platform for discussion. The open secret here is to pull your resources and centralize them -- in other words, to organize.

One of the commendable cases of citizen organizing from Utah is the GRAMA campaign. If you look closely you will see that public records -- which are an issue of common interest across different civic communities -- helped bring people together in Utah. If it fits into the basket of common interest, then it goes into the realm of prioritization. But as the citizen effort to repeal the bill slaying GRAMA succeeded -- as the people won -- energy and activism around the issue of public records faded, leaving transparency advocates in the lurch.

Challenge: How do communities sustain interest in an issue after the crisis has passed?

The discussion with Utah’s transparency leaders revealed that the blogging community in Utah is fading. Political blogging in the state might have fizzled down because the audience for it has reduced. When bloggers are not concentrating on national issues and are jumping ship to become legislators (like Holly Richardson who is one of the state’s notable female political bloggers but is now an elected House representative), staying involved in local issues can be trying.

Some resources for both individuals and organizations to help build strength (and numbers) in their activist pools include:

  • The CityCamp unconferences model: a great way to get out the local community around open government issues, find out who’s interested/invested in the space, and maybe even inspire a few new bloggers.
  • The 10 Principles for Opening Up Government Information, a guide writte by Sunlight and several other #opengov groups which can be used for conversations about budget portals, public records databases, legislative data, campaign finance, etc.)
Other thoughts, ideas, and tips we shared at the meeting that may be helpful:
  • When tackling specific legislation, getting violations of the law documented, especially on camera can create credibility and traction if you choose to send it to media. Here is an example from Sunlight’s home turf: DC.
  • Sending out a report card/questionnaire to city councils on where they stand on specific open government issues can be a great way to get some attention for these issues. (OpenAustin did just that here).
  • The Utah.gov campaign money in politics is supposed to be open but some values have N/A on where the money came from. How does your state website look like?
  • Entrepreneurial journalism - a fancier term for journalism that involves reinvention of the trade, and for the citizen watchdog, an appropriate way to tell the story of local issues happening bearing in mind what the people --- formerly known as the audience-- would like to see. The Internet is now making it possible for anyone who can write, to be able to publish, so get going!
  • Identify communities that have bad open government (public records laws) as projects which can bring people together. An example could be looking at the different types of public records responses to the same requests. Charles Davis offers more in his book Art of Access.
  • As a follow up to problems identified in public records acquisition, people can merge a citizen network to educate themselves on how to submit a request. You could even create an informal document with tips on how to file effective public records requests just as The Utah Foundation for Open Government did. (Just make sure you put the resource in an easy to access location). Again, this is where the idea of creating a Google Group or listserv network comes in handy!
  • Another suggested idea could be looking at how procurement codes are currently being regulated (or not) -- as is the case in Utah.
Do you have other tips to share? Join the discussion in the comments section.

Big thanks to Tubbytwoshoes for the awesome image.

CityCamp San Francisco

We're big fans of CityCamp here at Sunlight. It's very cool to watch the process of government opening before your eyes, as these local unconferences bring together city officials, activists, journalists and developers to make real change in their communities.

So I was pumped to get this message from Jay Nath in San Francisco:

CityCamp San Francisco 2011: Ideas and Action is shaping up to be a great unconference event on June 18 at 1 So. Van Ness, but it won't be the same without you. If you've already registered, we hope you'll do so today, and if you already have, please tell your friends. You can register free through Eventbrite here.

CityCampSF focuses on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. We'll have discussion and action sessions around sustainability, health, digital engagement and much more. Bring your best ideas and action!

TechCentralSF is hosting a pre-CityCampSF mixer and panel on “Gamification for Good” on June 17. You can get advance discount tickets here. We're happy to have TechCentralSF as an organizing sponsor, along with GovFresh, NationBuilder and Third Thursdays SF. Media sponsors include Gov 2.0 Radio, Shareable and OpenSF, and fiscal sponsors are Tropo, Blockboard and FirmStep.

Have ideas for unconference sessions? List and vote on them here.

If you're in San Francisco, check it out and help build the movement for local open government.