Let my data go! the case for transparent government

(I’ll be speaking on data visualization as a tool for transparent government at
Personal Democracy Forum 2008, June 23-4) 
 
RELATED: Federal Computer Week op-ed on “transparent government”

an address to the New, New Internet Web 2.0 conference
November 1, 2007

I suspect my presentation today will be the first time many of you have heard of “transparent government.” It is an exciting new way of treating government data that will blossom as Web 2.0 apps, and what I call the Web 2.0 ethos of cooperation, become commonplace.Among other benefits, transparent government can:

and may even reduce the cost of those services.

Skeptical of those claims? I don’t blame you.

All I ask is a little willing suspension of disbelief as I describe the approach and its benefits, then let’s have robust discussion of its pros and cons.

Data: from dull to dramatic

Remember the final scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when the Ark of the Covenant was moved to storage in a government warehouse?

When that happened, even though nothing was said, you just knew the Ark wouldn’t ever be seen again, no way, no how.

Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of citizens seem to think happens with a lot of government data. Their taxes pay for the data collection and processing. Their activities and lives are the data’s raw material. But once data are collected, most citizens don’t have a clue how it’s actually used or whether it has any value.

It often seems as if these data are condemned to remain meaningless numbers locked in obscure databases within unknown agencies.

Where the heck is it and why should we care?

Now, enabled largely by Web 2.0 apps, there’s an effort to change this perception about data and their usability by grassroots and/0r officially-sanctioned programs encouraging the general public to examine public data, in hopes that these new perspectives may lead to valuable insights that might affect the creation, delivery and evaluation of government services.

This field is so new that there’s no consensus on what to call it, or even what the content is. While I’ve chosen to use the transparent government theme, some variations include data liberation, public data, Google Government, or e-democracy.

“Transparent government,” as I use the term, would include implementation of the 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which requires creation of a search engine that would allow citizens to track federal spending. However, I’m talking something much more far-reaching than disclosure of spending, as you will see.

When ordinary people are able to gain access to government data even the limited number of examples of transparent government to date show that extraordinary things can result:

No matter what the specific form, these transparency projects create insights, provoke discussion — and sometimes outrage — on issues ranging from what military spending might pay for if diverted to human services to where illegal billboards are located.

Why?
Perhaps the best explanations of why we need transparency in government come from some leaders in the movement, Suzanne Peck, the former CIO of the District of Columbia; Microsoft “Evangelist” Jon Udell, and the staff of the data mashup site Swivel:

According to Peck: “if .. municipalities exist to organize efficient citizen services … they should be accountable for … efficiency and level of service with which they use those dollars.“ (and, BTW, part of the way this accountability is encouraged is the concept of sousveillance, letting government agencies know that the public is analyzing their performance and will hold them accountable.

Udell says: “…it’s ours, our taxes paid for it, so we should have it. But .. the compelling reason is .. we need more eyeballs, hands, and brains figuring out what’s going on in the world, so … when we debate courses of action we can ground our thinking in the best facts and interpretations.” l

And, the staff of Swivel are positively ecstatic about data’s power to improve our lives : “We believe data is most valuable when it’s out in the open where everyone can see it, debate it, have fun, and share new insights. Swivel is applying the power of the Web to data so that life gets better.”

Wow! These ain’t your grandmother’s data bases!

What?
Because the transparent government movement is so new, there are no formulas for what constitutes a component — in fact, perhaps there never will be any, because variety and pushing the envelope is one of the key values. However, the following examples will give you some broad parameters:

Private-sector inspiration
As with many e-gov initiatives, government transparency can capitalize on existing private-sector sites that help build understanding of data visualization, create user-friendly tools to facilitate it, and web sites where the resulting mashups can be aggregated and organizes by tags or other criteria.

For example, Many Eyes is an initiative of IBM’s Visual Communication Lab.
As its creators say, Many Eyes:

“is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to ‘democratize’ visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis…. All of us in the Lab are passionate about the potential of data visualization to spark insight. It is that magical moment we live for: an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern.

“As visualization designers we have witnessed and experienced many of those wondrous sparks. But in recent years, we have become acutely aware that the visualizations and the sparks they generate, take on new value in a social setting. Visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data. We all deal with data that we’d like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.”

I briefly mentioned another private sector model, Swivel, earlier.
With similar passion for the social benefits of free exchange of data, they say:

“Swivel’s mission is to liberate the world’s data and make it useful so new insights can be discovered and shared…. the world’s most important data have been completely neglected. … When people, business leaders and politicians cannot access the facts in an engaging way they’ll just ignore them. And when the facts are ignored citizens, communities and investors lose. Without accountability to the facts our world gets worse. We believe data is most valuable when it’s out in the open where everyone can see it, debate it, have fun, and share new insights. Swivel is applying the power of the Web to data so that life gets better.”

Transparent Government Pioneers
So who are the pioneers of transparent government? Where can you go for inspiration and to better understand the transparent government phenomenon? Let me describe a range of them that will give you an idea about the concept and how individuals and organizations have taken on this challenge without cooperation or involvement by government agencies.

Probably the first transparent government site mashing up data and a Google Map is the award-winning Chicago Crime. It was developed not by a police department employee, but by Adrian Holovaty, a Web developer with a background in journalism and databases.

Chicago Crime was, and is, not affiliated with the Chicago Police Department.

Holovaty takes data from the official Citizen ICAM site, which lets the public search for recently reported crimes. As we will see later, some municipalities do real-time raw data feeds to facilitate citizen mashups, but the Chicago Police to not — in fact, it takes a week after a crime before the data is posted, so once a day, Chicago Crime automatically does a screen scrape of new crime data from ICAM and it’s added to to the mashup.

A little more quirky, but equally important because it illustrates how a single individual with a real passion for an issue, no matter how obscure it may be, can bring light to an issue through a clever mashup, is IllegalSigns.ca. As the site’s name implies, this one concentrates on removal of illegal billboards in Toronto.

Equally important, this is an important example of sousveillance, in which government agencies are held accountable by public attention to their work — or lack thereof.

Another that’s probably of more interest to you working in DC is the National Priorities Project. It focuses on the impact of federal spending and other policies at the national, state, congressional district and local levels. It is an example of a transparent government project that relies more on provocative combinations of databases than on clever visualizations. For example, it allows users to determine tradeoffs between federal spending on military projects and a wide range of alternatives, including hiring teachers. The comparisons can be done on a statewide basis or by individual Congressional district.

The last example of citizen-initiated transparent government I’ll cite is Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles, a collaboration between UCLA and community activists. Its motto is “neighborhood improvement and recovery is not just for the experts.” They say the staff is “ ..firmly committed to the accountability of making public information broadly accessible and understandable to local communities.”

NKLA provides tools — such as access to the city’s code enforcement MIS — to access property and neighborhood data. It works with neighborhood residents, community organizations, and policymakers to mobilize support for community improvement in the Los Angeles area.

Under a new federal grant, NKLA is transforming the Neighborhood Early Warning System (developed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology), which identifies early signs that a neighborhood may be declining, into a way to monitor neighborhood conditions.

This is an important example of the value of transparent government because the system combines data on 7 “problem indicators” (from code violations to current and longer term property tax delinquencies) that might have otherwise remained isolated, as a means to highlight areas that need assistance before they become seriously blighted. It’s great example of visualization’s power: if you see a single block where there are overlays indicating 4 or 5 (or worse..) of the factors are present there, the numbers become almost irrelevant: you see there’s a serious problem (now if only the NKLA site wasn’t fraught with technical problems and a totally- unresponsive staff, they might actually be effective…) .

Another NKLA goal is an important one for transparent government: they want release of the relevant data by city agencies not just historically, but on a real-time basis, so it can identify problems before they escalate.

NKLA also illustrates another aspect of transparent government: when a Web-based service becomes available from companies, we start to ask why isn’t a similar service available from government? NKLA says, “The aim is for a system that will help residents track code complaints, inspections, and improvements in ways like online customers track their Fed Ex packages.”

Leading the way for government: DC’s Citywide Data Warehouse
However, the most exciting model — bar none — is right next door: the District of Columbia’s Citywide Data Warehouse (CDW), created as part of the city’s operational reform efforts.

CDW gets it.

It provides real-time RSS, XML, and ATOM feeds. Among the benefits:

The feeds are drawn from more than 150 data sets, ranging from the all-important crime reports to pothole complaints to the DPW (which Jon Udell quickly whipped into a cool sousveillance mashup).

I’ve just been informed that DC has just added (although I haven’t been able to find them yet) the critical elements whose absence had kept the program from really being successful:

They’re evidently still lacking a public outreach program to encourage the public to participate.

Concerns
There are a lot of concerns that can and should be addressed before a transparent government project is launched. Fortunately, there are sound solutions to most of them.

Test transparent government behind firewall first
I realize this whole concept of releasing data to the general public is downright scary to many in government!

So here’s a great way to ease into transparent government: apply the same strategy behind the firewall first.

After all, your own employees may be struggling with incompatible data bases, may need to reach across agency “silos” to see if there might be synergies between programs, or they may need to see if plotting various data bases geographically might illustrate hotspots where intervention should be concentrated.

Just as with public transparent government projects: employees from outside a given agency may be able to provide new insights simply because of their differing life experiences and insights.

Also, as more young workers, who have never known life without the Web, join governmental workforces, they’ll naturally ask why tools they’ve used can’t be used in government. This can empower them and tap their expertise.

Experimenting with transparent government on the inside lets you:

When launching a behind-the-firewall data visualization site, you need to have the same components as with a public site:

Going public
When you’ve done the behind-the-scenes work and realized value from an internal data visualization program and decide to launch a public transparent government program, you need to devote resources — and, most of all, make a serious commitment to analyze the results and act on the findings where feasible:

Transparent government a reality: but will government reap the benefits?
Of course there are obstacles and risks with transparent government, but there’s little choice about whether to implement it: as the public becomes more at ease with Web 2.0 participation tools and sees the benefits of ad hoc projects such as Chicago Crime, they will come to demand it! More important are the benefits, particularly in an era in which public faith and participation in government must be rebuilt. It:

Who would have believed that dry data — with a healthy does of Web 2.0 magic — could become the engine to involve the public in governmental transformation!

Thank you!

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