Designing for Big Data
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As a follow up to the posting Transparency is bunk is Jeff Veen's presentation Designing for Big Data. The relevance to this web site is his statement at the end of the presentation that we need to have tools that don't tell specific stories about data but enable you to discover the stories in the data. It is my belief that the future of investigative journalism will combine traditional storytelling as static narrative and analytical storytelling as dynamic visualization.
Transparency is Bunk
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Aaron Swartz in his posting Transparency is Bunk raises again the very real problem of fake-transparency
This is why I have been advocating for automatic open records. I don't want to have secondary information and data from South Kingstown's Town and School Administrations. I want the information work products of the tools they use to be automatically available to me. I don't want see an edited and polished representation. I want the actual thing.
Swartz goes on to say
I could not agree more with him. This is the role of journalism. Let the role of "news" be handled by the services of machines digesting the data coming from automatic open records. Let the journalists do the intellectually stimulating and demanding job of investigation. (And the import job of cultural reporting.) I doubt that Liz Boardman will miss attending another pro-forma Town Council meeting.
"The way a typical US transparency project works is pretty simple. You find a government database, work hard to get or parse a copy, and then put it online with some nice visualizations.
"The problem is that reality doesn’t live in the databases. Instead, the databases that are made available, even if grudgingly, form a kind of official cover story, a veil of lies over the real workings of government. If you visit a site like GovTrack, which publishes information on what Congresspeople are up to, you find that all of Congress’s votes are on inane items like declaring holidays and naming post offices. The real action is buried in obscure subchapters of innocuous-sounding bills and voted on under emergency provisions that let everything happen without public disclosure."
This is why I have been advocating for automatic open records. I don't want to have secondary information and data from South Kingstown's Town and School Administrations. I want the information work products of the tools they use to be automatically available to me. I don't want see an edited and polished representation. I want the actual thing.
Swartz goes on to say
[...] so I want to add a helpful alternative: journalism. Investigative journalism lives up to the promise that transparency sites make."
I could not agree more with him. This is the role of journalism. Let the role of "news" be handled by the services of machines digesting the data coming from automatic open records. Let the journalists do the intellectually stimulating and demanding job of investigation. (And the import job of cultural reporting.) I doubt that Liz Boardman will miss attending another pro-forma Town Council meeting.
Town of South Kingstown Council votes against the “Automatic Open Records”
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Yesterday night the Town of South Kingstown Council voted against the “Automatic Open Records” petition funding the “Automatic Open Records” Committee outlined in my letter to the Town Council on March 30, 2009 [1]. The general tenor of the comments were that the goal is good but that funding it now is not good.
Each of the Council members gave their specific reasons for voting against the funding.
Councilor O'Neill said that he was discouraged by the “Bowling Alone” culture [2]. Having more people attend (in person) public meetings was important to him. My rebuttal was that this is a societal issue not reasonably to be addressed by one councilor. As our representative he should be going to where the people are rather than expecting them to come to him.
Councilor Eddy said she did not know if it was the will of the people. My rebuttal was that a petition is a statement of the will of the people. That over 95% of the people I asked to support the petition did so and signed. I am not sure how clearer it can be.
Councilor Hagan McEntee said that the Town Administration was preparing a new web site and hoped this would address some of what I have been asking for. My rebuttal was that I have been involved with advocating for automatic open records since the beginning of the budget process (November 2009) and during this time I have not seen a single request for public input into the new web site. This is a clear indication that the Town Council and the Town Administration sees this issue as a clerical one and not as an infrastructure one.
Councilor Fogarty spoke about the costs of delivering and supporting the tools and data. My rebuttal was that the physical costs of these are minor compared to the staffing costs. These are costs the town already incurs. I wish I had reminded her that she had the same objection at an earlier meeting and that my response then was the same as now: If you don't study the problem how will you know what the costs are and this is the purpose of the Committee.
I am afraid that I have forgotten Councilor Whaley's specific objections. She did touch on the issue of not understanding why a committee should be funded. Councilors Eddy, Fogarty, and Hagan McEntee touched on this to. (Councilor O'Neill did not object to the funding amount.) I did not directly respond to this objection during the meeting. I regret this because this was the actual issue at hand. Let me do so here.
An effective committee needs engaged members and adequate support. Support ranges from having expert testimony, to gathering option, to making photocopies. Remunerating an expert for time and expenses is an obvious cost. The making and tabulating an option poll has obvious costs. And there are the less obvious costs of advertising a meeting, turning the lights on and air conditioning the meeting room, photocopying the working documents, and recoding the meeting. (Many of these costs were enumerated in my letter [1].) The members volunteer their time and expertise but we shouldn't expect this of its support. And so from who's budget are these costs paid? A funded Committee adds further transparency to the process.
In the end, however, the lack of success for “automatic open records” is mine. In political terms my efforts was an “issues campaign.” An issue campaign's success is achieved by ever broadening the support. Each supporter needs to understand the issue from their perspective. This is something I will have to more steadily attend to the next time.
Thank you all for your support and encouragement. I look forward to our Councilors' commitment to addressing automatic open records later this year.
[1] http://southkingstownrinow.blogspot.com/2009/03/letter-to-town-council-30-march-2009.html
[2] http://www.bowlingalone.com/
Each of the Council members gave their specific reasons for voting against the funding.
Councilor O'Neill said that he was discouraged by the “Bowling Alone” culture [2]. Having more people attend (in person) public meetings was important to him. My rebuttal was that this is a societal issue not reasonably to be addressed by one councilor. As our representative he should be going to where the people are rather than expecting them to come to him.
Councilor Eddy said she did not know if it was the will of the people. My rebuttal was that a petition is a statement of the will of the people. That over 95% of the people I asked to support the petition did so and signed. I am not sure how clearer it can be.
Councilor Hagan McEntee said that the Town Administration was preparing a new web site and hoped this would address some of what I have been asking for. My rebuttal was that I have been involved with advocating for automatic open records since the beginning of the budget process (November 2009) and during this time I have not seen a single request for public input into the new web site. This is a clear indication that the Town Council and the Town Administration sees this issue as a clerical one and not as an infrastructure one.
Councilor Fogarty spoke about the costs of delivering and supporting the tools and data. My rebuttal was that the physical costs of these are minor compared to the staffing costs. These are costs the town already incurs. I wish I had reminded her that she had the same objection at an earlier meeting and that my response then was the same as now: If you don't study the problem how will you know what the costs are and this is the purpose of the Committee.
I am afraid that I have forgotten Councilor Whaley's specific objections. She did touch on the issue of not understanding why a committee should be funded. Councilors Eddy, Fogarty, and Hagan McEntee touched on this to. (Councilor O'Neill did not object to the funding amount.) I did not directly respond to this objection during the meeting. I regret this because this was the actual issue at hand. Let me do so here.
An effective committee needs engaged members and adequate support. Support ranges from having expert testimony, to gathering option, to making photocopies. Remunerating an expert for time and expenses is an obvious cost. The making and tabulating an option poll has obvious costs. And there are the less obvious costs of advertising a meeting, turning the lights on and air conditioning the meeting room, photocopying the working documents, and recoding the meeting. (Many of these costs were enumerated in my letter [1].) The members volunteer their time and expertise but we shouldn't expect this of its support. And so from who's budget are these costs paid? A funded Committee adds further transparency to the process.
In the end, however, the lack of success for “automatic open records” is mine. In political terms my efforts was an “issues campaign.” An issue campaign's success is achieved by ever broadening the support. Each supporter needs to understand the issue from their perspective. This is something I will have to more steadily attend to the next time.
Thank you all for your support and encouragement. I look forward to our Councilors' commitment to addressing automatic open records later this year.
[1] http://southkingstownrinow.blogspot.com/2009/03/letter-to-town-council-30-march-2009.html
[2] http://www.bowlingalone.com/
Governing as Social Networking
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Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, recently gave the presentation Governing as Social Networking. While his speech is not available his slide deck is. The deck has lots of data to think about, but I really liked the set of slides starting at #33, "There is a new pattern of communication, influence, and support in a world of networked individuals."
He states that there are four steps in the flow of communication:
1) Attention
2) Acquisition
3) Assessment
4) Action
The slides that follow explain how to address the steps. Well worth reading and thinking about.
He states that there are four steps in the flow of communication:
1) Attention
2) Acquisition
3) Assessment
4) Action
The slides that follow explain how to address the steps. Well worth reading and thinking about.
Governing as social networking
View more presentations from PewInternet.
IT is not a simple clerical matter
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Today's Narragansett Times (22 April 2009) has an article about reinstating the live broadcasting of Narragansett Town Council meetings. The $30,000 to $40,000 prices quoted by Verizon and Cox are outrageous. For about $500 in additional hardware the Town could use its existing equipment to stream the meetings live over the web using Ustream.Tv. With a little more coordination the meetings could be made available for later viewing at Archive.org.
My research and experience over the last few months has told me that municipalities are not being given good technical direction. Municipal IT (Information Technology) needs to treated strategically and not as a simple clerical matter. Until that is done we are going to continue to see our money poorly spent.
My research and experience over the last few months has told me that municipalities are not being given good technical direction. Municipal IT (Information Technology) needs to treated strategically and not as a simple clerical matter. Until that is done we are going to continue to see our money poorly spent.
Tufte on Recovery.gov
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Edward Tufte -- the author of many fine books on information visualization and their understanding -- is consulting on Recovery.gov. Follow this at Describing and tracking stimulus projects totaling $787,000,000,000 on the internet: any ideas?. Thank to Ed Manlove for the reference.
Petition seeks budget funds to study more record access
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The South County Independent newspaper had a good story about the petition this week. You can read the whole article at Petition seeks budget funds to study more record access.
Update: The South County Independent URL has been updated. Thanks to Brian Jepson for the error report and fix.
Update: The South County Independent URL has been updated. Thanks to Brian Jepson for the error report and fix.
Practical Tips for Government Web Sites To Improve Their Findability in Search
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Vanessa Fox's article Practical Tips for Government Web Sites To Improve Their Findability in Search gives good advise on making your site more useful to Google's, Yahoo!'s, and others search engines. In short
- Use XML Sitemaps
- Don't block access to content
- Avoid dead ends when moving content
- Use descriptive ALT text for images
- Ensure all links are working and that the server is responsive
- Ensure each page has a unique title and meta description that accurately describe the page
- Ensure links are functional with JavaScript disabled
- Use progressive enhancement best practices to ensure a usable experience with Flash, JavaScript, and similar elements disabled
- Understand the fundamentals of search engine friendly web architecture
Monica Guzman: Being an Awesome News Commenter
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One of the difficulties of participation is knowing how to. Having more opportunities for participation alone does not make it any easier. Today you can speak at a meeting, write a letter, phone, TXT, email, instant message, twitter, blog, vlog, etc. Still, if the message is not crafted then it will likely be ignored. This video of Monica Guzman's Ignite presentation on Being an Awesome News Commenter is a good start at understanding how to craft your message.
The Ignite format is a great at focusing the speaker and the audience. The speaker has to tell the story in 5 minutes with 20 slides that auto-forward every 15 seconds. The audience contributes 5 minutes too. It would be very interesting to use this format in a public forum. I wonder if anyone has?
The Ignite format is a great at focusing the speaker and the audience. The speaker has to tell the story in 5 minutes with 20 slides that auto-forward every 15 seconds. The audience contributes 5 minutes too. It would be very interesting to use this format in a public forum. I wonder if anyone has?
April 6 and 7 Town Council budget meetings not online
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I was unable to convert the DVDs of the April 6 and 7 Town Council budget meetings for use online. The AoA software I use was unable convert past 8 min on one DVD and 40 mins on the other DVD.
These DVDs are copies of the original DVDs recorded using PBS's loaner recording equipment. The new recording equipment arrived a few days ago and so I hope we will be able to get an online version of the April 27 budget meeting.
These DVDs are copies of the original DVDs recorded using PBS's loaner recording equipment. The new recording equipment arrived a few days ago and so I hope we will be able to get an online version of the April 27 budget meeting.
Need to an explanation of redacted expenses
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The first expense I looked at at the DEM was April's FEES: MISCELLANEOUS and every expense was redacted. The DEM spent $12,337.97 in April on unknown fees. If fees continue for a year then there will be $148,055.64 of expenses for no known reason.
If I understand correctly, based on the Attorney General's Guide to Open Government in Rhode Island, 5th Edition, the redactions do not need to be explained. However, given that $148,055.64 is no small amount of money, some explanation, within the spirit of APRA, should be given for redacted expenses.
If I understand correctly, based on the Attorney General's Guide to Open Government in Rhode Island, 5th Edition, the redactions do not need to be explained. However, given that $148,055.64 is no small amount of money, some explanation, within the spirit of APRA, should be given for redacted expenses.
State of Rhode Island's Transparency Portal
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State of Rhode Island's Transparency Portal
"This website provides two methods to track government spending. The first is the RIPAY website; this allows users to search for expenditures by vendor. The second method is the Open Government expenditure search; this provides the ability to review spending in the context of expenditure classifications. The data presented for each method is updated weekly from the State accounting system and is presented in a user-friendly format.
"The information on RIPAY has existed for several years and relates to all State agencies. At this time, the open government expenditure search is applicable only to the agencies listed below. In the near future, expenditures for other State agencies will be available."
Smartpens and public meeting
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How could a $200 tool dramatically change a public meeting? The tool is Lightscribe's Pulse smartpen. The Pulse is an ink pen that when used on specially marked paper digitally records the text written and the words spoken (actually, any audio within reach of its microphone). What is equally remarkable is that you can use the pen to replay the audio associated with any of the written text at any time in the future. When using this in a meeting you now have
1) an audio record of the meeting with its discussions, dissensions, monologues, etc,
2) a textual record of the meeting, including content such as minutes, notes, illustrations, etc, and
3) a timeline (or living graph) that connects the two.
Here is an example used in Michael Wesch's cultural anthropology classroom: [Show in full screen for best effect.]
Now imagine this tool being used within a public meeting. One scenario is to use it as in the classroom example above, a secretary uses the Pulse to record the meeting. The secretary would use the actual paper of the meeting's agenda [1] to record who and what is said throughout the meeting. A limit of this scenario is that while you hear many voices you can not (digitally) identify the voices and that the textual record is only that of the secretary. (And being a good secretary is a learned skill.) A second scenario is to give each public board member a Pulse and have them record their thoughts on the actual paper of the meeting. Since each member has a Pulse there is no need to record who is speaking. Instead, at the end of the meeting, collect the Pulses and the notes and then use an online tool to present (on the web) all the records as individual records and in combination.
Generally, the audio and notes of a meeting is far more significant than the video of a meeting. And this can be had for $200 and a little creativity.
[1] The Livescript paper is special only in that it has patterns printed on it (in light blue) that the Pulse pen understands as page location coordinates and others as commands. You can purchase sheets of the paper to use with any photocopier. In the future, Livescribe has said, you will be able to print both the agenda (or other "form") and the codes at the same time on normal paper.
1) an audio record of the meeting with its discussions, dissensions, monologues, etc,
2) a textual record of the meeting, including content such as minutes, notes, illustrations, etc, and
3) a timeline (or living graph) that connects the two.
Here is an example used in Michael Wesch's cultural anthropology classroom: [Show in full screen for best effect.]
Now imagine this tool being used within a public meeting. One scenario is to use it as in the classroom example above, a secretary uses the Pulse to record the meeting. The secretary would use the actual paper of the meeting's agenda [1] to record who and what is said throughout the meeting. A limit of this scenario is that while you hear many voices you can not (digitally) identify the voices and that the textual record is only that of the secretary. (And being a good secretary is a learned skill.) A second scenario is to give each public board member a Pulse and have them record their thoughts on the actual paper of the meeting. Since each member has a Pulse there is no need to record who is speaking. Instead, at the end of the meeting, collect the Pulses and the notes and then use an online tool to present (on the web) all the records as individual records and in combination.
Generally, the audio and notes of a meeting is far more significant than the video of a meeting. And this can be had for $200 and a little creativity.
[1] The Livescript paper is special only in that it has patterns printed on it (in light blue) that the Pulse pen understands as page location coordinates and others as commands. You can purchase sheets of the paper to use with any photocopier. In the future, Livescribe has said, you will be able to print both the agenda (or other "form") and the codes at the same time on normal paper.
AG cannot interpret or express an opinion on charter
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I received a response from Laura Ann Marasco, Special Assistant Attorney General, in the Open Government unit of the Department of Attorney General to my email requesting a legal opinion on sub-section 4222.C of the Town's charter. The upshot is that it is a Town matter and so the AG can not interpret or express opinion. She suggests contacting the Town Council or and Town Solicitor.
The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory
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O'Reilly Radar has the interesting posting The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory by John Geraci. The title alone characterizes what I hope is the near future for South Kingstown.
The idea of using crowdsourcing to provide or enhance government services is a very powerful one. Crowdsourcing aims to improve a service or data by enabling the users of the service or data to have a hand in improving it. The Wikipedia is perhaps the most widely known online example. The Great Backyard Bird Count the most widely known off-line example. Lesser well known examples, examples that many of you participate in, include adding new words to Microsoft Word's spelling dictionary and rating movies on Netflix. The goal is to use the wisdom of the crowd and the specific knowledge of an individual together. And usually at little cost to the municipality and little inconvenience to the individual.
The idea of using crowdsourcing to provide or enhance government services is a very powerful one. Crowdsourcing aims to improve a service or data by enabling the users of the service or data to have a hand in improving it. The Wikipedia is perhaps the most widely known online example. The Great Backyard Bird Count the most widely known off-line example. Lesser well known examples, examples that many of you participate in, include adding new words to Microsoft Word's spelling dictionary and rating movies on Netflix. The goal is to use the wisdom of the crowd and the specific knowledge of an individual together. And usually at little cost to the municipality and little inconvenience to the individual.
Stumblesafely and quantifiable awareness
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O'Reilly Radar has an interesting interview with Eric Gunderson of Development Seed on the Promise of Open Data. One of the projects Development Seed worked on is Stumblesafely which mashed-up bar locations with crime data to help Washington, D.C. area bar-goers pick the safest places to drink. Unfortunately, the mash-up shows there is no safe place to drink!
Being able to build these kinds of awareness tools with public data will objectively ground the conversation about the costs of safety for both the people and the police. They can both use the information to advocate for using money to an end that's success can be measured.
Being able to build these kinds of awareness tools with public data will objectively ground the conversation about the costs of safety for both the people and the police. They can both use the information to advocate for using money to an end that's success can be measured.
How to track changes in documents
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Today I received an email from a wiki at PBWiki containing information about all the documents at the wiki that were changed yesterday. The information includes not only the list of changed documents but also a visual indication of the changes to those documents. I can't share the actual email but in image to the left you can see each changed page is given its own blue section in the email. The blue section contains the page's content (or a portion of the content) with deletions marked in red and additions marked in green. This kind of document change visualization is commonly used in software development organizations for reviewing changes to all manner of document kinds. We should expect the same from our government when reviewing the drafts and final copy of legislation, zoning changes, etc.
The Versioning on Paper video is a enlightening and frightening example of what needs to be done today to track document changes.
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