I like Ellen Dunham-Jone's TED presentation on retrofitting suburbia. A good synopsis of what is happening and where it is going (in the short term).

"Ellen Dunham-Jones fires the starting shot for the next 50 years' big sustainable design project: retrofitting suburbia. To come: Dying malls rehabilitated, dead "big box" stores re-inhabited, parking lots transformed into thriving wetlands." More....

Sidewalk Graffiti Provides Navigational Assistance For Subway Commuters

"A considerate cartographer wielding a stencil and a can of spray paint has left a helpful navigational compass at the top of the stairs outside the NRW train at Prince Street for commuters exiting the station. As even native New Yorkers cant attest, everyone has exited a subway station and needed a moment to reorient themselves; a directional compass will make it that much easier. The unknown compass crusader stenciled the sidewalk at the uptown 6 train station on Spring Street as well. "

http://nyctheblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/sidewalk-graffiti-provides-navigational.html

I love simple, unobtrusive signage. It can be used in physical space and virtual space. Brainstorming on this example from NYC that painted a compare rose at the exit of subway stations you could use the same technique too

* point to bathrooms near parking

* point to information booths

* point to insert-your-favoriate-coffee-franchise-here

What would you point too?

Permalinks and hashtags for city council agenda items

"Among the agenda items that came before the Keene City Council last night was a request by Tom LePage, who runs Armadillo's Burritos, to extend his sidewalk cafe around the corner onto Railroad Square. I'm in favor of it! As we head into the summer season, I'll be going to Armadillo's a lot. I always want to sit outside, but there are only a few tables out front, and they're usually occupied. Around the corner, where the restaurant abuts Railroad Square, there's more space available, and it'd be fun to have a ringside seat for the various musical, artistic, and political activities that happen in the square.

"Tom's proposal came up at this point in the meeting. The relevant piece of video, served up byGranicus, lasts only about five seconds. That's how long it took for city clerk Patty Little to mention the item, and for mayor Dale Pregent to refer it to the Planning, Licences, and Development Committee. But thanks to a new feature added to the Granicus service, that bit of city business now has a permalink and also a hashtag (#granicus732_7716)."

http://blog.jonudell.net/2010/05/21/permalinks-and-hashtags-for-city-council-agenda-items/

Christina Gagnier: Government Must Give a ****: A Lesson from @garyvee

"The attitude to accompany the technology is simple. It is just a matter of letting people know you are there, listening and caring about what they have to say, whether it be about their communities, statewide policies or national issues. Civic iPhone applications like SeeClickFix and CitySourced work because their users feel like the city government actually cares when that pothole finally gets filled. They are not magic; they just give citizens the validation that they matter and their actions count. The application itself is not what transforms the citizen experience, rather, it is the physical act of the government itself that comes as a result from the data collected by the application."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-gagnier/government-must-give-a-a_b_513434.html

Sacramento City Council Receives Agendas on Kindles and Netbooks

"Distributing meeting agendas to Sacramento City Council members has become less expensive and greener now that members receive agendas electronically on Amazon Kindle e-book readers and netbooks.

"Before the switch, the city consumed one ream of paper per day for each council member for all necessary documents, according to Sacramento City Clerk Shirley Concolino. That amount of paper cost $1,500 per year, per council member."

http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/749789

I would really like to know how the council members use the e-books with the other information sources -- their own memory, and that is in print and online. Nevertheless, this is a good sign of growth -- willingness to accept change.

Comprehensive Community Plan now online

The Planning department had underway the re-digitization of the Comprehensive Community Plan. Better news is that it is now online at http://www.southkingstownri.com/town-government/municipal-departments/planning/comprehensive-community-plan. Vincent Murray, Director of Planning, was kind enough to send me a copy of his letter to the Town Manager.

Letter to the TC regards putting online the town's comprehensive plan

Dear Councilors:

Would you please include in the Comprehensive Community Plan five year update work the placing online, as one or more PDF documents, the full text, maps, etc of the whole plan — the updates and the original, unchanged, portions as a comprehensive document.

I understand that the electronic sources of the original Comprehensive Community Plan have been lost and so the additional work is not a light undertaking. I also understand that very few printed copies of the plan are available for purchase. And, further, new printed copies require the time consuming activity of assembling the original with the amendments and additions since its 1992 publication. This document is the framework within which so many of the town’s decisions are made that its easy and broad availability should be a priority during this five year update.

Yours truly,
Andrew Gilmartin

Four Steps to Gov 2.0: A Guide for Agencies - O'Reilly Radar

If I am an agency head and want to embrace Gov 2.0, what should I do first? ... Four Steps to Gov 2.0: A Guide for Agencies - O'Reilly Radar

Redefining the Role of Citizen in a Gov 2.0 World

John Kamensky's posting Redefining the Role of Citizen in a Gov 2.0 World is a good summary of the new citizen ideas coming out of the various open government efforts these last few years. Read the whole post. The headlines are

"A prominent role these days is engaging citizens in oversight and accountability. "

"we can’t become a nation of fault finders"

"Increased involvement in dialogue. This is where conversations are back and forth, and where both sides learn."

"Being better informed about issues. This is where citizens can gain a broader understanding of the implications and tradeoffs in making big decisions, or even local decisions."

"Providing ideas and solutions. Sometimes people with different perspectives can solve problems that the experts have a hard time with."

"Being empowered by information to solving their own problems. Too often, complexity creates a need for “middle men” such as tax advisors, lobbyists, and attorneys. Reducing complexity, or providing information more openly or using “plain language” to describe things can make a huge difference."

"Becoming involved in co-delivering public services."

"Becoming engaged in framing public decisions. In some communities, such as Des Moines, IA, citizens became engaged in measuring the performance of city services and then involved in helping set city budgeting priorities."

Re: Against Transparency

Larry Lessig, in his wonderful New Republic essay Against Transparency begins with

We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement–if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness–will inspire not reform, but disgust. The “naked transparency movement,” as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.

Please do read the whole essay before weighing in.

Jon Udell has a good posting collecting some of the links Contextual clothing for naked transparency.

Open innovation tools

Manor, TX uses an online tool to accept ideas for enhancing or improving municipal services. There is a simple and clear process that all ideas undergo on their way to either acceptance or not. The online tools is Spigit.

Better Policy Making

The UK Government Cabinet Office, in their Better Policy Making report, and outlined 9 features of modern policy making:

1. Forward Looking - Defining policy outcomes and taking a long term view
   
2. Outward Looking - Taking account of the national, European and international situation; learning from the experience of other countries; recognising regional variations.
   
3. Innovative, Flexible & Creative - Questioning established ways of dealing with things, encouraging new and creative ideas, identifying and managing risk.
   
4. Evidence Based - Basing policy decisions and advice upon the best available evidence from a wide range of sources; ensuring that evidence is available in an accessible and meaningful form.
   
5. Inclusive - Consulting those responsible for implementation and those affected by the policy; carrying out an impact assessment
   
6. Joined Up - Looking beyond institutional boundaries; setting cross-cutting objectives; defining and communicating joint working arrangements across departments; ensuring that implementation is part of the policy process.
   
7. Review - Systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of policy is built into the policy making process.
   
8. Evaluation - Existing/established policy is constantly reviewed to ensure it is really dealing with problems it was designed to solve.
   
9. Learns Lessons - Learning from experience of what works and what does not.
   

We should expect no less from South Kingstown's councilors. Unfortunately, we have no evidence that this is in fact the case.

Live and On‐Demand Video Streaming RFP

Here is the RFP for South Kingstown's MEETING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: Live and On‐Demand Video Streaming, Agenda Management, and Minutes Automation. I found out about it only by listening to the broadcast of Monday's Town Council meeting yesterday (Wednesday) on the public access channel. The document was not on the Town's web site: That is, separate searches for "streaming", "video", and "rfp" did not result in any relevant page or document.

Re: Data.gov.uk Newspaper

It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area. In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for the first time. ¶ It gathers information about your area, such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.

More at Data.gov.uk Newspaper

The Three Laws of Open Government Data

The Three Laws of Open Government Data:

1) If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
2) If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
3) If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower

More at the three laws of open government data.

The City of Nanaimo has been pushing the envelope on open data and open government for a number of years now.

"At first blush the site seems normal. There is the standard video of the council meeting (queue cheesy local cable access public service announcement), but the meeting minutes underneath are actually broken down by the second and by clicking on them you can jump straight to that moment in the meeting. [...]

"Given Nanaimo’s modest size (it has 78,692 citizens) suggests they have a modest IT budget. So I asked Chris McLuckie, a City of Nanaimo public servant who worked on the project. He informed me that the system was built in-house by him and another city staff member; it uses off-the-shelf hardware and software and so cost under $2,000 and it took two weeks to code up."

How to Engage Citizens on a Municipal Website...

Update: It looks like the City of Nanaimo made the wise choice to use a comprehensive content management solition with elementCMS rather than waste their citizens' money building in house a feature-poor equivalent.

City of Vancouver's open data and information motion

“On May 21st, 2009 the City of Vancouver passed a motion that directed City Staff to begin sharing the data and information the city collects, to share this data in open standards and to place open source on an equal footing with proprietary software.

“Below is a simple version of the motion - one that could serve as a template for other cities.

“Consequently, this page is designed to be a place where interested citizens, politicians and public citizens other cities can suggest changes, propose edits, copy and repurpose the template. If your city has passed a motion that addresses open data, open standards and/or open source, let us know and we will post the motion to this website so other cities can leverage the work of others.”

open city motion v.1.1

Suggestions on best practices for school web sites

I was asked for some guidance or suggestions on best practices for school web sites, specifically for a K-8 district. The demographics of the town are such that about 64% of the kids in the public schools are hispanic with a significant number of those students coming from homes where only the children speak English. Additionally, the website would be part of a larger strategy of trying to get out the message that the public schools are way better than most tax-payers/parents would tend to believe. [...]

The full posting is at Suggestions on best practices for school web sites

Citizens for a Better Providence

"Our mission is to promote effective, efficient and transparent governance in the City of Providence that fairly serves the best interest of all of the city's residents. We will • Hold elected officials accountable • Educate the citizenry • Mobilize citizens, promote participation • Work collaboratively w/ government"

Citizens for a Better Providence

MediaBugs rethinks corrections by taking a page from programmers

"Scott Rosenberg, best known as the co-founder of Salon, has been mulling this idea for a while, and last week, he received a $335,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to build MediaBugs, the first correction-tracking system for news outlets in the San Francisco Bay Area."

MediaBugs rethinks corrections by taking a page from programmers