}getabstract compressed knowledge “en, | Citizenville How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government by Gavin Newsom and Lisa Dickey Penguin Press © 2013 272 pages Focus Take-Aways Leadestp & Management + Governments are slow to adopt new technologies even after they change citizens’ jobs. Sraeay eee) + "Government 2.0" must embrace transparency and an open data policy — + Goverment information belongs to the people. Producson 8 togsies + Everyone laments the modem loss of privacy, but ike it or not, privacy is dead. Sal Buenas > economics trois «= *- GoVernment should use a standardized open interface so citizens are able to access ae information easily ‘Gs! Binees + Increased tr , paradoxically, increased J eee em”, noTeased transparency means, paradoxical, increased secur conoid + Instant feedback and rating systems enable a more responsive goverment. + To reduce bureaucracy, use “dashboards” and game mechanics so citizens can access their own records, pay parking tickets and otherwise deal with govemment-related tasks. + Social media-empowered movements — lke the Arab Spring — demonstrate the shift of ower to the people. + Proper use of technology could usher in an era of post-partisan Government 2.0. Rating (10109 Overall Importance Innovation Style 9 9 9 8 “apace nar api a wa gat ond lo pr het fn 7-79 ra et SSeENr emg pt sat pt a es aioe ‘chowee: ts pert somes ganic aad Semnancrtnnaas merece “Ts summary estes oe parser use of Am expan fodenorgendyno can)Cites ae. where partisan plies ‘masta Backseat real ‘poxparisan Innovation and isk taking." }getabstract compressed knowledge Relevance What You Will Learn. In this summary, you will learn: 1) How gaining access to government information can empower citizens, 2) Why making it fun for citizens to interact with government serves the Public good and 3) How government could use an open information platform to stimulate civic participation. Recommendation California Lt. Govemnor Gavin Newsom, writing with Lisa Dickey, offers stimulating ideas about the possibilities of a more open, robust democracy in the digital age. His title evokes popular games like Farmville, in which people improve virtual farms. In Newsom’s future, people improve their communities. He loads his book with examples of how government can create innovative solutions that engage citizens directly. He also cites, many possible beneficial results of increased direct engagement. getAbstract recommends his forward-looking thesis to anyone intrigued by a civie future that offers an alternative to partisan gridlock and policy paralysis. Summary Government Is the People Unlike most government agencies, citizens and businesses are accustomed to wireless technologies, social media-enabled collaboration, less privacy and a greater degree of ‘transparency. For government to catch up, it must rethink these issues. Goverment happens in the background of daily life: in the streets and subways you use to commute, the libraries and public schools your kids attend, regulated utilities, inspected food, monitored air pollution, and even the Internet, which was developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Government consists of lots of people — not politicians ~ working, hard in agencies and offices to keep such services running. Government is the people, and in a democracy, the people are the government. It is not them and us; it’s all us Information-Fueled Power to the People ‘New technologies have redistributed power from traditional hierarchies, causing a fundamental shift in the way people and governments interact. Information can pave the way for change. To take advantage of these new opportunities, government should make accurate, searchable information easily available in a standardized format, and then show ‘the taxpayers who pay for it exactly how best to use it. This would result in a much-needed increase in transparency, which promotes trust and accountability In the past, the public had to submit Freedom of Information requests for sets of data created and aggregated with taxpayer money. That information should be easily available toall citizens. For example, in the lead-up to Hurricane Irene, the city of New York posted. valuable data about the storm and related city resources. Due to overwhelming demand, the site crashed. Mayor Michael Bloomberg then made the information available to news outlets, empowering New Yorkers to prepare for the storm. With open data, government can help people help themselves; publicly available information also can generate jobs, and profits. The National Institutes of Health and other agencies created an accord to ‘amen rn rrr ‘Tie saan) reel tha preonal te ctr Dengan (berergn@yahon co)“Opening up government dara othe righ thing to dd We paid fori. We omit We have ‘aright i." “We have to meet the people where ‘they are. dnd where ‘the are right now is laying games and Spending tne on Heabnetorting Uy kr om ‘must reve! your spending publi. Sourre more likey loth vice about Io you spend Transparency leads }getabstract compressed knowledge share human genome information openly. That publicly sponsored research has fostered an entire sector of for-profit pharmaceuticals. Security Issues Bureaucracies are reluctant to release data, because reporters and citizens pounce on any bad news amid the information, If transparency only provides fodder for criticism, government bureaucrats will remain unenthusiastic about sharing. Everyone laments the modem loss of privacy, but like it or not, privacy is dead. In a ‘world of Facebook, tracked preferences, and cameras in stores and on street comers, everyone lives publicly to some extent. The upside, though, is greater security. People ‘who want to do bad things have nowhere to hide. Total transparency also can generate ‘undesirable consequences, such as possible security breaches. At every step, participants debate the security issues involving transparency — and that’s a good thing, For instance, if government employees can’t be sure their emails are private, they will not communicate frankly. However, transparency should be government's basic default setting, with necessary exceptions for security. As WikiLeaks proved, transparency is inevitable in the digital age, even if it takes awhile to evolve. A Government App Taking Apple’s successful apps store as a model, government should open up and let people innovate, The Code for America organization did just that when it gave its expert code writers six-month fellowships in various cities. In Philadelphia, the coders made an app, based on publicly available information, to help people locate and learn about the city’s fabulous murals. When they tried a similar program organizing San Francisco's public art, they found the city’s data incomplete. To complete the app, coders asked residents to report to the project whenever they found public art. Citizens happily helped, thus doing effortlessly and for free what would have cost the city thousands of dollars. The increase in public engagement with government? Priceless. Goverment must embrace transparency and the goals of open data. Using a standardized Application Programming Interface (API), agencies can build applications utilizing all sorts of data, modified for myriad purposes. Government will have to start from scratch, ‘but that makes more sense than building onto legacy systems that can’t do the job. This will be an enormous, costly task in America, but the US cannot fall further behind. Currently, itranks 26th in Internet download speeds, and its wi-fi service is patchy. World- standard Internet speed is essential to productivity and the ability to compete in a global data market. Government must create basic rules that enable the market and pinpoint upgrades that will let citizens solve their own problems. “The Blue Button” The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) wanted to make veterans” health information, more easily available via its website. VA programmers posted a big blue button on the agency's homepage. Veterans clicked on it to download and save their own information easily. Some in the private sector objected, but the VA said that it was giving people their personal data; it wasn’t the VA’s to withhold. The blue button worked so well that other government agencies and even insurers set up their own versions. The government now has incentives in place to utilize the blue-button protocol. That button will lead to the digitization of health records far more quickly than could any act of Congress. (Bien 281 ‘Tie smart tha pao! te tra Dengan (berorgnyahon ce)“anyshere there's sf government ‘data, there should ‘bea button for people m acces Itt really that simple” “tm a competion Ler who can be the ‘mort open and ‘commantate ‘everyone win }getabstract compressed knowledge Now energy utilities are implementing a “green button” so ratepayers can track their energy usage. The government asked — but didn’t require — utilities to establish a green button, They did, setting up a scalable, open data protocol for energy information, New ‘York City revolutionized its interface with citizens by analyzing data and needs, and providing social media spaces where people can ask for help and get what they need. At nyc.gov, residents have a “dashboard” that lets them interact with the city in various ways, such as paying parking tickets and obtaining permits. Games Governments Play Dustin Haisler, chief information officer for Manor, Texas, sought better ways to respond, ‘toand communicate with residents. He asked how government could engage more citizens and make civic engagement fun. He introduced innovative digital programs, such as quick response codes on city signs, so people could obtain city-related information on their smartphones. He also rewarded good ideas with a local currency called Innobucks that people could cash in for various local perks, such as discounts at neighborhood businesses. ‘The SuperBetter website, designed by Jane McGonigal, gives users a game-like interface for solving serious problems like losing weight. Many criticize her approach as frivolous, but Americans spend a lot of time looking at their screens, so redirecting that time constructively is a productive way to “meet the people where they are.” Farmville In the Farmville game, players spend real money on virtual goods like livestock and tractors. Developer Zynga has made SI billion selling virtual merchandise to game players. What if, in a real-life analog, players of “Citizenville” paid real money for real changes ~ for example, to fund civic landscaping or to paint over graffiti? Farmville players take pride in their virtual property; participants in Citizenville would reap real- life rewards for improving their community. ‘The DonorsChoose website raises funds for teachers’ projects, trying to compensate US teachers who spend S1 billion of their own money annually for school-related supplies. Founder Charles Best says money is secondary to investing in public school education. ‘Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppellman brought word-of-mouth to the Internet. On Yelp, participants review anything that has an address — a doctor, a restaurant, a government agency. Imagine what could happen if agencies within a city competed for the highest ratings? Think about Yelp-like ratings for politicians, who would become more responsive to their constantly Twittering constituents’ needs and not just at election time. DARPA — the government agency that developed the Internet — launched a contest to design a combat support vehicle. Instead of commissioning an incumbent contractor to, generate a design at the cost of untold thousands of dollars, DARPA held a contest that fostered a number of innovative designs free of cost. Within 14 weeks after the agency chose Victor Garcia’s Flypmode design, Local Motors manufactured the prototype. Goverment holds regular contests on the challenge.gov site, A prize strategy rewards success, avoids procurement headaches, removes pork-barrel appropriations and reaches outward. No one knows who might dream up the next innovative web solution. Vote in Citizenville ‘The way Americans vote is out of step with the digital age. Estonians implemented a system in which citizens vote digitally over a period of days. Instead of town hall 2883 rrr ‘Tie smart th pao! te ctr Dengan (berorgn@yahon co)“tise th se latent ecole that wean pe to ‘eae te ‘zee ain of ommonseth = ‘meaning plc fod orvefare thar est among ‘community of The easier itis for ordinary people to ‘alec nfrmaion, ‘he greater thelr “Overcoming bureaucracy, updating the ‘museum pieces ‘of governance, ‘eealing the real ‘people who make ‘np ow government, restoring rs ecology can help wsdo all of these ‘crucial hing ie ‘low oursehes to ‘embrace I.” }getabstract compressed knowledge gatherings that can emphasize polarization, how about a more meaningful two-way interaction? Sites like Quora and Localocracy make civic gatherings more productive. Citizens must use their real names, s0 no one can make uncivil comments behind the mask of anonymity. People will participate in government when they see that their participation leads to results. In New York City and Chicago, citizens have a hand in making budgetary decisions, But that is old hat in Brazil, where 1.2 million people — in a state of 11 million = recently cast their budget votes online at the same time as the World Cup. That's ‘transformative engagement on a grand scale. “Armies of Davids” versus Goliath Opponents objected when the Tea Party and the Occupy movements took to the streets, ‘but these actions echo the Civil Rights movement and other protests. Tea Partiers and Occupiers care deeply about government — if in opposite ways — and demonstrate greater engagement than the average citizen. Social media has shifted some power to the people. Social media-fueled people power emerges many ways, such as the Arab Spring, the reversal of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood, and websites going dark to protest restrictive web legislation. The recording industry had a stranglehold on music sales for decades. You had to buy entire albums even if you wanted only one song. Then Napster, the song-sharing app, allowed people to download individual songs for free, though illegally. Steve Jobs and Apple seized the opportunity by creating iPods and. iTunes, and by making a deal with the record producers to sell songs within the law. People can bypass layers of bureaucracy and obstruction by creating their own change. Entrepreneurs know that to succeed, sometimes you must endure failure, which proves that you pushed the limits, People in government fear failure so much that their agencies become paralyzed. The public must encourage bolder, more creative thinking in govemnment. Todd Parks, chief technology officer at the US Department of Health and. Human Services (HHS), worried about resistance to making departmental data open, But he found that people supported that step. Parks identified those with similar goals and. formed small teams to define problems quickly and create solutions by utilizing customer feedback. Results include making information of hospital quality available on Bing, setting up health service directories and offering snapshots of geographic communities? health status, Beyond Partisanship State and federal governments can lear a lot from local governments. Mayors routinely share best practices. At the city level, both Republicans and Democrats have the same problems — fixing traffic lights and picking up the garbage. Technological solutions across the country connect citizens to their local governments in meaningful ways. Public-public partnerships have the potential to bridge the gaps caused by funding shortfalls, giving people more power to govern themselves and creating a truly vibrant commonwealth. About the Authors Gavin Newsom, the current California lieutenant governor, is the former mayor of San Francisco. Freelance writer Lisa Dickey has collaborated on nine nonfiction books. (Sean 281 ‘Tie samara tha pao! te ctr Dengan (berorgnyahon co)