Tag: counties

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National Association of Counties Innovation Summit

As the first Senior Fellow of the National Association of Counties (NACo), I had the privilege to be part of their recently concluded five-day Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.

It was also an opportunity for me to introduce to the counties the Rural Imperative of the Intelligent Community Forum.  Since I blogged about the need for a new connected countryside a couple of weeks ago, ICF announced my new role, which you can read about at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/02/prweb11614027.htm.   There’s also a brief video that I did at http://youtu.be/d0fD6rguvwQ.

For three days, there was a special focus on technology and more interesting presentations than I can summarize here.  Sometime next week, you will be able to see video of Saturday’s Innovation and Technology Summit at NACo.org.

Here are some of my observations:

  • The VP of the Maui Economic Development described their strategy.  I cheered when she said that, notwithstanding the traditional incentives and approaches of economic development, the most important thing is to “grow your own”.  She went on to describe how they are focused on workforce development and all kinds of creative, only-in-Hawaii learning opportunities.  But much of that targeted children.  In an economy where adults need to keep refreshing their skills and knowledge until well past what you used to be retirement age, adults also need access to learning opportunities.
  • The Directors of the Health and Human Services Departments of both Montgomery County, Maryland and San Diego County, California both focused on outcomes.  This too is an important step forward beyond the usual output measures that have dominated performance data in government.  Montgomery County also puts as much emphasis on social return on investment as on pure financial return on investment.
  • One other part of the San Diego presentation caught my attention: that counties need to lead the “higher levels” of government.  In the face of Federal government dysfunction for the last several years, most local and state governments have taken the approach of go ahead without waiting for the Feds to take action.  So we’ve seen much more innovation at the sub-national level than at the national level.  Now it seems that some sub-national governments are actively upending the pyramid of power and hoping to guide the Federal government to a more innovative posture.
  • There was a keynote speech by a White House staffer on open data and much discussion of open data on various panels.  Rich Leadbeater of ESRI rightly pointed out that “open data is not an end in itself.  It’s what you do with it.”  This is a refreshing attitude since too many governments seem to spend a lot of time congratulating themselves for making the data available on the Internet and leaving things at that. 
  • Some governments have encouraged private companies to develop apps with this data.  Curiously, those governments have not usually embedded the apps into their own systems so these companies are left on their own to get citizens to know about them.  Worse, too many government think that asking private companies to create these apps absolves them of their own responsibility.  The reality is that not all the applications that are needed or can be developed with open data will generate the revenue a private company seeks, but those apps are still useful for the public too have.  The only way they will be created is if the government does the development itself or pays for the app to be developed.  Considering that the costs of software development have gone down considerably over the past decade, this is not something that can easily be dismissed as out of budget.

In my end-of-day review and commentary on the sessions, I offered my reaction to the data being put out on the web – “TMI, TLK”.  Too much information, too little knowledge.  Governments should recognize that they and their constituents have to start working together to make sense of all that data and use it to make improvements in policies and programs. 

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Large County Innovation Summit

The National Association of Counties’ Large Urban County Caucus – LUCC, as it is known – represents the largest counties in the country, where a significant percentage of Americans live.   LUCC held its 2013 County Innovation Symposium in New York City last week from Wednesday through Friday. 

(I was invited in my new role as the first Senior NACo Fellow.)

Although Thursday’s schedule included sessions on health care, criminal justice and resilience, the meeting on the other two days focused on economic development.  Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program and co-author of the recent book, “The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy” kicked off Friday morning.

He and other panelists noted the evolving role of counties and NACo itself, as the old suburban vs. urban disputes are overtaken by important socio-economic trends. 

First, there is an increased understanding and recognition among public officials now of the metropolitan, really regional, nature of economies.  The old game of providing incentives to companies to move within a metropolitan area, resulting in no new jobs in the region, is wearing thin.

Second, the global nature of the economy implies that regions are now competing with each other, not localities.  And only a regional scale can generate the funds necessary to compete on a global basis.

Third, the demographic differences that used to separate suburban and urban areas are diminishing.  The two are beginning to look a lot alike.  Brookings’ research indicates that today there are more poor people in suburbs than in cities. 

Along with this discussion of economic strategy, there was a strong interest in encouraging innovation and in learning how to get good innovations to diffuse quickly.  This interest is one reason why NACo has appointed Dr. Bert Jarreau as its first Chief Innovation Officer.

With that in mind, the group went to visit Google’s New York labs.  (It is interesting to see Google’s entry into the sub-national arena over the last year or so, as more traditional IT companies have withdrawn somewhat from this market.)

A predictable big hit was the demonstration of Google Glass and a discussion of Glass apps, called GlassWare, that might be of value in the public sector.

There were also presentations of two applications that were extensions of Google’s search and other tools.  One was for integrated predictive policing, with heavy use of video cams (both public and private) and unstructured, narrative data.  Similarly, Macomb County, MI (population 900,000) showed how it uses a search tool, called SuperIndex, for text and images of land records.  The latter, by the way, is financially self-supporting.

By the end of the meeting, NACo LUCC decided they will make this innovation symposium an annual event.  It is often these kinds of unexpected, under-the-radar, developments that surprise people later.  County governments has not had a reputation for innovation, but keep your eyes open for what develops with this group.

©2013 Norman Jacknis

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Is County Innovation An Oxymoron?

Last Friday, the National Association of Counties held an Innovation Summit as part of their annual meeting in Ft. Worth.  I was asked to give the keynote speech on what local government leaders can do to encourage innovation in their counties, but I also attended the other discussions.

As I listened, in the back of my mind were recent articles about the increasingly important role local government can play – in the face of a dysfunctional Federal government and the global connectivity that enables local governments to work together and provide better services.

So the first question is whether these county governments can step up to the challenge, or as the title of this post puts it: Is County Innovation An Oxymoron?

While certainly not all of them are innovating, it is striking how many are.  Because so little is reported about local government innovation and there is not an active peer network among these innovators once they leave their annual meeting, the counties often don’t know what each has done.  That, of course, limits the spread of these innovations.

But that will change.  The counties are about to create a peer-to-peer online community, thanks to Bert Jarreau, NACo’s Chief Innovation Officer.  

Moreover, the cost of computer technology and networks is going down and becoming more widespread, which is great for counties with smaller budgets, who want to innovate, but have felt they didn’t have the money and staff skills to do so.

With “cloud computing”, where all kinds of software, hardware resources and data is available on the Internet, these counties don’t need to buy their own expensive equipment or hire large numbers if IT experts.  Instead, they can pay for what they use.

With many of their employees already owning smart phones and tablets, these counties can get access to mobile apps.  Since people have already figured out how to use apps on these devices, training is simple.  And software in the app market often costs dramatically less than traditional software. 

With videoconferencing, social media and other collaboration tools, it is also possible for these county innovators to support and help each other at any time.

These three big trends – widespread technology, cloud computing and mobile devices – may seem familiar to those in the IT industry.  But the reality is that this combination is relatively recent and still maturing.

All in all, however, this adds up to an unprecedented potential for innovation in local government.  It just needs the right platform and the people who will act as a catalyst for that potential to be realized.

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

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