Tag: eGov

Posted on

Six Lessons For Mayors – Part 2

[As a reminder from last week, I’ve repeated the introductory paragraphs, but continue on from lesson 4.]

Mayors, governors and other local government leaders are being inundated by all sorts of “experts” telling them how to run a smart city.  Often, the ulterior commercial motivation of these messages is not even well hidden.

Fortunately, in recent years, an objective and disciplined set of academic researchers have stepped up their focus on these questions. 

The Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany has worked with government officials all over the world and studied their efforts to build smarter cities and use technology intelligently.  As recently designated Government Fellow at CTG, I have taken a look at some of their past research and work.

image

Here are the last three of six lessons, which stand out to me.  (By the way, it’s worth noting that these also apply in the private sector, although that’s not what CTG studied.  Where it ways government, think company, and where it says citizen, think customer.)

4. Government Staff Can Be Supplemented

Lesson #4 is that cities with successful smart city services did not do this all within their own agencies.

At its simplest, CTG also saw examples where private sector partners in a city who have deep experience operating call centers can be helpful in training government staff for this kind of work.  Volunteer neighborhood liaisons were also used to extend the reach of 311 and related services.

At its simplest, CTG describes examples where private sector partners in a city who have deep experience operating call centers can be helpful in training government staff for this kind of work.  Volunteer neighborhood liaisons were also used to extend the reach of 311 and related services.   Many times governments feel that they must take on all the aspects of an initiative, when many times there are private and non-profit organizations looking to play a role.

5. The Smart City Involves More Than City Government

From the citizens’ viewpoint, smart government services may require sharing data among different government entities.  As difficult as it is to share data within a single government, it gets even more complicated to share between agencies of different governments.  Understanding this complexity is critical to successful IT efforts.

As CTG reports:

“Expecting a great variety of benefits, governments around the world have initiated an increasing number of cross-boundary information sharing (CBIS) initiatives. Collaborating and sharing information in metropolitan areas is different from sharing within organizational hierarchies. Normally, government agencies in metropolitan areas are not subordinated to a single entity and their willingness to collaborate and share information is mainly motivated by common needs and interests.”

“Network organizations are an alternative to hierarchies because they are based on relationships, distributed knowledge, mutual dependency, and norms of reciprocity…  Networks in fact can be an alternative to traditional bureaucratic and hierarchical solutions and e-government information integration can be a good example of that.”

Lesson #5 is that a mayor may succeed faster by facilitating these informal networks of relationships, rather than going through the arduous process of imposing cooperation through legislation and complex legal arrangements.

6. The Single Most Important Player Is The Mayor

CTG’s research all over the world highlights this single most important Lesson #6: the most critical role in the whole smart city ecosystem is that of the mayor, who must provide consistent and visible leadership for a smart city across all agencies under his/her control and those his city interacts with.

CTG observed:

“despite important challenges, information integration initiatives can be implemented with relatively good results if there is enough political support from top government executives. … This work offers insights on how the support of the mayor can significantly influence the implementation of an information integration strategy in at least three different ways: (1) the creation of an adequate institutional framework, (2) the alignment of diverse political interests within the city administration, and (3) the increase of financial resources.” 

“The executive support and political champions help resolve interdepartmental conflicts.”

As with all knowledge, these lessons may seem obvious once presented – but not so predictable before they are presented.  Indeed, it is also clear from the research that not all of these lessons have been heeded in the rush to the smart city movement and the result has been much less than mayors have hoped for.

image

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/101845371086/six-lessons-for-mayors-part-2]

Posted on

Six Lessons For Mayors – Part 1

Mayors, governors and other local government leaders are being inundated by all sorts of “experts” telling them how to run a smart city.  Often, the ulterior commercial motivation of these messages is not even well hidden.

Fortunately, in recent years, an objective and disciplined set of academic researchers have stepped up their focus on these questions. 

The Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany has worked with government officials all over the world and studied their efforts to build smarter cities and use technology intelligently.  As recently designated Government Fellow at CTG, I have taken a look at some of their past research and work.

image

Here are the first three of six lessons, which stand out to me.  (By the way, it’s worth noting that these also apply in the private sector, although that’s not what CTG studied.  Where it ways government, think company, and where it says citizen, think customer.)

1. Systems That Can Share Will Enhance Citizen Service

CTG worked with and studied cities that implemented 311 systems and later rolled out larger service management systems.  While the cost of handling 311 telephone calls, among other reasons, have diminished the number of new telephone-only installations, the 311 experience has provided lessons on the obstacles to providing better service to a city’s residents.

311 systems and other single points of entry for citizen service, even the web, make glaringly clear the lack of integration across government agencies.  Complex technology that is not interoperable only adds to the traditional human problem of bureaucratic silos. 

So Lesson #1 is that the city needs to make sure its computer systems are interoperable – or at least open to sharing data.  Integrating the back end is just as important as providing a citizen interface on the front end.

2. It’s Not Merely About Technology

Having said that, CTG’s research makes Lesson #2 clear: any mayor, who thinks that simply building a system for citizen services is sufficient, will not likely succeed in his/her larger goals of creating a smart city.

As one of their reports states:

“A smart city is not only a technological concept but a socioeconomic development one.  Technology is obviously a necessary condition for a smart city, but citizens’ understanding of the concept is about the development of urban society for the better quality of life. The adoption of up-to-date technologies per se does not guarantee the success of smart city initiatives. Rather, innovation in management style and policy direction makes a city more livable. Success of smart city projects is not determined by technology or technical capital. Success is dependent on leadership and interorganizational coordination. Technology itself does not make any contribution to innovation.”

3. Government Staff Overcome Technological Limitations

Lesson #3 is that, in various ways, government staff (people) can overcome the lack of integration of citizen-facing systems in government. . 

The 311 experience has illuminated the weaknesses of legacy systems and the frequent situation where the 311 software used by operators is not really connected to the legacy systems that departments use to manage the services they deliver to the public.  So 311 becomes a cover for the disorganization behind the scenes.  In such cases, CTG has found that well trained, qualified human agents can fill the gaps and give the citizen the kind of integrated service which is expected.

[TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK] …

image

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/101256317797/six-lessons-for-mayors-part-1]

Posted on

Accelerating Internet Activism?

Last week I was at the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF), the annual gathering of technologists, political activists, entrepreneurs and many others focused on the ways that the Internet is playing a role in government and society.  As it does every year, PDF had an interesting and thought provoking range of speakers and panels.  The event was inspiring both in the activities of many of these individuals and the sheer creative ambition that drives them.

With more than 140 speakers in both plenary sessions and breakouts, it is not physically possible to hear everyone.  But something was bothering me in many of these sessions I did attend.

It was brought home by Anthea Watson Strong’s reference to the Calculus of Voting written many years ago by the political scientists William Riker and Peter Ordeshook.  This was a relatively rare moment in which someone explicitly or implicitly referred back to previous research and analysis of political behavior.

And in a breakout session, Ben Berkowitz, the founder/CEO of the very useful and successful SeeClickFix, rightly expressed concerns about the focus of many activists on just the next election.  He asked for a new approach – a consistent effort, an organization, that helps people with the daily public issues and annoyances that bother them.  

I told him that there used to be organizations that did just that – the old urban political machines.  They were building long term supporters for a party, so their timeframe was more than just the next election campaign of one politician.  While they helped people with their problems, of course, the old machines were also corrupt.  A modern more ethical version may be what he’s looking for.  Not a new idea, just a better one.  (For a recent assessment of the political machines of the 19th and early 20th centuries, see Terry Golway’s book “Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics”.)

This was one of several examples in which more historical context would have been helpful.

Perhaps it was entrepreneurial enthusiasm to push ahead and not look back.  Perhaps it was a matter of being so convinced that what you’re doing is so new, no one before you could have something of value to contribute to your thought process.  (I have to admit that this is something I’ve also been guilty of myself in some of my entrepreneurial enthusiasms.)

Newton famously said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”   In the world of political technology this means understanding previous political thought and analysis, history and modern research on political behavior. 

Most people in the audience were excited by the possibilities for true democratic governance that the Internet and related tools make possible, including me.  But to accelerate this movement there needs to be more context and deeper knowledge on the part of the creators and activists. 

Otherwise, we end up becoming another example of the old story about reinventing the wheel.  Not only is that wasted effort, but, without learning, each new reinvention of the wheel seems to start out as immature as the last one.  In turn, that immaturity and lack of progress may dampen the potential engagement of the larger number of potential citizen activists which the PDF movement will need.

image

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/88472868695/accelerating-internet-activism]

Posted on

Citizenville?

I’ve written a couple of times about Carl Skelton’s Betaville software for citizen engagement in urban planning and design, so my eye caught the title of a book that came out a few months ago – “Citizenville: How To Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government” by current California Lt. Governor and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.  (Alas, Citizenville is a name based on the popular game, FarmVille, not Betaville.)

When the book came out, there was a little bit of publicity and reviews in a few newspapers.  Perhaps the largest audience Newsom had was an interview on the Colbert Report, which unfortunately was fairly cynical in tone.  Many people, even those who are interested in better government, haven’t read it.

Let’s first get the criticisms out of the way.  Some critics have dismissed Newsom as a lightweight and clearly he does not write in an academic style.  It’s more journalistic, even breezy.  (Many people might consider that a plus.).

The tone in places is somewhat clichéd and sometimes annoying to those of us who are much deeper into the role of the Internet in government.  For example, the implication that the private sector is almost always better than the public sector is too broad a view to be worth much as a guiding principle.

Some of it is too much about him.  And not all of it is correct or well thought through.  But then that would also be true of authors with more prestigious academic credentials.

Ok, now to the more important positive side.  The book is a reasonably good compendium of the various ways that the Internet is being used in the public sector.  It should be read. 

For me, the most significant thing about the book is that an incumbent, leading politician wrote it.  In a way, that’s also why the book is useful to other public leaders.  Newsom shares his experiences – both good and bad – and outlines at least some of the minefield facing other elected officials who wish to use digital technologies in public service.

In addition to writing a book that can help to educate public leaders, Newsom, along with Code for America, has created the Citizenville Challenge (http://citizenville.com/challenge/) that has enlisted cities such as Philadelphia and Austin.  

Over the last several years, I’ve seen more elected officials who understand the role of technology in better citizen engagement and better public sector outcomes.  My own experience has led me to realize that technologists, in and out of government, can really only succeed when the top elected official leads the way.  Ultimately, that’s why this book is important.

In a recent review, Pete Peterson summarizes this key to success:

Of course, technology can facilitate these opportunities — but not without public-sector officials who see governments as more than “service providers” and citizens who regard themselves as more than “customers.”

[Note: If you want to get a quick idea of what he’s been saying, take a look at this video from the Commonwealth Club of California.  http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/311166-1 ]

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/51069393911/citizenville]

Posted on

Citizens Participating In Budgeting?

This week, the New York State Technology Leadership Academy will take place in Albany, New York.  As I posted two weeks ago, I’ll be speaking about deep citizen engagement – the ways that government leaders can get the benefit of citizen co-creation and co-delivery of public services.

Note: the new website for you to contribute to and assess ideas is at https://claritypresales-13df0e80fac.secure.force.com/ca_idea__ideahome .

A timely article by Governing magazine appeared Monday – Tax Day, appropriately enough – about a “Study: Citizen Budgeting Related To Better Outcomes”.  (http://www.governing.com/blogs/view/gov-study-citizen-budgeting-related-to-better-performance.html)

The study was published in The American Review of Public Administration and focused on the relationship between the degree of citizen participation in highway budgeting and outcomes, such as road fatalities and road surface quality.   The researchers found that the greater the citizen participation, the more positive the outcomes.  This effect was strengthened the earlier the citizens had a chance to participate.

While there have been increasing reports about participatory budgeting, this is the first study that shows that citizen participation is not merely a democratic ideal, but is also a way to get better government.

Go to http://arp.sagepub.com/content/43/3/331 , if you want to read the original article, “Citizen Input in the Budget Process: When Does It Matter Most?” by Hai (David) Guo and Milena I. Neshkova, The American Review of Public Administration, May 2013; vol. 43, 3: pp. 331-346. 

Some other reports about citizen participation in budgeting can be found here:

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/48198642518/citizens-participating-in-budgeting]

Posted on

Government-to-Government Services?

There was an interesting article in the New York Times, “Police Surveillance May Earn Money for City” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/nyregion/new-york-citys-police-surveillance-technology-could-bring-in-money.html).

Because it focused on law enforcement, much of the article dealt with privacy and other issues raised by police use of technology.  These issues are indeed challenging, but not that new.

A newer part of the story is that this is a good example of something I’ve been expecting to see for a couple of years: government to government software-as-a-service.   

Here are some relevant excerpts from the story:

The policing system is making New York safer and it will also make money for the city, which is marketing it to other jurisdictions. 

Buyers would pay to access the software (at least several million dollars and more depending on the size of the jurisdiction and whether specifications have to be customized). New York City will receive 30 percent of the gross revenues from the sale of the system and access to any innovations developed for new customers. The revenue will be directed to counterterrorism and crime prevention programs. 

This government-to-government service allows less technologically skilled governments to get sophisticated services they could create for themselves.   It also enables the most technologically advanced governments to spread out their development costs over a larger base and to save some money for their taxpayers.  A win-win as the old expression goes.

Even beyond law enforcement – or maybe I should say, especially outside of law enforcement – the logic of this situation is likely to lead to an expansion of these government-to-government technology services.  More examples in future posts.  Please let me know if you have any examples.

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/47619726647/government-to-government-services]

Posted on

New York State Technology Leadership Academy

In two weeks, the New York State Technology Leadership Academy will take place in Albany, New York.  This event brings together hundreds of the technology executives who try to make technology serve, ever better, the needs of the people of New York.

I’m on a panel Thursday, April 18, talking about Deep Engagement with the citizens of New York, enabling them to co-create public policy and deliver public services.  

As befitting the topic of the panel, there is now an opportunity to direct the conversation.  You can share your ideas or participate in the live conversation on April 18 at 11 AM Eastern Time.  Go to http://bit.ly/11LSR5U 

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/47030097497/new-york-state-technology-leadership-academy]

Posted on

When Will Citizens Be Able To Track Requests To The Government?

A little prelude that may seem obvious, except for the fact that it is widely ignored … 

The people that public officials call citizens or voters or residents are not single-minded civic machines.  Most of the time they are consumers and workers outside of the public sector and so what happens outside of the public sector affects the expectations of the public sector on the part of those same citizens, etc.  

So one of the more frequent parts of a consumer’s life these days is being able to track things.  Here are just a few of the many diverse examples, almost all of which have been around for at least a couple of years:

  • You can track your pizza order from Dominos from the oven to your front door.
  • You can track shipments, at all stages, through FedEx or UPS.
  • You can track the path of a taxi or “black car” that you ordered via Uber.
  • You can track airline flights so you know when to leave for the airport to pick up a relative.

However, in the public sector, this kind of tracking has been rare.  In addition to tracking mass transit in some big cities (perhaps imitating the airline services), there are few examples I could find, such as:

But clearly there are many more situations where people want to track their interaction with the government and cannot.

Why not enable citizens to track their government transactions in mid-stream?  While suggestions of this kind are often proposed to increase transparency of government, the tracking actually serves a much simpler goal – to reduce frustration on the part of the citizen.  If people can see where their request or application is, they will have a lower sense of frustration and a greater sense of control.

If the citizens could also get an estimate of how long it usually takes to go through each step of an approval process, all the better.  

When the Internet began getting much attention more than ten years ago, many governments decided to put applications on line, at least in the form of PDF documents that people could print and then fill out.  Eventually, people could apply online.  New York State government, for example, had a big project that was intended to put every citizen transaction on the Web.

Well, we’re past the point where citizens accept that as the best that can be done.  Now is the time to initiate a “big project” to enable citizens to track the status of each of those transactions.

Of course, the ultimate goal, in so far as possible, is to complete those transactions instantaneously online, like the fishing license app that Michigan makes available.  Then the tracking problem disappears, but that’s a subject for a future blog post.

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/44707380194/when-will-citizens-be-able-to-track-requests-to-the]

Posted on

Overdue Convenience of the Day: City Hall as Food Truck

Great story in American City & County and also the Atlantic  about Boston taking an old idea and using it in a new way.  Even in a time when it seems everyone has a phone that can get on the Internet to government websites, the reality is that many people can’t operate this way – some never and almost everyone at least part of the time.

So this City Hall on the go is a nice alternative.

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/41866382718/overdue-convenience-of-the-day-city-hall-as-food-truck]

Posted on

A Fundamental Decision Making Flaw in Public Officials?

Are our public leaders flawed because they were selected as public leaders? 

The answer would seem to be yes, according a paper by four academic researchers on organizational behavior, which I came across recently (although it was published last November).  Its title and subtitle make the point: “The Decision-Making Flaw in Powerful People: Overflowing with confidence, many leaders turn away from good advice.”

Some of their key findings:

“this paper finds a link between having a sense of power and having a propensity to give short shrift to a crucial part of the decision-making process: listening to advice. Power increases confidence, the paper’s authors say, which can lead to an excessive belief in one’s own judgment and ultimately to flawed decisions. …

"In addition to confirming the previous experiments’ finding that more powerful people were less likely to take advice and were more likely to have high confidence in their answers, this final experiment showed that high-power participants were less accurate in their answers than low-power participants. …

"For one thing, organizations could formally include advice gathering at the earliest stages of the decision-making process, before powerful individuals have a chance to form their own opinions. Encouraging leaders to refrain from commenting on decisions publicly could also keep them from feeling wedded to a particular point of view.”

Whether or not you might find this research conforms to your own experience, the last point – gathering in lots of information before the public leaders decide – is certainly not an unrealistic suggestion to improve decision making in many cases.  Today, the Internet and the collaborative discussion tools it offers can make this happen fairly easily. 

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/32803522813/a-fundamental-decision-making-flaw-in-public-officials]

Posted on

Video: How To Get Fit For The Future Economy


A few weeks ago, in a post “How Intelligent Communities Get Fit For The Future Innovation Economy”, I summarized my keynote presentation at the Annual Summit of the Intelligent Community Forum.

If you’d like to see a video of the keynote presentation that ICF recorded, go to http://vimeo.com/45415273

Unfortunately, the ICF staff also cut out all of the brief video clips that engaged the audience, including holographic-like telepresence, laser projections on city walls, virtual/physical interactions on Times Square and the like.  (I suspect they were worried about copyright issues, although they needn’t have worried.)

If you’re interested in seeing those videos, in their full length, you can find them as follows:

As always, please send me your comments and observations (njacknis@cisco.com).

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/27907953361/video-how-to-get-fit-for-the-future-economy-a]

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
Posted on

Why Do We Still Have Tax Brackets?

It must be the warm summer that has made me wonder about silly things like: why do we still have these tables of brackets that determine how much income tax we’re supposed to pay?

I can understand there was a time, many decades ago, that the government wanted to keep things simple so each person could easily determine the tax rate that would apply.  And I know that the continued use of tax brackets is not the biggest problem around,  However, tax brackets are just another symptom of government’s failure to see the widespread deployment of technology in the general public and its failure to use basic technology for simple improvements that are appropriate in this century.

There are some problems that brackets cause.   Politicians, like Steve Forbes and Rick Perry, who advocate a single flat tax rate often start with the argument that their approach would be so simple people could just send in a postcard.  Putting aside the merits or demerits of a flat tax, there is, of course, something really backward about telling people to use a postcard.  From 2000 to 2010, postcard usage dropped by half, an even greater drop than in first class envelope mail.

There are also those who observe people trying to game the system by adjusting their income so they don’t get into a higher bracket.  Those who argue for lower taxes in the higher brackets implicitly say that people will work less if it means an obvious jump in tax rates by shifting into a higher bracket.  Similarly, US News published a story earlier this year on “How to Avoid a High Tax Bracket in Retirement”.

With the current set of progressive tax rates, your percentage of tax goes up as your income goes up.  There is nothing in today’s world that requires the use of brackets in a progressive tax system.  Indeed, a system based on a formula instead would eliminate the negative impacts of bracket-avoiding behavior that critics of progressive taxation point to.

There are a few possible formulas that might work.  The most complex would be a logarithmic or exponential curve, which is nevertheless easily computed by a computer.  If you want to make it even simpler, another formula would set the percentage tax rate as a percentage of income.  (Remember school math?  TaxRate = m * Income where m is some small fraction.)

No matter the formula, computers can handle it.  The IRS could make a formula available on line or over the phone – just enter your taxable income and it will tell you what you owe.  It can be built into the calculator function of cell phones.  We no longer have to assume we live a world limited to paper-based tables.

While we’re at the effort to bring government into the modern technological era, why do we still have fixed budgets?  This budget reform from the 1920s was also developed in a world that did not have the ability to dynamically make calculations.  So every year, government officials make their best guess on the condition of the economy, the demand from an unknown number of potentially needy citizens and other factors that determine the ebb and flow of public finances.  Since the budget process is lengthy, they make this guess well ahead of time so they could be trying to predict the future more than 18 months ahead of time.

A rolling budget would work better by automatically adjusting each month to the flow of revenue and the demands on government programs – and all you need is a big spreadsheet on a not-so-big computer.  However, the budget makers would have to decide what their priorities are.  For example, for every percentage of unemployment, we need to put aside $X billion dollars for unemployment insurance payments.  It would take work to do this for each of the promises the government makes – although maybe not as much work as trying to guess the future.  

(Of course, the real obstacle to a rolling budget model is that policy makers would be forced to make more explicit their priorities.)

I could go on, but you get the idea.  It’s about time that government not only buys technology (which it does, sometimes, in large volumes), but also brings that technology into its thinking.

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/26971606341/why-do-we-still-have-tax-brackets]

Posted on

Social Media In A Disaster

This is an age of ubiquitous communications, at least in the form of text and voice.  (We’re not quite there yet with video, but that’s just down the road.)

But some media have been diminishing in importance, while others grow.  The ability to reach most Americans in a hurry by just tapping into three television networks is gone, as viewership of network television decreases over time.  On the other hand, there has been a growing use of social media.

So government officials, who are responsible for handling disasters and emergencies, have been expanding their use of social media and experimenting with it.

And, of course, social media are social – which means that emergency news will be more widely distributed by those who initially receive it.  They help the government do its work.

Here are just a few examples:

  • Not surprisingly, college security officials have used social media during lockdowns and shooting incidents.
  • The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) [check name] has its own Twitter feed @fema .
  • During the wild fires in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, the Los Angeles Fire Department also used Twitter with a twist.  In addition to getting the word out, they asked residents to use Twitter to let them know where the fire seemed to be headed.  It was a kind of instant collective intelligence arm of the fire fighters.
  • As a result of horrendous floods last year, this January, Queensland, Australia launched an app called Ready Queensland, in which volunteers are quickly mobilized using their smart phones.  See www.emergencyvolunteering.com.au  for more information.

With collaboration among Internet/smartphone users growing, I would expect to see some other government developed the next generation of the Ready Queensland app – one which enabled people to coordinate their activities in response to a a crisis.  

I realize this poses challenges to the traditional understanding of emergency managers as to how they do their job.  But it is likely they will see the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, as people who are organized together do better in a crisis than a disorganized, ignorant and, thereby, panicked mob.  

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/21267424611/social-media-in-a-disaster]


Posted on

More confusion about cities

The video, Thinking Cities, from Ericsson is well done.  You can see it at http://www.techi.com/2012/02/ericssons-vision-of-a-networked-society-expands-with-thinking-cities/ 

But initially this reminded me an old vaudeville line – “everyone wants to get into the act.”  Since IBM has stamped their effort “Smarter Cities” and Cisco initiated “Smart + Connected” cities, I guess Ericsson felt that the word “thinking” was all that was left 😉  The marketing folks at the ICT companies all seem to be working from the same script and featuring many of the same (usual) suspects.

What bothers me is that the start of the video is simplistic and misleading – two tales of cities, which got mixed up.  There is all this talk about people going to cities.  That’s true if you look at the global numbers.  But, as occurred in developed countries a hundred years ago, that’s more a reflection of the industrialization happening around the globe in today’s developing countries, rather than some desire of people to experience urban life in and of itself.  Indeed, there has been no recent mass migration of people in developed countries to central cities.

So it’s rather odd that almost all of the people in this and similar videos are from developed countries and are talking about the urban experience.  I’d like to see a video where the people interviewed were from the developing countries that are undergoing urbanization.  

Let them explain the reasons why they move.  (I suspect it’s first to get out of poverty and make a better living.  They’re also working too hard to worry about the wonderful cultural assets of their new location.)  Such a video would direct the attention of the ICT companies to issues that they have ignored when they talk glowingly of urbanization.

So that gets to cities in the developed world which this video really speaks to, although dramatic growth in urbanization is not the issue there. Of course, as the video notes, there is a separate set of issues in both the developed and developing world where ICT can help – namely the management of the physical infrastructure of cities.  

Unfortunately, this is the second step to first making a commitment to modernize that infrastructure and such a commitment has been missing in the USA.

You won’t be surprised that I like the part, near the end, where there is a brief discussion about citizen engagement.  For me, the most valuable role of ICT in urban areas of developed countries is to enhance quality of life and public governance is part of that quality of life.

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/18847694070/more-confusion-about-cities]


Posted on

“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”
– Quicksort developer C.A.R. Hoare

Simplicity in design applies to government policies and programs as much as it does in the creation of software. 

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/18147813569/there-are-two-ways-of-constructing-a-software]

Posted on

Hidden Reserve Of Public Safety Skills

Protection is a public service and one that can only effectively be carried out with the support and consent – and participation – of the people.  We’ve read stories about how Twitter played a key role in responding to wildfires or iPhone applications show a community map of registered sex offenders and crime areas.

But in public safety, especially, there is a unique source of participants – one that is especially important in these days of tighter state/local budgets. In California, for example, there are nearly 190,000 sworn active public safety officers (police and fire).  However, there are nearly a million retired and former officers.  This represents, on average, nearly 15 million years of skills and experience walking the streets.  This population of people never lost their purpose or their desire to contribute – they just ran out of time!

How can we harness this trusted population?  A local government could create an “opt-in” network of these experienced citizens.  Typically, public safety training records are centralized through a central state body.  A database comparison of the records can be matched against the ‘opt-in’ application.

Once accepted, the officer will receive instantaneous alerts on his cell phone, based on its GPS location, about reported problems.  When a problem is reported, the public safety dispatcher would have the ability to examine a geo-spatial screen and discover how many people are in a particular area and who best to solicit or notify. 

Governments across the country should enable this skilled population to support public safety problem-solving, in order to identify, recognize, and address problems much faster.

With Jeff Frazier, Cisco IBSG

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/17655114970/hidden-reserve-of-public-safety-skills]

Posted on

US Mayors discuss social media

The last plenary session of the US Conference of Mayors (http://usmayors.org) mid-winter meeting consisted of a panel of mayors discussing their use and reaction to social media.  

But, first, one side observation about the audience.  Last year and certainly two years ago, it was rare to see much technology in the audience at a mayors’ meeting, aside from traditional cell phones.  At this session, more than half the audience of mayors seemed to have iPads and almost all of the rest smartphones.  This, in itself, is a sea change in attitudes and understanding of technology among elected officials.
Perhaps the biggest news about this session is that it was held and that the mayors were leading it.  Here are some of the, perhaps not surprising,  highlights that give a flavor of the discussion:
  • Some of the mayors, a minority, tied the rise of social media to the increase in petitions to recall mayors from office – even a short time after the election when the mayor won.
  • Social media cannot be treated in the same way that mayors used to handle a response to a letter from a constituent, in part because of the expectation of a rapid response and in part because the request and response are both visible to a wider audience.  At the same time, there is still a large constituency which is not using social media, so the traditional forms of public communications must also be accommodated.
  • The 24 hour a day nature of the Internet and social media also means that there are no private moments for mayors.  Everything they do can be recorded on video and posted shortly after the event.  
  • This also leads to a situation where the professional and personal lives of mayors get intertwined on the Internet.  Some have tried to separate these using various approaches, but the difference is often too subtle for the average resident.
  • Mayors with Facebook pages, which are completely open, find constituents using those pages to make requests for various city services.  More popular mayors in larger cities can end up maxing out at the 5,000 friend limit imposed by Facebook.  Thus, the experienced Facebook mayors recommended adopting a politician’s Facebook page.  Of course, one of the nice things about this style of page is that it is limited to “Likes”.
  • The whole experience of governing with Facebook can be overwhelming to a mayor, if the mayor doesn’t properly think it through.  The mayors who have been successful on Facebook and other social media have established a formal protocol (and staffing) within their office for managing and responding to the social media.
  • Nevertheless, none of the mayors is turning off the spigot.  They find the greater communication with residents helpful.  They noted that, especially in emergencies, social media gets the message out better than anything else.  Some have experimented with actively using social media in governing.  One example is http://www.engageomaha.com/ created by the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska.

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/17316386964/us-mayors-discuss-social-media]

Posted on

Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money; we make money to build better services”

Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money; we make money to build better services”

Liz Gannes, AllThingsD, had an interesting article about Zuckerberg’s political vision for Facebook.  

Although the average person tends to think of those who run Internet companies as somewhat anti-social geeks, I’m more often struck by their strong political views and mission.  I cannot think of an example of an official corporate statement from a CEO of a traditional company that would contain the sentiments below.  It goes beyond the usual corporate social responsibility mantra.

(There was also another news story that Facebook will not yet operate in China because they didn’t see how their model would work, given the political system there.)

Of course, even assuming that Zuckerberg’s intentions are as good as they sound, the question is whether the typical pressures on public companies will diminish the priority of these goals.

Highlights from Zuckerberg’s letter:

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected. …

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scaleof the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on. …

We hope to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions.

We believe building tools to help people share can bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.

By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.

Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.

Finally, as more of the economy moves towards higher-quality products that are personalized, we also expect to see the emergence of new services that are social by design to address the large worldwide problems we face in job creation, education and health care. We look forward to doing what we can to help this progress.


© 2012 Norman Jacknis
[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/17154212994/zuckerberg-tells-investors-we-dont-build-services-to]
Posted on

New Competition Between Governments

The speed and accessibility of digital information and services increases everyday.  Whatever a government does online can be viewed by not only its own constituents, but by anyone else.

This building trend is likely to lead to increasing competition among governments.  Competition between governments is not new – we have a long history of wars between nation-states to prove that point.  Even when relations between governments are peaceful, there has been a strong economic (mercantilist) competition to attract (steal) businesses and the jobs their plants and offices presumably bring when they move.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.  Instead, what will be at stake is the very loyalty of citizens and the relevance of public leaders to those citizens.

This may seem odd.  Historically, governments – no matter their political ideology – have been about control over physical territory and the people who live within the borders of that territory.  But the Internet is all about breaking down borders between people.  As the Internet increases in use, these borders become weaker.  This is true, as we have seen in some countries last year, even when the government has governed through the use of threats of physical violence and coercion.

We have also seen an ever-larger percentage of people who earn a living by the creation and delivery of knowledge, ideas and other intangible services, rather than the industrial era’s tangible services and goods.  These people can and do take their work with them, instead of going to an office or factory.  They may split their time each year between multiple locations, but they can still be in virtual touch with any place.  

This has two implications for the way they look at government.  First, it sets up a competition for the attention and allegiance of these people.  Which, if any, of these locations is the one they consider primary?  In a way, the governments of these different locations are in competition.

Second, while government still delivers many physical services, like maintaining streetlights, government too is finding that an increasing proportion of its activities are intangible services.  Much of what used to be conducted over the counter or desk, such as filing applications or making payments, is now done on the Internet.  

As society has become more complex, government finds itself also delivering digital information about problems from avoiding insect-born diseases to financial literacy.  For many of these intangible services, a person can look to any number of government websites, not just the website of the nearest government agency.

A few years ago, the Health Department in Westchester County, New York, created a web site on women’s health.  That site received visits from people who lived way beyond the New York area, even as far as South Africa.

So government leaders can no longer take for granted the interest of the people who might physically be located within their jurisdiction.  

This doesn’t mean government will disappear.  There will always be some geographic and physical responsibilities for government, like maintaining roads.  But from a citizen’s viewpoint it may become more like a visit to McDonald’s.  When I need it, I want to find it nearby, to be clean and to have good service, but I don’t have any particular loyalty or interest in McDonald’s beyond that.

While they may not normally go out of business, governments can certainly shrink because the lack of interest makes it hard to raise taxes.  And, of course, some governments have disappeared as when city and county governments have consolidated in various parts of the US.

So what’s a leader to do? To begin, public leaders must recognize that this competition is intensifying and that, like smart executives of consumer products companies, they have to think about market differentiation and market strategy.  As well, to strengthen the brand value of their jurisdiction, public leaders will also have to start to exercise the creativity that has made companies like Apple and Starbucks so successful.

To get your creative ideas flowing, I’d suggest two classic books on innovative strategy: “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen and “Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

As your thinking develops on this, please let me know so I can share your ideas with others. 

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/16462084069/new-competition-between-governments]
Posted on

Questions For Academic Research

I made a presentation two weeks ago at HICSS-45, one of the largest and longest running international systems conferences.  They had a running track on e-government and related topics.

Unlike the public officials I normally interact with, this provided an opportunity to talk with the university researchers who are delving deeply into the impact of the Internet on government, politics and society.

One of their requests to me was for a list of questions that non-academics are interested in getting answers to.  I reached out to various people who are currently or have been in government positions and came up with the list below.  (I’ve imperfectly organized the list by category.)

This list is not only of value for academics looking for interesting topics, but also for non-academics to step back and think a bit about the consequences of what they’re doing.


Politics and Governance:

  • What evidence is there that governments around the world are using the change potential of new technologies, especially social technologies, to not just “do things differently” but to “do different things”?  What are the distinguishing characteristics of those governments who are doing so?
  • We have heard anecdotes about how eGovernment has increased trust in, confidence in and legitimacy of government, in place like Mexico.  What survey research, before and after the introduction of eGov, is there that demonstrates this relationship? For what kinds of citizens is the effect most positive or not? For what kinds of governments is the effect the greatest?
  • Technology is supposed to be part of a wider shift to co-design, co-production and co-development of public policy and public services.  What are the conditions that facilitate this or inhibit this shift?  
  • Is there a link between eGovernment and other aspects of the Internet that enhance or diminish the resilience of societies?

Government Services:

  • How much of the benefits promised by eGovernment have been achieved?  What are the conditions that lead to greatest likelihood of delivering on its promise and potential benefits? 
  • What is the pattern of use of eGov services and other eGov tools? Has it been increasing, decreasing, or plateauing?  How do demographic, attitudinal, behavioral, and other factors affect the degree to which a person will use the Internet to interact with government?
  • To what degree and in what ways does the experience of citizens as consumers in the virtual marketplace on the Internet affect their expectations of how government should work?
  • What are the priorities and expectations of citizens, politicians and bureaucrats for technology-enabled government?  What accounts for any observed differences?
  • How is technology changing what it means to be a public servant and public servants view their relationship to citizens?


Citizen Behavior:

  • What are factors – personal, societal, governmental, technological – that result in citizens moving from inattention to lurking to higher levels of participation in Internet based public policy discussions?
  • Is there a relationship between increasing use of social media by government “actors” (politicians or bureaucrats) and trust/confidence in government?  
  • Noting that there are a variety of Internet-based tools, how do different technologies enhance or diminish the ability of people to collaborate on public policy or political action? 
  • As technology makes it possible for people to participate in “local affairs” from a distance, how and when do they decide to participate virtually? For those who have allegiances to more than one jurisdiction, how do they decide what is their primary allegiance and concern?


Technology Challenges:

  • How do you build a network that is secure, yet integrates the technology in the homes and offices of citizens with the technology owned by the governments serving them?
  • As the movement to the Internet of things means that government covers the geography it controls with sensors everywhere, how can this mass of real-time data be quickly analyzed and correlated, and then systems control and respond to anomalies that are detected?
  • Governments have experimented with various technological means of interacting with citizens, from web-based versions of paper forms to social media to geographic mashups, etc.  What software works best for what kinds of interactions?

Please feel free to contribute other questions so we can continue the dialog between the researchers and the rest of us.

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/16114595332/questions-for-academic-research]