A few weeks ago, we wrote about several of OpenPlans initiatives graduating from the internal new project incubator that is our “Civic Works” group.  OpenPlans is fertile ground for new civic technology and media projects — from urban policy media outlets like Streetsblog, Streetfilms and GothamSchools, to public technology projects like Open311, all the way to mature open source software organizations like OpenGeo — and it is always exciting to see our initiatives grow and expand.  Today, I’m happy to say that one of our initiatives, Civic Commons, is taking a big step forward in terms of funding and leadership.

With our partners at Code for America, we are proud to announce a $250,000 grant from the Omidyar Network for Civic Commons.  Together, Code for America and OpenPlans have been developing Civic Commons for the past year, and we are very proud to have Omidyar’s support as we move forward.

We are also very excited to be welcoming Andrew McLaughlin as Executive Director of Civic Commons.  Andrew was most recently the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the United States, advising President Obama on internet, technology  and innovation policy (including open government and open technology platforms) and before that the Director of Global Public Policy for Google, and the Vice President at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN – the nonprofit that manages internet domain names).  Needless to say, Andrew has a strong background in government technology and the internet, and we’re proud to bring him on board to lead Civic Commons.

For those of you unfamiliar with Civic Commons, it is a new non-profit effort to help governments use shared and open technologies for the public good. In Andrew’s words:

We believe that governments — especially the cities, towns, and counties that are on the hook to deliver public services every day — can now take advantage of the same technologies and techniques that have generated such enormous efficiencies and enabled such impressive new services by private enterprise. In a digitally interconnected world, cities don’t have to operate in isolation.  They don’t have to reinvent (or re-procure) the wheel every time they face a problem that technology could help address. Cities can pool their resources — their talents and ever-shrinking budgets — to build shared technologies. Just as open standards (e.g., the Internet protocols), shared infrastructures (e.g., cloud computing), and collaborative software (e.g., open source projects like Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Apache Hadoop) have powered astonishing advances in personal and enterprise computing, it is now time for governments to put them to work for the public good.

We believe that governments can now build and deploy shared technologies — open standards, common infrastructures, collaborative projects, and open source software, together with proprietary systems — to improve public service delivery, transparency, accountability, public participation, and management effectiveness, all while spending less.

In sum, Civic Commons is built around two central convictions: first, that wave after wave of innovation is delivering amazing new capabilities to the people and organizations that can take advantage of them, and second, that, with a little help, governments can absolutely understand and seize the opportunities created by the rapid evolution of information technology.

You can also see some of the ideas behind Civic Commons in this short video:

The notion that the internet and shared, open software tools can change the ways that citizens engage with their governments and each other is central to OpenPlans founding goals, and we are very excited to see these ideas get a big boost with this next step for Civic Commons.

The full press release about Civic Commons’ leadership and funding can be found here.

Today, I’m proud to announce that two of our projects are officially “graduating” from the Civic Works incubator and, at the same time, that we’re welcoming several fantastic new leaders.

First, is our Transportation group.  What began with our work to help Portland’s TriMet create a beautiful online system map using open source tools, and led to our recent work with MTA to bring mobile and online bus tracking to Brooklyn, has become a thriving social enterprise. We are now working with some of the biggest transit agencies in the US to deliver better information to riders at a lower cost, using open technologies.

The Transportation group will be graduating from Civic Works, led by co-Directors Jeff Maki and Kevin Webb. Kevin and Jeff are talented civic technologists who have contributed greatly to our success thus far.  Under their stewardship, the team will continue to provide strategic technology services to transit agencies looking to build the next generation of open information infrastructure.

Second, is our Open Government group.  OpenPlans has long believed that governments should benefit from the cost-saving and innovation opportunities inherent in open source software, open data, and open technology platforms.  We have steadily grown our efforts in this space, including the Open311 platform, which has grown into a multi-city, multi-vendor collaboration under our leadership, and the Civic Commons initiative, which we’ve been incubating with our partners at Code for America and O’Reilly Media.

We are pleased to announce that our Open Government efforts will graduate from Civic Works and officially become a part of Civic Commons.  With our partners, we have been building Civic Commons into a strong initiative, and will be making a formal announcement about next steps later this month, so stay tuned.

As part of this change, I’ll be joining the Civic Commons team to help get that project off the ground. In my new role as Senior Director at OpenPlans, I’ll remain involved with all of our projects, supporting each of the initiatives mentioned here as they continue to grow, but I’ll no longer be leading Civic Works as a whole.

I’m very happy to announce that Frank Hebbert will be stepping into the role of Director of Civic Works and leading this group going forward.  Frank has a long history of working at the intersection of technology, urban planning, and community building, and has been leading our work in that space through projects like the NYC DOT Transportation Feedback Portals and TransportationCamp.  I couldn’t imagine a more natural leader for Civic Works, and have extremely high hopes for where he’ll take the group.

Civic Works will remain the place where we explore how technology, planning, citizens, and government come together, and where we experiment with new projects and businesses that we hope to grow.  We are fortunate to have a talented staff of engineers, designers and analysts within Civic Works, as well as a fantastic community of collaborators and co-conspirators.

We’ve had some great successes over the past year, working closely with many cities and our growing network or partners, and we look forward to continuing this momentum in 2011 and beyond. That these projects are “graduating” from the Civic Works umbrella is a testament to our model, and we will look forward to seeing what the next crop of projects produces.

I couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds for OpenPlans, and I’ll look forward to seeing you all along the way.

Today, we are excited to launch a new project: real-time bus locations for the B63 line in Brooklyn.  For the past several months, we’ve been working closely with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build the open source and open data infrastructure for this new service.  As open source software developers, as open data advocates, and as MetroCard-carrying members of the NYC tech community, we at OpenPlans are extremely proud to help New Yorkers answer the question: “where’s the bus?”

As of this morning, you can log on to http://bustime.mta.info from your computer or smartphone and see B63s moving along their routes. You’ll also be able to retrieve real-time bus information from any phone via SMS — MTA will be installing informational signs with SMS codes along the B63 route in coming weeks.

This project is remarkable for a number of reasons:

Low Cost: when estimates to expand the 34th Street real-time bus data pilot to citywide scale came in at over $140mm, MTA began looking for a low cost solution.  This pilot, built using low-cost hardware and open source software, demonstrates that critical real-time information can be delivered to riders citywide at a fraction of that cost.

Built on Open Source: rather than building from scratch, and rather than buying a commercial package, we began by identifying and improving the most mature and successful open source project in this space.  That project was (and is) OneBusAway, a project developed by Brian Ferris for the Greater Seattle area.  For the MTA Bus Time B63 pilot, OpenPlans extended and adapted OneBusAway to meet MTA’s needs.

An Open Data Platform: the MTA BusTime B63 pilot has an open data program baked in — software developers can simply visit http://bustime.mta.info/wiki/Developers/, sign up for an API key, and build apps that make use of B63 real-time locations.  We have worked with MTA for several years to help grow their open data program, and are pleased to see them advance it even further with this initiative.

OpenPlans does a lot of things, so you may not realize that we have a growing business developing and supporting open source software for the transportation industry.  We are proud to add the MTA Bus Time B63 pilot to our list of projects, and are looking forward to working with more customer-oriented agencies to develop open information systems.

We have had a great time working with MTA on this project — they have a really sharp tech team, and we very much agree with their approach to designing and building customer information systems.

I’d also like to thank the incredibly talented and hardworking Transportation Team here at OpenPlans that has worked on this project since the fall: Jeff Maki (our tireless project & product manager), Andy Cochran (our creative director), Chris Patterson (our front-end engineer), David Turner (our transit algorithm specialist), Michael Keating (our business development manager), Evan Carter (our systems administrator) and Brian Ferris from OneBusAway.

A full press release is available here, and you can also see MTA’s announcement here.

See you on the bus!

That’s why we are announcing our search for an Executive Director for Civic Commons. This could sound misleading; as of yet, there is no legal entity called Civic Commons. But there needs to be, and the person we hire will make bring that entity into being. Even that statement could sound misleading; we’ll be “hiring” someone in the sense of empowering them with the resources and authority to act as this organization’s leader, but while we are in encouraging discussions with several funders about an operating budget, there is no guaranteed salary until these conversations move forward. This is a true start-up job; the ED will help raise his or her own salary and will build the organization from the ground up.

There are other daunting aspects to this job. We need someone with the energy, skills, and leadership to match the ambitious scope of our vision. The ideal candidate will have held leadership positions at one or more levels of government, will have a firm grasp on the technology landscape, especially with open source and cloud-based solutions, will have worked with private sector software vendors and implementations, and will have experience with non-profits, consortia, and/or standards bodies. This organization will succeed to the extent that it can articulate a vision and engagement model that a large set of stakeholders can get behind, so that delicate balance of leadership and consensus-building is critical here.

The only thing bigger than the challenge of this job is the potential impact. Andrew Hoppin, whose blog post last January was part of the inspiration for Civic Commons, has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging efforts like this one to save the government a billion dollars. A lot of barriers would need to be broken to make that happen, but it is possible. And it’s more than just cost savings, it’s the spread of innovation that we think Civic Commons could enable. We think this organization will be a very big deal, and the person who takes this position will have had a lead role in a major transformation of government technology.

How will we conduct the search and choose an ED? Because Civic Commons isn’t a legal entity yet, there is no board of directors to approve the process. The three partner organizations are conducting this search, so resumes should be send to edsearch@civiccommons.com, which will go to myself, Nick Grossman at OpenPlans, and Bryan Sivak at OCTO. The three of us will consult with the board of advisors who’ve agreed to help with this project, and we will make the final decision. We are not putting out a formal timeline, but will take resumes as they come in and interview candidates as appropriate until we find the right person. Any interested parties should contact us at this email address as soon as possible.

Please help us spread the word about this important opportunity.

by Jennifer Pahlka

(Cross-posted from Civic Commons)

Today at the Gov 2.0 Summit, we had the pleasure of announcing an exciting new initiative: Civic Commons.

Civic Commons’ mission is to help governments share technology more effectively. Governments spend an enormous amount of time and effort producing and procuring technology, and while sharing investment and expertise is completely logical, many barriers stand in the way of this happening. Civic Commons will support the sharing of actual technology as well as the many related resources (such as policy language, contract language, case studies, etc.) needed to make this possible.

Civic Commons is being founded by OpenPlans, Code for America, and the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer. A substantial amount of effort will be dedicated to the project throughout 2011 as DC’s Code for America project.

OpenPlans is extremely proud to be part of this initiative, as it strikes at one of our core mission goals: to improve government services and the citizen experience by leveraging a shared investment in open code. We were founded in 1999 on the promise that shared investments in technology among governments can produce more open, accountable, effective, and efficient government. Since then, nearly all of our efforts have focused on technology and knowledge sharing among civic institutions, and we see Civic Commons as a natural extension of these efforts.

We are also very proud to be partnering with Code for America and OCTO, both of whom are leaders in this exciting and important space. OpenPlans has worked extensively with both CfA and OCTO over the past year, on projects like the OpenMuni wiki (now part of Civic Commons) and the Open311 initiative (now also a project in the Commons).  We’ve also got a great list of advisors & supporters, and as Civic Commons grows we expect to nurture an even wider and more diverse community of partners and collaborators.

We are hoping to ride what is becoming a giant wave of interest in this issue, and harness the effort of many smart people who are thinking and writing about it (Andrew Hoppin, David Eaves, Gunnar Hellekson and Clay Johnson, here’s looking at you).  The beauty of civic technology sharing is that everyone’s interests are aligned, and we believe this is also the case in this new initiative.

Now that we’re officially up and running, we’ll be writing more about our plans for Civic Commons, and we hope that you’ll join in that discussion as well.

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT.  It was great to be around such a creative and talented group of people, and as usual, this year brought with it a new batch of Knight News Challenge winners. (For a roundup of some conference takeaways, see Paul’s post).

The topic for my talk was “Data into Action” — in other words, how can we build on transparency and use data to create social and political impact?

This was the question posed by Chris Csikszentmihalyi, the director of MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, and the host of the conference.  It’s a particularly relevant question now, because the past few years have seen a real explosion in public open data, including countless websites and apps that make use of it.  Built into Chris’ question is the assertion that perhaps we don’t fully know how best to make use of all of this data that’s becoming available to us.

My guess is that we are going see a big increase in the number of tools that make public data actionable.  Below is my initial take on how (you can also see the video and the slides from the conference).  This is admittedly not fully formed: I don’t claim to know how to “turn data into action” — rather, I just have a few ideas about some of the factors and how they’re shaping the “data into action” landscape.

Making data actionable

Making data actionable requires focused effort; data on its own isn’t enough.  So where does that effort come from and how does it help?   Each of the following groups can play a part, and I hope to see more initiatives involving collaboration among them:

• Government. Government can play a role, not only in producing data and making it available to the public, but also in accepting data in new ways.  Efforts like Open311 are attempting to create standards for read/write government APIs, and the idea of “government as a platform” is largely about considering and building out these data sets and APIs.  In most cases government alone cannot make data actionable, but they play a hugely important role in making it possible.  Side note: it’s worth mentioning that simply publishing a data set is not enough: in order to produce worthwhile action (and justify the expense of opening data), governments need to cultivate communities of users/developers around their data sets.
• Civic Hackers. In recent years, civic data mashup sites have provided new views into how cities and governments operate.  GovTrack is one of the most mature: a congressional data site that combines many datasets in order to provide insights into what’s happening in congress, it makes that data actionable by providing ways for people to stay apprised of updates (called “trackers”), and provides an API which many other sites have used. On more of a personal utility level, a new application called CabSense takes historical NYC taxi pickup and dropoff data, and uses it to provide recommendations on where best to catch a taxi.  For every corner of life, civically conscious and entrepreneurial endeavors are popping up to make data more actionable (GovTrack in fact runs a modest profit from ad revenue).
• Journalists. Journalists have always used research to provide consumer- or citizen-friendly insights.  In the age of mass data, the need for this hasn’t changed, though some of the methods have.  For instance: the Washington Post recently launched its “Daily Gripe” column, which uses incoming SeeClickFix issue reports as a basis for follow-up reporting.  The NY Times recently did an in-depth analysis of the same taxi data that powers CabSense.  As news organizations start using more real-time data, we can expect to see a big increase in interpretive data analysis.
• Nonprofits & interest groups. Like journalists, nonprofits and interest groups are particularly motivated to produce action out of data. Uncivil Servants, a 2007 project by OpenPlans, Greg Whalin (a dot-com startupper by day and civic hacker by night) and NYC’s bike/ped advocacy group Transportation Alternatives is an example of this working to great effect.  The website  crowdsourced illegal use of city-issued parking placards, and TA followed up on those reports with the city as part of their “Above the Law” [PDF] campaign.  The result was a major restructuring of parking placard policy in NYC.

Each of these groups — and I’m sure there are others I’m missing — can add layers of meaning and actionability to raw data sets, and is a critical part of the “data into action” ecosystem.

Combining the lessons from “data sites” and “action sites”

Above: screenshot from the Haiti Crisis Map

For the most part, we’ve seen innovation along these two separate, parallel tracks: sites that mash data up in creative ways (for example: Outside.in, Everyblock, BigAppleEd, and many of the sites I mentioned above), and sites that imagine new ways for people to interact and collaborate with one another (examples: The Extraordinaries, The Point, PledgeBank, GroundCrew, and on).  I believe that we’ll begin to see a convergence of automated “data sites” and social “action sites.” A frequent thread of criticism about data sites is that they can feel cold and lifeless; I expect that will change as the convergence happens.

That these are largely separate is of course not a hard and fast rule: tools are emerging that combine the two: most notably Ushahidi, InSTEDD and others’ response to the Haiti Earthquake in January.  And here in the US, SeeClickFix‘s ”watch areas” are a clever way to make citizen issue reports actionable.  I know there are more examples like these (please link to the best ones in the comments).

The challenges in how to “do data” and how to get people to collaborate are substantial, and it’s understandable that they’ve been tackled mostly independently.  But I think the timing is such that more and more folks will begin drawing the lessons that each class of sites has demonstrated, and start tying the approaches together.

Bridging the civic divide

My last hypothesis is that we can “piggy back” higher-level civic engagement on top of more personally-oriented tasks.

I see perhaps the biggest opportunity for converting data into action in attaching “civic actions” to services that people use for personal reasons.  For instance: “where’s the bus?” has been a huge topic over the past two years — transit has been one of the hottest sectors of open government data, precisely because it serves a very important personal need: how to get around.  Rather than viewing this as an insignificant development, I prefer to view it as an opportunity to draw people in to more civically significant activities.

Washington DC is taking an interesting approach to this: at last month’s Online Engagement for Sustainable Urban Mobility event, DC CTO Bryan Sivak announced that they will be building out a network of QR codes on the DC Circulator bus system (another example of government building the “platform”, or laying the foundation for innovation).  These codes will allow for the expected location-specific interactions between bus riders and the bus system. But it’s only a short step to imagine piggy-backing on those interactions to introduce questions like “which of these changes to the bus system would be most helpful to you?”.

A more subtle example is WalkScore. I recently moved from NYC to Boston, and I used WalkScore to help decide where to live.  This data (how walkable are certain locations?) is immediately actionable (where do I choose to live?).  What’s especially clever is that WalkScore uses this helpful-on-a-personal-level data to stealthily introduce the civic action that they’re advocating (reducing car dependence and encouraging alternative transportation).

Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people have a hierarchy of civic needs.  The basics need to be taken care of before “civic self actualization” is possible.  By building a foundation of engagements, beginning with the most personal and necessary, we can build a ladder to more significant civic actions.

What’s next

So, I think this is an interesting topic, and one that’s worth thinking about (and working on) in more detail.

I’ve been talking to Joe Edelman, CEO of Citizen Logistics (the makers of the awesome GroundCrew real-time organizing platform), and Chris Csikszentmihalyi from MIT about ideas for follow up.  The three of us would like to host an ongoing conversation on this topic, and invite others who are working in this space to join in.

To that end, we’re happy to announce the new Data into Action tumblog:

http://dataintoaction.org

We’ll be posting there as we traverse the interwebs; please also feel free to submit your own posts, or if you prefer tag sites on delicious with “dataintoaction.”  We’ve also established a Data Into Action google group, for open discussion:

http://groups.google.com/group/dataintoaction

That’s it; we will see you out there….

Last month, we hosted a one-day workshop with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer‘s office called Speak Up, New York.  The purpose of the event was to bring together NYC community groups and “civic hackers” to discuss how community groups are using technology to organize and engage.  With a keynote from Deputy US CTO for Open Government Beth Noveck, presentations from E-Democracy, Neighbors for Neighbors, Transportation Alternatives, and others, and representation from many NYC community boards as well as projects like Localocracy and SeeClickFix, it was a great opening discussion.

In the spirit of building community, our first step is to continue to bring together the people who are interested in these issues, to see what kinds of things we can do together, starting right now.  Long term, OpenPlans and the MBPO are also interested in  building a series of web tools to empower community organizing in NYC, but the more important step is to build connections among the community of people we intend to serve.

With that goal in mind, we are kicking off a series of monthly meetups, where we’ll work together to develop tools and resources to empower local community organizing in NYC.  The next meetup is this coming Monday, July 26th, 6:30-8:30pm, here at OpenPlans.  Projects for Monday’s meetup will include (please click through to vote or leave a comment on each idea):

• Mapping out the communication tools that community groups are using today
• Creating a “how to guide” for starting a community group
• Creating a Public Registry of Community Organizations

To join the group and to RSVP for next week’s meetup, check out the meetup group here:

http://meetup.com/SpeakUpNY

We are excited to move forward with this great group of people, and we hope you can join us!

// Photo from the June 11 Speak Up, NY workshop by Robin Smith

Localocracy has a nice way of expanding into new communities.  They avoid the “tumbleweeds” problem by building support for the initiative before it starts, in a kickstarter-ish sort of way.  This is, of course, not a new idea, but I think Localocracy does a nice job of executing on it.  E-Democracy has long used a similar system for building interest before groups launch.  It’s also reminiscent of the genius way that Threadless builds demand for t-shirts before deciding to print them.  I like the way that Localocracy uses the approach to both build excitement and guarantee some level of engagement once the sites go live.

Last night at an event here at OpenPlans, I spent a few minutes talking to Boštjan “Bos” Špetic, the founder of a web startup called Zemanta (a tool for finding related content to blog posts — for writers as well as readers).  Most of Bos’ team is based in Slovenia, where he is from.

We got to talking about OpenPlans’ work and the issue of Open Government in general. As it happens, Bos is on an advisory committee to the Slovenian government on Open Government, and will have an opportunity, come fall, to deliver recommendations on where they should direct their efforts.  He is looking for information on where to start, as it’s pretty much a blank slate for them right now.

First off, I don’t know anything about Slovenia’s government, policies, or infrastructure.  All I can do is point to some resources that are beginning to be developed here in the US, after a few years of real traction towards open government:

Coming from the top is the White House’s Open Government Initiative .  I can testify to the impact that this high-level mandate has had throughout the country; we see language from it in new initiatives, RFPs, etc every day.  Next, there are a number of books, notably O’Reilly’s recent Open Government, Beth Noveck’s excellent Wiki Government (which focuses on collaborative governance) and Personal Democracy Forum’s Rebooting America. And of course, there are a number of evolving online resources, including the Open Government Playbook, which acts as an index to lots of open government documentation, and the (very rough) Open Government Guidebook that’s being developed as part of our OpenMuni effort, and aims to become a step-by-step how to for some processes.

One of my favorite open government resources, that’s now admittedly a bit out of date, is the Public Transit Openness Index, a screenshot of which is at the top of this post.  What it does nicely is breaks the concept of “open” down into concrete, measurable steps, which can be compared across agencies.  It would be great to see something like this for open government more broadly, across functions and jurisdictions.

The White House’s Open Government Directive offers a start, and they’ve begun to track agencies’ progress, but what I’d love to see is an organic document that breaks open government down into pieces, and links it up to efforts that are underway or have already taken place.  Maybe this already exists?  The Playbook and Guidebook, above, are both moving in this direction, but I’ve yet to see a more granular and hyperlinked checklist like the Transit Openness Index. Checklists are great, and social checklists are even better.  Perhaps this is a project for WikiHow (which doesn’t yet have a government section), or maybe it’s something new.

Regardless, it’s clear that there’s still work to be done in packaging the learnings of open government, for ourselves and for folks around the world who are looking for models to follow.

Update: I neglected to mention Phil Ashlock’s excellent recent post covering the State of Open Government which covers this question in much more detail than I did here.

The New York City Department of Transportation needs your help! We want to provide more and more useful information to the traveling public about traffic and transportation. We know we’ve got a lot of the raw data, we need you to help us separate the wheat from the chaff.

Here at the DOT we’re plugged into all of the comings and goings of the city – we’re constantly monitoring highways, ferries, traffic cameras, bridges and road work. This means that we create a ton of data, some of which we share publically on our data feeds page. However, most of our data isn’t currently public.

There are many reasons why you (outside of the walls of government bureaucracy) will be able to build better apps, at ten times the speed and efficiency than we will ever be able to. We see our role as opening up and cleaning up our data to make it easier for you. Together we can provide the public with the information they hunger for, to make better decisions about how to move around the City.

To get started on this, we need your help to identify where the hot spots of demand are, so we can prioritize where direct our efforts to format and open up data. We also need you to help us start assessing where the gaps are between the data we have and the data we’d need to create truly useful “real-time traffic” apps. We’re at the beginning of this process, and the first step is to have an informal brainstorming meetup with developers. We’ll talk about some of the data feeds that we have, and hopefully you’ll come with some questions we haven’t asked yet.

The meeting is full and RSVPs are closed, but it’s not too late to get ideas in.  At the meeting tomorrow, I’ll also be encouraging DOT to host some sort of idea sourcing tool online.

Leave any ideas in the comments section here, or on today’s post on Streetsblog (where there are already a few comments coming in).