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Data Into Action

By Nick Grossman | Published: August 3, 2010

data-into-action

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.

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A Case for Open Data in Transit

By Vanessa Hamer | Published: August 2, 2010

StreetFilms has produced a great video highlighting the case studies and benefits of open transit data and how that relates to the broader movement around Gov2.0. Along with websites like CityGoRound.org and the developer resources exemplified by transit agencies like Trimet, BART, MBTA, and the MTA this video does a great deal to show what can be done and what is being done to leverage more innovation and access to information around public transit. If you know of a transit agency or a developer that could use this kind of insight and inspiration, please pass it on. The video concludes by looking further into the whole transportation network by asking what else we could do with access to better data in regards to traffic, safety, and more.

The video features Chris Dempsey and Joshua Robin of the MBTA, MTA Chair Jay Walder, O’Reilly Media founder and gov2.0/web2.0 thought leader Tim O’Reilly, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase, NYC Councilwoman Gale Brewer, Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives, as well as Nick Grossman and Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock of OpenPlans.

Please take a look and spread the word: http://www.streetfilms.org/a-case-for-open-data-in-transit/

Posted in all, open data, transit | 1 Comment

NYC DOT Seeks Developer Feedback

By Sam Wong | Published: July 22, 2010
A screenshot on traffic conditions in Lower Manhattan at 3:30 PM from Google Maps.

A screenshot on traffic conditions in Lower Manhattan at 3:30 PM. (Google Maps for Android)

Yesterday morning Nick Grossman and I attended a developers’ meeting at the NYC Department of Transportation to brainstorm some ideas to better enhance the open data movement at the agency.  The room was very well-balanced in terms of attendance between developers and DOT officials, and there were some interesting requests from the development/programming community.

Real-time data and the consolidation/aggregation of NYC transportation data were two general areas of importance to the DOT and development/academic community.  In the long run, the DOT hopes to provide real-time traffic information along with improving delivery truck routing around low bridges on their data feed portal.  They mentioned that like many New Yorkers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg would prefer knowing the traffic conditions ahead of time and not getting delayed for meetings and events in Midtown traffic.  Better real-time traffic data will be the foundation for building apps to help New Yorkers navigate congested streets.  Moreover, better transportation apps could help people make more informed transportation choices, thereby building a more sustainable city.

Thus, the DOT is seeking the talents in the developer community to help build solutions.

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Join Us @ the Speak Up NY Working Group

By Nick Grossman | Published: July 22, 2010

speakupny

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):

1) Mapping out the communication tools that community groups are using today: http://www.meetup.com/SpeakUpNY/ideas/318493/
2) Creating a “how to guide” for starting a community group: http://www.meetup.com/SpeakUpNY/ideas/337693/
3) Creating a Public Registry of Community Organizations: http://www.meetup.com/SpeakUpNY/ideas/305362/

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

Posted in Community Involvement, open government | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Study: A Three-Tier System, Utility & Collab for Open Data

By Sam Wong | Published: July 21, 2010
A screenshot of Toronto's Open Data Site, which allows for collaboration about data sets.

A screenshot of Toronto's Open Data Site, which allows for collaboration about data sets.

Pioneering an open data policy on the government level is not the easiest initiative without support, according to a recent study by the Open Society Institute. It takes various levels of negotiations among parties of the public, elected officials and “civic hackers”.  Furthermore, some government administrations are more risk adverse than others, unsure on how to proceed from being closed to being open in the most cost-effective manner.   Most seek to replicate best practices from successful initiatives and improve on others through news stories and conferences, but never some thing tangible; a resource guide, such as our own OpenMuni wiki (still in development), could be more purposeful in understanding the processes of unlocking accessible and quality data.

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Posted in Activity Feeds, Open Government, Open Standards, all, open data, open government | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Bootstrapping Community Engagement

By Nick Grossman | Published: July 21, 2010

localocracy-launchpad

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.

Posted in Incentives, Online Participation, community | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Wanted: Open Government Checklist

By Nick Grossman | Published: July 20, 2010

Public Transit Openness Index

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:

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What Transpo Data Should NYC Open Up?

By Nick Grossman | Published: July 20, 2010

Tomorrow morning, NYC DOT is inviting developers to come and discuss what transportation data sets they’d like to see opened up.  From their invitation:

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).

Posted in open data, transportation | Tagged | Leave a comment

OpenBlock: Newspaper Survey

By Paul Winkler | Published: July 12, 2010

If you’re interested in the OpenBlock “hyper-local news” project, we want your help!

Our first goal is to make the OpenBlock software easier to install and use for newspapers in the 25k-100k circulation range.  If you or somebody you know works at such a paper, please take a look at this short survey. The results will help us plan our work in the first few months of the project.

Thanks!

Posted in Open Government, civic media | Tagged | Leave a comment

MTA Continues to Open Its Doors

By Sam Wong | Published: July 8, 2010
A screenshot from NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications' (DoITT) NYCityMap showing subway entrances/exits and their intersections (green globe), subway station, and the lines serving that station.

A screenshot from NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications' (DoITT) NYCityMap showing subway entrances/exits and their intersections (green globe), subway station, and the lines serving that station.

The MTA recently released a new dataset with exact latitude and longitude coordinates of station entrances and exits. This was a highly requested dataset for many transit developers and showcases the lastest development in the MTA’s transition from a data licensing model toward community collaboration in pursuit of more innovative applications. This shift has not only inspired programmers to develop much-needed applications that help citizens navigate the subway system, but is also a great example of confidence in the community’s ability to provide low cost innovations while many public transit agencies are facing fiscal challenges.

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Posted in Activity Feeds, all, community, data, mta, nyc, open data, open government, transit | 2 Comments