Running on Open Government - Campaign Toolkits

[Jennifer Bell]

I've been asked by a mayoral candidate of a small Canadian city to
give some input into the 'open data' section of his campaign
platform.

It would be great if someone else has done this already, so that I
could just pass on a pointer to best practices. Does anyone know of
local campaigns that have been run with an open data component -- and
preferably won?

A toolkit for explaining to local politicians:

- what open government data means
- how to leverage it as part of your campaign

could be a good shared resource...

Jennifer Bell
http://visiblegovernment.ca

[Joe Germuska]

So far I haven't personally heard of any municipal candidates running
on open gov platforms, but look forward to what other folks can tell us.

Adriel Hampton, an open government activist, is running for the house
seat in CA-10.

http://adriel4congress.ning.com/
http://adrielhampton.wordpress.com/whois/

Joe

--
Joe Germuska
J...@Germuska.com * http://blog.germuska.com

"I felt so good I told the leader how to follow."
-- Sly Stone

[Josh Tauberer]

This is an interesting question (what to tell candidates) and one we
don't often get to talk about in our open gov community because most of
the players are 501c3s.

Off the top of my head, a pro-open campaign (even though you only said
data) should include three aspects:

* Making more information legally public by strengthening FOIA-type
laws. There's probably something good here:
http://openthegovernment.org/article/subarchive/19/

* Making public information more available by following open data best
practices. For that I'll just plug my own monograph:
http://razor.occams.info/pubdocs/opendataciviccapital.html

* Making government interaction more open by strengthening its community
interaction and employing open APIs for government services. I can't
think of any good references for this, although (iirc) it's something
Tom Steinberg has written about (but where?).

Anyone have any good links for any of these?

- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

[Rick Blum]

You might call the folks at Project Vote Smart. As part of their
collaboration with Sunshine Week, they asked candidates questions on open
government. A phone call there might direct you to some of the candidate
answers in their database related to open government.


______________
Rick Blum
Coordinator, Sunshine in Government Initiative
www.sunshineingovernment.org

[Robert Millis]

In case you don't have it, the Project Vote Smart site is http://votesmart.org/ 

You can get a lot of detailed information from their database online.

Robert MillisHudson Street Media

Tel: 212-226-1000 / Fax: 212-226-1308

http://www.HudsonStreetMedia.com

http://www.DynamoPlayer.com

[Jose M. Alonso]

Josh, those are good references. We also included a reference to your
doc from the one the W3C eGovernment Interest Group just published:

Publishing Open Government Data
http://www.w3.org/TR/gov-data/

One of the questions in the original email also asked about what OGD
is. This reference can also be of help:
http://www.w3.org/TR/egov-improving/#OGD

-- Jose

[Steven Clift]

If I were running for local office, I'd promise an new city ordinance
that required:

1. All public meeting notices, agendas, and meeting documents must be
placed online at the same time they are distributed to elected
officials.

2. All public meetings must be digitally recorded (audio is fine) and
placed online within 24 hours of the meeting. Council meetings must
also be webcast live.

3. An official e-petitioning system that can force the council to
discuss certain issues at a certain threshold and take public comment.

4. All ethnics and campaign finaces disclosures must be posted online.

5. Any e-mail/public document sent to a quorum of elected officials by
city staff must automatically must be posted online automatically.

6. Every council member will be supported with a combined e-mail
news/blog tool for use in governance (that may not be used for
election purposes and is transfer to the next council member (assuming
districts).

7. Detailed government spending information posted online on a monthly
basis (not just proposed budget or government staff salaries (which
the media tends to gather a post)).

8. Require every e-mail received by the city to be confirmed with a
copy of what was received, given a tracking number, and be responded
to within two weeks.

9. Create a system for the public to comment on public meeting agenda
items (stay tuned!).

10. Add a city presence on popular social networking sites.

11. Set up e-mail alerts about new content online and personalized
keyword and geographic relevancy trackers so people can get timely
notification of information that matters to them.

12. Real-time police blotter and e-alerts.

What would you add?

The best way to see your local government to do any of these things is
get candidates to promise them before the votes are cast!

Steven Clift
http://stevenclift.com

--
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Donate today: http://e-democracy.org/donate

[Josh Tauberer]

I've put this on the wiki:
http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php?title=Campaign_Toolkit

(I also cleaned up the recent vandalism because I accidentally opened it
up for anonymous edits recently.)

- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

[Thomas Lord]

On Wed, 2009-09-09 at 21:33 -0500, Steven Clift wrote:
>
> 12. Real-time police blotter and e-alerts.
>
> What would you add?

I would take at least that bit out. I am pretty
sure that, in many cases, the police would quite
correctly have strong objections to any such idea.

Or, perhaps you can see a way to arrange so that
organized criminals can't read the blotter in
real time and/or have to issue real time
reports of all of their own activities. And
also how not to overburden forces with new bureaucratic
requirements when they should be busy patrolling and
such.

> 10. Add a city presence on popular social networking sites.

As the federal gov't has started to learn, that
creates conflicts between TOS agreements and law.
It also creates an odd and arguably unethical
endorsement of certain services by government.

> 3. An official e-petitioning system that can force
> the council to discuss certain issues at a certain
> threshold and take public comment.

That's a pretty huge legally mandated procedural
change. It's one that could be easily gamed.

Several of your other items look fairly good to
me, though.

-t

[Conor Sullivan]

If there is an Identity verification system that confirms which users are registered voters in the community a system like that could actually be very viable.  Reminder that this would only force the council to discuss issues and take public comment.  I will stand with Steven on this one, I think such a system is a must have in a truly transparent and open government. As far as I know the legal precedent is that your electronic signature does count as your real signature so these petitions could hold up.
 

Several of your other items look fairly good to
me, though.

-t

--
Conor White-Sullivan
CEO/Founder Localocracy
413 259 7840
553 Main St. Amherst Ma
co...@localocracy.org
twitter.com/localocracy

[Hugh]

This list is an excellent contribution. Thanks!

On Sep 9, 9:33 pm, Steven Clift <cl...@e-democracy.org> wrote:
> 2. All public meetings must be digitally recorded (audio is fine)

Audio is not much use to you if you are a deaf citizen.

Video is of limited use if you are a visually impaired tax payer.

Audio and video are challenging to index and search.

There's really no substitute for text transcripts from a professional
stenographer. Audio and video may supplement transcripts, but in
practice are mostly inadequate by themselves for most use cases.

Thanks again,
Hugh

[steve...@gmail.com]

The city needs to focus on getting the data released first, then
pushing from the released data to distribution sites (Facebook,
Myspace, Twitter, etc). If the city can at least give the data, then
others can mash it up. The govtrack model seems to make sense -- free
flowing data allows people to make many sites from the source.

[Kohl Gill]

As a someday-maybe local candidate that would be running on just such
issues, this topic is fascinating. Notes below.

On Sep 10, 12:44 pm, Thomas Lord <l...@emf.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-09-09 at 21:33 -0500, Steven Clift wrote:
>
> > 12. Real-time police blotter and e-alerts.
>
> > What would you add?
>
> I would take at least that bit out.  I am pretty
> sure that, in many cases, the police would quite
> correctly have strong objections to any such idea.
>
> Or, perhaps you can see a way to arrange so that
> organized criminals can't read the blotter in
> real time and/or have to issue real time
> reports of all of their own activities.  And
> also how not to overburden forces with new bureaucratic
> requirements when they should be busy patrolling and
> such.

I think at least quasi-real-time alerts is reasonable. This is just
an issue of turn-around-time, which my local police force (Washington,
DC) has gotten down to a couple of days for most crimes, a few hours
for the most serious.

>
> > 10. Add a city presence on popular social networking sites.
>
> As the federal gov't has started to learn, that
> creates conflicts between TOS agreements and law.
> It also creates an odd and arguably unethical
> endorsement of certain services by government.

This isn't so much of an issue, especially if the presence starts out
with just a link back to the city's website. The real content would be
constructed by the fans/users/citizens, which is most appropriate.

Cheers,

Kohl

[Jonathan Gray]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Jennifer Bell
<visibleg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  - what open government data means

Regarding defining open (government) data, the Open Knowledge
Definition may be of interest:

http://opendefinition.org/

--
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

[Steven Clift]

Except for the US Congress most local governments (state legislatures
too) only have audio recordings that they then upon request have
transcribed into other formats.

The MN legislature for example has a library of audio from hearing
etc. that if the courts ever need to determine legislative intent ...
folks have to listen to them. I once spent a day digging in once when
I worked in the state senate.

Although today, a back door to text are the closed captions from the
"best of" legislative video broadcast over television and cable in MN.
(Why the heck isn't the U.S. Congress providing video to public
television for over the air HD sub-channel broadcast too!)

In MN open meeting law all that is currently required of public
meeting documentation is a notice and a record of votes. Even minutes
aren't required. So an audio or video file would be a huge step
forward assuming you have the infrastructure in place.

(I actually had a prototype built called Democaster.org -
http://dowire.org/wiki/Democaster for the UK government working
primarily with open source audio/free to use tools to make it
economically viable to webcast a five person meeting to another ten
people live or on demand.)

Steve

[Jennifer Bell]

Hi all, thanks for the replies! To help out the local campaign I
mentioned, I'll be writing up a platform that amalgamates some of
what's been posted, as well as maybe some points from sources like
Obama's technology platform, etc. This will be good for immediate
needs, but I have no doubt that a final result will be stronger if
other people contribute too.

I was impressed with how the EU P.S. 2.0 manifesto came together on
Mixed Ink:
http://mixedink.com/Eups20/Manifesto

Would anybody be interested in participating in writing and editing a
short 1-2 page campaign platform for local open data? Like any
platform, the document has to have a strong marketing component,
selling the ideas to average citizen.

If you're interested in participating, please respond or contact me at
jennifer at visiblegovernment.ca , and include:

- whether you're interested in authoring a first draft (est. 5-8
hours, or more (!))
- whether you're interested in rating and editing first drafts (est.
3 hours or so)
- coming in at a later stage to rate and make suggestions. (1 hr?)

I could see a reasonable finished product being produced in the next
3-4 weeks. It could be really cool.

Let me know what you think,

Jennifer

[Hugh]

> I once spent a day digging in once...

Of course your recognize that the fact that you had leave your desk to
do that rather than point & click on your computer is a deliberate
impediment to transparency.

> So an audio or video file would be a huge step...

It's step, sure, but I'm not convinced it's a huge step. I my humble
experience govts use audio/video as a sop to openness rather than a
sincere effort.

"You want minutes? Silly man, this is the 21st century - we can do
better than that these days - stop by any time (MF 9:30-11:30,
1:30-3:30), we'll see if we can't find that tape for you."

Offering audio or video of meetings is a small step from offering
minutes in runes on clay tablets stored in the bottom of a locked
filing cabinet stuck in a disused basement lavatory with no lights and
a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'

[Steven Clift]

Say, sort of scary, but I happened upon something I wrote on this
topic a decade ago ... sadly or perhaps consistently many of the ideas
are the same:

From:
http://stevenclift.com/?p=293
GOVPUB,

I am interested in your feedback on any efforts to fund/support
government online development in terms of Internet access to
legislative/rulemaking/decision-making information and interaction. I
helped staff the Minnesota Government Information Access Council
1994-97 and it seems that anything that requires new resources to
provide online (versus a leveraged HTML dump) hasn't happened.

For example you can access most Minnesota legislative documents that
existed in the older systems, but rulemaking information is rarely
online except for (almost useless PDF state register files) because
their is no uniform system to leverage. I am **thinking about**
working with some MN legislators and perhaps Gov. Ventura's office to
draft up a dream bill for online access to official government
"democracy" decision-making information.

Below are a set of ideas that have been bouncing around my head. These
are expensive infrastructure ideas that would require new public
investments - no creative budget shifting would bring these about.

Are you aware of any states/countries that have:

1. A requirement that all public meetings be announced via a statewide
online system that includes the meeting time, place, agenda, live net
audio/video feed information and perhaps searchable past agendas,
official minutes, and archived audio/video files.

2. A state-level fully web-enabled rulemaking information system that
covers all agencies with rulemaking authority.

3. A statewide directory of all public (state and local) elected and
appointed bodies including information on each member and term of
service.

4. A government-wide electronic correspondence system which assigns
permanent e-mail addresses to all elective and appointed positions as
well as a system for use by officials to sort incoming e- mail and
develop auto-response routines.

5. A "My Democracy" system which allows the public to monitor and be
automatically notified of state legislative or local council bill
introductions, amendments, changes, meeting notices based on user
preferences.

6. Comprehensive Internet access to audio/video feeds for all
legislative committee hearings and floor sessions and searchable
access to audio/video archives.

7. Live meeting support systems for full remote Internet access to
meeting handouts and other materials distributed at the meeting.
Complementing audio/video access such a system would allow handouts
and testimony to be submitted in HTML and other popular formats for
instant Internet access.

8. Legislative or city council chambers that have been fully connected
for ISDN as well as standard **Internet-based** audio and video
conferencing for remote testimony. Specially outfitted legislative
offices that extend notebook access to include audio/video
conferencing such that legislators are equipped to meet with
constituents or make public/school presentations from their offices
via Internet-based video conferencing.

9. A statewide open appointments system that contains announcements
for all state and local open appointment opportunities include "My
Democracy" opt-in notifications based on parameters preset by the
citizen.

10. Rule of Law systems that extend from state statutes and rules to
provide coordinated online access to all local and school ordinances
and state agencies or university rules and procedures. I am interested
in full hyperlinked system showing the extension of the state
constitution down through every law, rule, or procedure that draws its
legitimacy from that constitution.

11. Examples of state-level "C-SPAN" like organizations that have
extended video coverage from just legislative event to executive
branch and significant non-government public affairs events.

12. Model legislation to package the text, audio, and video services
described here into an official, government-funded "democracy
network."

13. Creation of school and library-based "Democracy Centers" where
dedicated Internet-terminals and support materials are presented to
allow enhanced public access to online legislative information. This
might include a training program for librarians to improve support for
patron.

14. A requirement that all agency reports required by or submitted to
the legislature be delivered in standard electronic formats and that
those reports be stored and archived in an uniform and sophisticated
system. This might include a fully electronic state document
depository system.

15. An online conference center where commissioners and elected
officials can interact publicly with citizens or where organized
online events sponsored by government agencies can be held. Or
official online partnerships among government, non-profit, and media
organizations to create topical spaces for public policy discussions
connected directly to the legislative/administrative process or
general "public commons" forums at the local level. These interactive
spaces would be linked from appropriate places on government web
sites, from a "My Democracy" page, or for example allow people
interested in a certain legislative proposal to opt-in to
communication versus just receiving the bill one-way from government
without any forum for online deliberation.

Please send any feedback to: cl...@publicus.net

Steven Clift
http://www.publicus.net

On Sep 9, 9:33 pm, Steven Clift <cl...@e-democracy.org> wrote:

> Steven Clifthttp://stevenclift.com

> Executive Director -http://E-Democracy.Org
> Donate today:http://e-democracy.org/donate