Comments on: Palo Alto: The city as open digital platform

By: adamdstiles

adamdstiles — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:38:34 +0000

Open Budget: Oakland — born at this year’s Code for Oakland — will soon release an interactive visualization of Oakland’s city budget. We’ll be demo-ing at Code for Oakland’s final 2012 event: Oakland City Hall, September 27th at 6:00 p.m. openbudgetoakland at gmail

Background here: http://oaklandlocal.com/article/update-oakland-open-data-city-analysis

By: diegohmay

diegohmay — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:11:23 +0000

GP,
a great point the one you are bringing… and one worth a good discussion over coffee or wine !

Transparency is certainly not cheap, and we are in the early days of figuring out the right business case for it.

I do see though some facts that show some light at the end of the tunnel:
#1 – I see a generation of people interested in giving of their time to help other bigger things. Gen Y may be argued, but that is part of their genes
#2 – I see hackathon after hackahon after hackathon… that is simply a mix of biz people, developers, designers, journalists, citizens, and government related organizations spending hours and time with the idea of innovating for good.
#3 – It is clearly simpler today to create a new application, quickly test it, see if it gains interest, and then it becomes viable to maintain that.

And to finish up, the big guys (IBM, SAP, Oracle, etc) are all with strategies around smart cities and ways of connecting Governments and companies with Citizens and Shareholders or Stakeholders.

Well… I don´t think I answered your good point. I am bullish, but I certainly do not have the exact answer (yet).

Diego

By: Steve Ardire

Steve Ardire — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 02:33:27 +0000

looks like this may dovetail with Digital Government – Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/egov/digital-government/digital-government.html

By: GP

GP — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 01:17:42 +0000

Jeff -
Thanks for writing this article and sharing Palo Alto’s experiment with data. I have been working in the Open Data and Government space for nearly three years with Recovery.gov. This is a signature project for enhancing the cause of transparency and accountability in Government spending through the use of cloud computing, open data and citizen-friendly visualizations. The site provides a zip-code level view of Government projects funded with ARRA (Stimulus) money. This transparency and accountability model has largely worked with historically low levels of Fraud, Waste & Abuse.

The question is what next? Transparency is not cheap – so clearly there has to be a tangible ROI that ensures better government performance which ultimately results in better use of scarce tax payer funds. I find it surprising that there are few real published case studies that help establish a conclusive link between open-data enabled transparency and better performance. On of the few good articles on this topic is pasted below.

https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/public_sector_technology_software_beyond_open_data/

More concrete examples and case studies that help establish the link between open data initiatives and improved performance in concrete terms will help us continue to push the envelope in figuring out modern ways of improving government performance.

Thanks again.
GP

By: Steve Ardire

Steve Ardire — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:34:01 +0000

> If Open Budget spreads to cities across the state, citizens may soon be able to compare their towns’ respective police and library budgets and create a virtuous cycle of civic improvement.

Would be great to see vs basket case cities like Stockton