Email
Like
Liked ×
Save
Private Content
Embed
Loading embed code…
We have emailed the verification/download link to "".
Login to your email and click the link to download the file directly.

To request the link at a different email address, update it here. Close
Validation messages. Success message. Fail message.

Check your bulk/spam folders if you can't find our mail.
Loading

+ Follow

Open Gov Ninja 101

by U.S. National Library of Medicine, Division of Specialized Information Services

3,278 views

Presentation at Gov 2.0 Expo. 2010.05.26 ...

Presentation at Gov 2.0 Expo. 2010.05.26

David Hale
Project Manager, Pillbox

National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health

6707 Democracy Blvd. #510
Bethesda, MD 20817

david.hale@mail.nih.gov

Accessibility

View text version

Upload Details

Uploaded via SlideShare as Microsoft PowerPoint

Usage Rights

File a copyright complaint

2 Embeds 138

http://www.slideshare.net	120
http://gov20.govfresh.com	18

Statistics

Likes: 7
Downloads: 26
Comments: 0
Embed Views: 138
Views on SlideShare: 3,140
Total Views: 3,278

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Open Government Ninja 101. My name is David Hale. For the next 40 minutes we’ll be talking about the skills, strategies and stealth required to be an Open Gov Ninja. First let me tell you a little about myself. I’m the project manager of Pillbox at the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. I’m also the co-chair of the National Library of Medicine’s Social Media Guidance Committee. You can contact me by email or Twitter, where I’m @lostonroute66. Before we get started, let’s take a look at the syllabus.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hokusai-sketches---hokusai-manga-vol6-crop.jpg
I’m going to talk about the concepts of being an Open Gov Ninja through my experience with Pillbox. I’ll start with a brief demo of Pillbox and a few of the applications that are being developed outside of the government using our dataset. I’ll answer the burning question: what is an Open Gov Ninja? We’ll get into the skills, strategies, and stealth required to become an Open Gov Ninja. And then we’ll have an exam. You did know there’s an exam, right? It’s pretty easy. One question. A quick note before we begin, I just tweeted a link to my slides and a complete transcript of this presentation, as well as links for every site I show. Let’s get started.
Pillbox began as a result of discussions between the National Library of Medicine and the National Capitol Poison Control Center, as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Both groups were experiencing challenges related to medication identification. Later the FDA became a partner.
This is the Pillbox from the National Library of Medicine. Pillbox is now a cooperative project with the Food and Drug Administration. The URL is pillbox.nlm.nih.gov. On the surface, it’s a medication identification and reference system. Users identify medications based on their physical characteristics. They can search by imprint - the text written on the pill, shape, color, size, and score - the lines across many pills.
Pillbox’s data is based on the FDA’s drug labels and NLM’sRxNorm. I’ll explain later the value of mashing these two datasets. It’s a system we call “Mash and Release.” The app also serves as a way to explore pills visually. Once a user has identified a medication, we connect them to information in other government datasets related to that medication.
Obviously, we link to the FDA drug label.http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov
We also link to a new meta-search tool at the NLM called the Drug Information Portal. This takes the chemical name of the drug and searches datasets at the NLM, NIH, and FDA. There are links to articles in medical journals, clinical trials, even drugs in lactation.http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov
This is a Section 508-compliant, HTML version of Pillbox that does more than identify drugs based on physical characteristics. Users can search on drug names, both brand and generic, the manufacturer, even the inactive ingredients.
On top of all of this, we are adding high-resolution images of medications. These images are in the public domain and will eventually become part of the drug label.
This combination of federal pharmaceutical datasets and high-resolution images is pretty powerful. PharmManufacturing Magazine called us “the Physician’s Desk Reference on steroids.”
But what you don’t see when you go to the website is the application programming interface, or API. This allows applications running outside of the NLM to send us queries about our data. We’re making our data, images, and search available by simply sending a query to our web service. This transforms Pillbox from a government website into an open government platform for innovation.
Our API is currently in beta and has a limited number of participants. I want to highlight a few of the applications that are being built outside the government, with this dataset. Think of it as “federal pharmaceutical data as a service.”
First is Pillbox by Phone. This is a voice-activated system. You call a phone number and a computer-generated voice asks you questions about the pill you’re trying to identify. You answer, by speaking, and the system queries Pillbox in real-time. I made a recording of a call to Pillbox by Voice. The audio may be a little low, so I’ve transcribed the call on the next slide.
Pillbox by Phone was created by a student at George Washington University. It only took him three weeks. This is the type of innovation we want to foster. There are ideas outside of government that can only be fully developed when our data and services are open.
He also created an instant message version of Pillbox by Phone. This was easy in comparison to the voice-activated app. This system could be transferred to an SMS or text-message platform just as easily.
This is an iPhone app currently available in the App Store. It allows exploration of our data and integrates features such as favoriting medications, search history, and even sharing information about medications. What’s unique about this app is that as far as we can tell it was created without our API. This user likely scraped our data and created a stand-alone, offline app. If users are willing to go to these lengths to work with our data, shouldn’t we be opening the door and inviting them into our workshop?
Finally… PharmvilleRx, a Facebook game being development by a group of programmers in DC, where players prescribe medications to their patients… and each other.
While the game is irreverent and somewhat inappropriate, it teaches players about medication information and safety. And it shows the government as a source of reliable information. This is better than us telling citizens to use our resources. This is citizens telling other citizens. Also, in watching the development of the game, we learn about game theory as it relates to using government information.
The developers of PharmvilleRx created a Facebook search interface for Pillbox as part of the game. And they’re willing to share this code. Any of us feds have the expertise in-house to convert a php-search interface into FBML? We don’t. And now, we’ll learn a little more about it, thanks to these developers. We’ll talk more about this group and how we made our initial connection later in the class.
Civic coding is big news these days. The developers of PharmvilleRx have released hundreds of lines of open source code related to the Pillbox API at an online programmer’s community. Again, more on this later.http://github.com/lostonroute66/pillbox
As we start to get press at news outlets like Federal Computer Week, I guess we’ll have to stop referring to Pillbox as a “stealth project.” However, everyone thought we were making a pill identification database. What we were really doing is creating a new way for government to work with communities to open data and solve challenges.http://fcw.com/Articles/2010/01/27/NIH-Pillbox-online-verification-tool.aspx
A number of public health organizations are interested in using Pillbox, our data, and services, both nationally and internationally.
And… we’re still in beta.
So, how did we do it?
If I said we accomplished these things by following an ancient text of the Open Government Ninja, I’d be lying. The truth is, we started as many other government projects: with a specific set of requirements, developed in a silo. Good ideas, but lacking a deep connection to the communities who would use our data. It was our community who guided us down this path.
Some put the origins of the Open Government Ninja somewhere in the mid-12th century Japan.http://www.digital.archives.go.jp/gallery/view/detail/detailArchivesEn/0000000088
Others put the date somewhat later. January 2009, when President Obama signed the Memorandum of Transparency and Open Government on his first day in office.http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/transparencyandopengovernment/
What is an Open Gov Ninja? That question is best answered by looking at myths surrounding ninja and their connections to Open Gov Ninja. And how we incorporate those ideas into our work. Along the way I’ll also highlight the work of other Open Gov Ninja.
Many believed that ninja had no code of honor. It was true that they rejected the samurai code of ethics. If a strategy led to victory, however unorthodox or breaking with tradition, it was used. Many were farmers, fighting for their families and land.
At the battle of Sekigahara, that unified Japan in 1600, ninja fought on the side of the victorious Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sekigaharascreen.jpg
Open Gov Ninja follow a code. The Open Government Initiative. Want to be an Open Gov Ninja? Start here.http://www.whitehouse.gov/open
How many of you have watched the President’s presentation of the Open Government Initiative? If you haven’t, watch it.http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/about
Want to dive in deeper? Read the Open Government Directive from the Office of Management and Budget.http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-06.pdf
The Open Government Initiative centers around data.gov, the clearinghouse for open government data. It contains data from every federal agency. Started one year ago with only 47 datasets, data.gov now contains more than 200,000, all available for download.http://www.data.gov/
Going back to the Open Government Initiative, I want to call attention to it’s three guiding principles: transparency, participation, and collaboration. As we talk about the skills, strategies, and stealth required for an Open Gov Ninja, think about these three concepts and how they relate to your work and the mission of your agency.http://www.whitehouse.gov/open
Open government is about getting a long-standing system to do something new and unique. Teaching an old dog new tricks. That takes innovation.
Many stories tell of ninja using magic – walking on water or becoming invisible. I was a little disappointed to learn that disappearing smoke bombs are not allowed in the convention center.
In reality, ninja used existing tools in new and innovative ways. These weapons are actually made from farm tools. Farmers took the scythes they used in the fields and modified them for combat. They used what was available to them.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kusarigama-crop.jpg
Open Gov Ninja do the same thing. Andrew Wilson from SAMHSA has quietly been working on a project that uses Google docs to collect RSS feeds from the Department of Health and Human Services, pulls them into Yahoo Pipes, an aggregation tool, and then filters them based on topic. This is a screen from the HIV filter, showing all HIV-related information from every HHS RSS feed. Andrew uses existing content in a new way and creates value. This is the work of an Open Gov Ninja.http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=61d8f2e3baab3b9a5aadc4246de27cb4
For Pillbox, our challenge was restructuring the FDA drug label data to break down the barriers that were keeping developers and communities from using this data.
This is a tiny piece of an FDA drug label in XML format. I would say this is about 1% of the label. This data is largely unusable without substantial subject matter expertise in a variety of areas. However, this data is freely available from the FDA. You can download the entire drug label dataset in one .zip file.
To make Pillbox work we had to bridge the gap from transparent and open to useful.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. How many federal employees does it take to create a pill identification table? Any guesses?
It took a team of 9, from two separate agencies.
In addition to pharmacists and regulators at the FDA, we needed computer scientists and database administrators at the NLM to develop a system to extract the information unique for each medication and create a lookup system. In the end we didn’t have enough information to create a pill identification system. We had to mash this data with another dataset at NLM to normalize the drug names and create the final connections. This was only possible through collaboration.
This is a sample Pillbox record for a single medication. It contains everything needed to identify this medication, key information after it’s identified, and links to other federal datasets. If it took a team of 9 subject matter experts at 2 agencies, 3 months to create this, no wonder no one in the health IT community had.
Teachers are always asked, “will this be on the exam?” So I am telling you, this will be on the exam. This process showed us that data that was created to satisfy regulatory requirements needed to be restructured to not only meet the needs of the public and health IT communities, but also the application we were trying to build.
Collaboration allows us to achieve greater goals than we could alone. But if we join together, contribute skills and then separate, we’ve missed the opportunity to share and learn from each other. We won’t become experts in the areas of others, but the skills we learn will help us be better at what we do.
Movies show ninja searching for scrolls that divulge secrets of ancient techniques. Victory depends on finding the scroll.
Ok, ok. So they did actually learn from texts. And yes, some of them were secret.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ninpiden_kuroro_kagi_breaker.gif
However, ideas brought from China by monks and generals, such as Sun Tzu, became the foundation of the first ninja schools. Leaders emerged who taught strategy and guided ninja clans.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enchoen27n3200.jpg
Open Gov Ninja have leaders as well. Aneesh Chopra, the first federal CTO, and Vivek Kundra, the first federal CIO, set the direction of open government, teach strategy, and coordinate our efforts.http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/about/leadershipstaff/choprahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vivek-kundra-2.jpg
And we have texts. They’re not ancient. And they’re certainly not hidden. But these documents guide open government.http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/open.shtml
We may not have schools in the mountains where we learn ancient arts, but we do have sources of information that are accessible anywhere we have an internet connection. And we have schools, of a sort.
Gov 2.0 meetups, held in cities across the U.S., bring together thought leaders, innovators, and others interested in discussions about open government. This photo is from a DC meetup called Health 2.0 STAT that connects those in the Gov 2.0 and Health 2.0 spaces.http://www.meetup.com/DC-MD-VA-Health-2-0/photos/813066/12825644/
Others exist online. Jeffrey Levy, EPA’s Director of Web Communications, teaches a mantra for community engagement through social media: Mission, Tool, Metrics, Teach. This mantra actually works in a multitude of situations. Follow you org’s MISSION first. Then choose the appropriate TOOL to achieve that goal. MEASURE the effect of that tool. Finally, TEACH others what you have learned in the process. If you don’t believe that Jeffrry Levy is an Open Gov Ninja, ask anyone who attended the conference last spring where he had 500 federal employees and contractors chanting, “Mission, Tool, Metrics, Teach.”
Everything we’ve talked about to this point has been internal, working within our organizations and with other agencies. Now we’re going outside the silo and learning about the lives of our citizens.
We may know more about our data than anyone, but we’re not the experts in how our data is used by our citizens. They are the experts. To be successful in opening government data, we have to understand how it will be used. And we can only learn this from our citizens.
A few years ago at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I met two persons who changed the way I looked at government data, the technology we use to leverage it, and how it impacts the lives of citizens.
Michael Wesch is the creator of the video “The Machine is using us.” Kelly Goto is an expert in lifestyle design and user experience. They both employ a concept called ethnography. Ethnography focuses on understanding the nature of your subject through holistic methods: field study, empirical data, observation, and shadowing. After hearing them speak, I knew I had to do one thing.http://www.ksu.edu/sasw/anfacwesch.htmlhttp://mediatedcultures.net/about.htmhttp://www.gotomedia.com/goto/bio/
I had to get our of my office and spend time with the citizens who would be using our data.
At the time I was travelling as part of work related to Native American health information outreach. I would spend mornings or evenings with the staff at the local hospital, fire station, or pharmacy. I spent time listening to their stories, not just listening for “user requirements” but learning about how they used data to solve challenges in their lives. I didn’t go to all of these places in person. Some I contacted by phone or chat. However, the experience of shadowing someone, following them as the work, is irreplaceable.
There are other advantages to spending time with your citizens. Not all of them are on this side of the Digital Divide. If you want to be sure you're not getting hung up on technology and losing sight of your mission, try spending time with a group that has limited access to technology, like the Blackfeet Indian Tribe in northwest Montana.
During this process, you document, document, document. Even if it doesn’t seem important, write it down or record it. When you’re done, take all of your notes and distill them into a single document. They become your user personas – encapsulated versions of all of your users.
Knowing how your citizens use data is critical in structuring it in a way that adds meaning for them. However, you can’t always be with your citizens. This way, whenever you have a question or if there’s a point of debate, you ask your personas. If your personas don’t have the answer, get back out there with your citizens and find it. And then add it to the personas document.
None of this is a new idea. This is user-centered design. The blue figures in this picture are the designers, the government. The white figures are the citizens. See how many more white figures there are than blue? When you build, your citizens should always outnumber you. If they don’t, you have a problem.http://www.indiana.edu/~usable/tools_templates.html
Developing personas taught me the value of community engagement. Now that I knew more about my citizens, I wanted to find others who were trying to accomplish similar tasks with similar information.
At Web 2.0 Expo there was a unconference called Web2Open. An unconference is a type of conference where the attendees set the agenda together at the start of the meeting. Everyone writes their session ideas on a whiteboard and self-organizes. I wrote a session for health information.
It turned out I wasn’t the only person thinking about this topic. At this table were persons representing health IT, nursing, public health, and insurance providers. These were the persons who would be using Pillbox in their work with citizens and patients. See the gentleman in the black shirt. His name is Mark Scrimshire. We’ll be seeing his work and how it affected Pillbox in a few minutes.
That discussion helped me realize that even if the data is structured in a way that’s usable by developers and citizens, you have to have the support of the communities that will be using that data. You have to have champions.
I realized this would be a team effort - a team made up not only of federal agencies, but engaged communities. The question was, how to get them to help? The answer turned out to be pretty simple. I just had to ask.
I took Pillbox in the road. Remember Mark, from a couple of slides back? Based on that session at Web2Open, he saw the need for a space for these health-related conversations to take place. He created a series of unconferences called HealthCamps. I took Pillbox to HealthCamp and asked, “does anyone have any advice?”
Everyone said yes. HealthCamp became an incubator for Pillbox. In this picture there are programmers, nurses, entrepreneurs, health community founders, and designers, representing 3 continents, standing around my laptop. Not only did they offer advice, they offered to introduce me to others who might be interested in joining this discussion. Out of these unconferences grew a community that not only engaged in the development of the project, they felt a sense of ownership.
A community that feels ownership of a project doesn’t wait for its release to talk about it. Pillbox’s community was blogging about it long before we even had a working prototype. By the time we launched our open beta, they were ready.
Whenwe launched the open beta for Pillbox, there were over 4,000 unique visitors the first day. In the first weeks, we had visitors from over 40 countries. We didn't create a publicity campaign. This is the result of individuals, working to add value to and solve challenges intheir communities.
It’s important to read the comments in blog posts about your projects. This is an opportunity to listen to and interact with your citizens. If you’re worried about inflammatory posts, don’t be. Those are people who care enough about your project to express their displeasure. I’ve observed enough government focus groups to come to the conclusion that when you have someone’s contact information and pay them, you get feedback that is skewed towards the positive.
Last week, Pillbox was picked up by Lifehacker, a well-read software and productivity blog. Even though we didn’t make the main RSS feed, the equivalent of the front page, we still had an order of magnitude increase in traffic. The comments were extremely helpful, in both support and critique.
For comments that are stronger in their critique, it may be difficult or inappropriate for you to respond. Luckily, you usually don’t have to. Your supporters will. In carrying your banner, your champions will also come to your defense.
Now, we’re going to get back into the technical details of opening data. It makes sense that open systems are better for opening data.
Ok. I just made this one up. Or, maybe the myth is that it was pirates, not ninja, who created Linux. Either way, this isn’t much of a myth.
Linux was created by these two men: LinusTorvalds, who wrote the kernel for Linux, and Richard Stallman of the GNU Project. I want to focus on Stallman, as he is also the founder of the Free Software Foundation, an organization that believes all software should be an open platform on which others can freely develop. Since “free” has two meanings in English – free as in “no charge” and free as in “liberty” – he coined the phrase “free as in ‘speech’ not free as in ‘beer.’”http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_Torvalds_flipped.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rms_at_pitt.jpg
Data.gov has hundreds of thousands of free government datasets for download. While it is free to download from data.gov, what’s more important is that you are free to do whatever you want with that data. Can we make this data even more “free as in speech”? To use this data, you have to download an entire set. But what if you only need small pieces of the data?
At three separate conferences two developers from Silicon Valley kept asking me about an API for Pillbox. At the first conference I said we didn’t have one. At the second I explained that they would eventually be able to download our entire dataset. At the third conference they said they weren’t going to let me leave until I understood the potential of an API. They explained they didn’t need all of the data all of the time. Storing thousands of records and images on a mobile device isn’t practical, unless you’re making an app for offline use. Further, because there are sometimes changes to the data, the bandwidth required to keep everyone up-to-date would be immense. Their users just needed what they needed, when they needed it.
And that’s when the light bulb above my head went on. An off. I told them we didn’t have anyone we could task with developing the specifications for an API. So they offered to participate in the first calls with one of our programmers. For free. They didn’t receive any advantage personally in doing this. They didn’t get access to the API beta until everyone else did. They offered assistance because they knew they were not only developing an API that they could use, but also in helping to validate this concept within government.
The NLM has several high-value datasets available through an API related to medical journals and genetics. How about including a catalog of government APIs at data.gov? I liked the idea so much I photoshopped data.gov to show what it would look like with a tab for an API catalog. Actually, we’ll be doing a proof-of-concept of this to present to the data.gov team this summer.
Don’t expect people to come to you for your data. The idea that “our data is free and open; all anyone has to do is come and get it” is flawed. It assumes that everyone knows about your data and services and understands the value it can create. They don’t. Take you data and your message to them.
At this Gov 2.0 /Health 2.0 meetup in DC, I did a demo of Pillbox and the API. There was a developer at that meeting who said he was interested in working with Pillbox’s API and he had a few friends who might be interested as well. He asked if I would be willing to come to a Ruby programmers meeting with him.
So, I went. At this meeting all I did was stand up, introduce myself, and say, “We have data and an API we believe can solve problems.” After that meeting he assembled a team of programmers and designers. This would become the team that began development of the Facebook game, PharmvilleRx.
They kicked off the project at Sunlight Lab’s Great American Hackathon. The persons you see on the right side of the picture are the team working on PharmvilleRx. This is their hobby. As I pointed out in the beginning of my presentation, they made a search interface in Facebook not because of a mandate, but because it was part of the game. Open systems that promote innovation create this kind of value as a side effect. In the course of making the game, they need to create what’s called a wrapper – code that programmers use in an application to access an API.
They wrote a wrapper for Pillbox’s API in Ruby, a programming language. I showed a section of the code earlier in the presentation. Afterwards, they uploaded the code to GitHub, a site where programmers share code. This wrapper is now available for anyone to use. It just got a little easier to develop an application with Pillbox’s API.
Let’s go back to the Hackathon. Sitting next to the programmer who wrote the Ruby wrapper, was a programmer who uses a different language, Python. A healthy rivalry exists between Ruby and Python programmers. Both want to show what their language is capable of. Not to be outdone, the Python programmer decided to write a wrapper for Pillbox’s API in Python.
Now we have wrappers for the API written in two languages. He wasn’t even planning on creating an app based on Pillbox. He just wanted to support other Python programmers and keep the competition with Ruby alive.
This is called coopitition. We reach greater limits when we push each other. Athletes have always been aware of this concept. The catch is, it’s only possible in an open system. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t allow proprietary systems. If someone wants to create proprietary code based on Pillbox’s API, they are free to do so, because open data is “free as in free speech.” However, a growing concern in the “civic coding” space is orphaned projects – projects whose developers moved on without completing the application. If code is open, the door is at least open for other groups to continue development of, or reuse the code.
And now – Stealth. Finally. The heart of a ninja.
Actually, stealth is kind of overrated. Yes, this idea of stealth is cool. Working in secret. Revolutionaries meeting in cafes. Actually, we do that already, at meetups and other events. But, there are times when stealth is appropriate.
If you must run a project in secret, I‘ll give you a some advice from my experience with Pillbox for operating in a stealth mode. But you’ll see that you’re not really running it in secret, as much as not actively promoting it. You always have partners. Your project is only secret to those who don’t see it.
Is your project aligned with your organization? You can be doing something your organization has never done and still be mission aligned.
Think small. In both scope and resources. The smaller the footprint, the less likely a project is to be noticed. Work in fast iterations. “Build a little, test a little, build a little more” as my previous director used to say.
If something isn’t going to work, you want it to not work quickly. See what’s happening, make changes, and re-iterate. And most importantly, document. The lessons learned from failure are usually more numerous than those learned from success. And, if you get called down for what you’ve been working on, you can always say, “look at what we’ve learned in this process.”
You’re going to need some level of protection. I’ve found the most effective protection is a member of management who knows what you doing and has given their consent, even if they don’t understand your work. Like your project, start small. The first person I let in was my branch chief. Not only was she a valuable resource for me, helping avoid potential issues with upper management, she became a bridge in helping convey the goals of the project.
It all comes down to management buy-in. I would suggest using these. If you’ve read your agency’s mission statement and know what it’s strategic goals are, you’re in a good position to offer management one of these. Showing the success of other agencies doing similar things is also a good strategy. This process is also iterative. Get approval for one small component first. Then another. Then show what happens when you combine them. Ideally, you want to bring management along with you. You may be surprised how supportive they become once they begin to see the advantages of a more open system.http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carrots.JPG
But honestly, what have you seen in this presentation that was done in absolute secrecy? Nothing. All of these ideas, even the last one, involve groups working together for a common goal.
Exam time. I said it would be one question. What is the single most important aspect of Pillbox’s success?
Collaboration. Partnerships. We collaborated with other agencies. Our citizens. Communities. Developers. We created a space for open conversations about the role of government in our lives and how we can work together to improve the health of citizens. There is nothing secret about that.
And THAT is the secret of being an Open Government Ninja. I want you all to BE Open Government Ninja. Thank you very much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hokusai-sketches---hokusai-manga-vol6-crop.jpg

7 Likes

Roald Sieberath at Roald Sieberath Tags opengov 2 years ago
Olivier DAVAZE, Project officer at Institut Gustave ROUSSY 2 years ago
Megan Canon at Megan Canon Tags open government ninja 101 2 years ago
Mark Silverberg, Cofounder, Lead Engineer at Social Health Insights 3 years ago
CameronGratisWilson 3 years ago
Richard Akerman Tags opendata opengov 3 years ago
Jerry Fahrni, Product Manager at Talyst, Inc Tags drug information 3 years ago

Open Gov Ninja 101 Presentation Transcript

Open Government Ninja 101:Skills, Strategies, and Stealth
David Hale
National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
david.hale@nih.gov
twitter.comlostonroute66
Open Gov Ninja 101: Syllabus
Introduction
Pillbox and apps demo
What is an Open Gov Ninja?
Skills
Strategies
Stealth
Exam
pillbox.nlm.nih.gov
pillbox.nlm.nih.gov
dailymed.nlm.nih.gov
druginfo.nlm.nih.gov
Application programming interface (API)
Drive traffic to your data,
not your website.
Applications currently in development using Pillbox’s API
Pillbox by Phone
Voice-activated pill identification
Thank you for calling Pillbox by Phone. Tell me one attribute you know about the pill.
Shape
Do you know anything else about the pill?
Color
Do you know anything else about the pill?
No
What shape is the pill?
Diamond
What color is the pill?
Grey
Your search matched one pill. Shall I list these results?
Yes
Epivir 300 MG oral tablet. Physical attributes: grey, diamond, 17.00 mm. Imprint: GX EJ7
Pillbox by Phone
Created by a student at George Washington University, School of Business
Also developed instant message (IM) text-based version
iPhone pill discovery app
PharmvilleRx
Open source code
Health organizations expressing interest in utilizing Pillbox
State Poison Control Centers
State Departments of Health
State and private hospitals
Regional health systems
Insurance providers
University medical programs
Libraries
International health and pharmacy orgs
And…we’re still in beta.
How?
Become anOpen Government Ninja
1162 A.D. Honshu, Japan
January 21, 2009 Washington, DC
What is anOpen Government Ninja?
Ninja myth:Ninja were mercenaries, with no concern for the greater effect of their actions.
Skill:Innovation
Ninja myth:Ninja used magic.
Andrew Wilson, Web and New Media Strategist, SAMHSA
andrew.wilson@hhs.gov
Skill:Innovation
Activity:
Restructure data
transparent
open
useful
How many federal employees does it take to create a pill identification table?
How many federal employees does it take to create a pill identification table?
9
(at 2 agencies))
How many federal employees does it take to create a pill identification table?
2 Pharmacists (FDA)
2 Regulatory experts (FDA)
2 Computer scientists (NLM)
2 Database administrators (NLM)
1 Project manager (NLM)
On the exam
In order to create value, data must be structured in a way that is contextually relevant to communities. This form may be different from the one in which it is used by government.
Skill:Collective learning
Ninja myth:Ninja learned from secret texts.
Vivek Kundra
Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States
Aneesh Chopra
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the United States
Skill:Collective learning
Activity:
Share experience &
exchange information
Mission, Tool, Metrics, Teach
Jeffrey Levy, Director Web Communications, EPA
levy.jeffrey@epa.gov
Strategy:Ethnography
You/your agency are the CONTENT experts.Your citizens are the CONTEXT experts.
Michael Wesch, Professor
Kansas State University
Digital Ethnography
Understand how individuals and communities use technology to ascribe meaning in their lives.
Kelly Goto, author
Design Ethnography
“Understand how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives”
Strategy:Ethnography
Activity:
Get out of the office
and into the lives of your citizens
Strategy:Ethnography
Activity:
Create user personas
User-centered design
Strategy:Community engagement
On the exam
It is critical to work with communities, prior to the release of data, in specifying its structure and developing systems that enable open access and promote application development
Strategy:Community engagement
Activity:
Ask for help
Strategy:Community engagement
Activity:
Let your champions carry your banner
Strategy:Community engagement
Activity:
Build an open system
Ninja myth:Ninja created Linux.
Richard Stallman
Creator of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation
LinusTorvalds
Creator of the Linux kernal
“free as in speech” not “free as in beer”
Strategy:Give up ownership
Activity:
Listen to your citizens take the wheel. (They know where they are going)
Pillbox APIPharmaceutical data as a web service
API directory for data.gov?
Strategy:Give up ownership
Activity:
Pay it forward
On the exam
Engaging communities and promoting participation in the processes leading up to the release of data leads to a virtuous circle where even competing groups can work together to solve challenges
Strategy:Stealth
!?!
Overrated
Strategy:Stealth
Activity:
Run a stealth project
Mission aligned
Small and iterative
Fail fast
Have cover
Management buy-in
Review
Innovation
Collective learning
Ethnography
Community engagement
Giving up ownership
Stealth
EXAMWhat is the single most important aspect of Pillbox’s success?
Collaboration
BE anOpen Government Ninja
Open Government Ninja 101:Skills, Strategies, and Stealth
David Hale
National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
david.hale@nih.gov
twitter.comlostonroute66