Better Communication, Stronger Community : Socrata Customer Summit

Editor's Notes

1. -Caroline, Impact Manager @ SeeClickFix -public network that connects neighborhoods with local governments -connect by routing reported neighborhood concerns to the right city official with the right information to the fix the issue -firm believers that better communication builds stronger community -today, one slice of what this belief looks like in practice is: the value of opening 311/citizens services data
2. -by the end of this talk, i will give you three awesome reasons why it is important that governments open up their citizen services / 311 data, with a story attached to each.
3. -1st reason to open up citizen services data: it allows governments to solve more, better. -There can be two really hard things governments have to do: 1. figure out & agree collectively what is a priority; & 2. once they know what’s their priority, collectively implement a strategy -By making citizen services data public, it becomes really clear, really quickly what issues are concerning citizens the most. And, therefore, it becomes easier for governments to come together, across departments, to focus and dedicate time and resources to solving those issues.
4. -For example, in Detroit, MI they had this massive problem with folks stealing from abandoned houses. They would ravage these houses, but a particularly harmful theft were the water meters in each house. -Not only were these meters expensive but, once gone, water would flood the room, basement, surrounding yard, and into the street. -By the time, the flooding came the City of Detroit’s attention, it was too late. Tremendous amounts of water would be wasted
5. -Citizens began reporting stolen water meters / signs of flooding in abandoned houses. -They were worried and would report for a number of reasons: bad for Detroit, potentially could damage their property. -As the issues came in on SCF’s public platform, it became very easy and apparent to Detroit that this was a top issue that needed addressing. -And it was the transparency of this data, that allowed for collective agreement across departments in Detroit to put time, energy, & resources into solving this issue for themselves and for their citizens. -Open data made Detroit make decisions more swiftly and easily -- better backed & more clear solutions.
6. -The 2nd reason to open up citizen services data is that it allows government to help government solve more, better. -In other words, it helps make government accessible to government. -It turns out, increasing accessibility within government internally can be really difficult. -And this isn’t good because there’s a lot that cang go missing, a lot of inefficiencies heightened when departments are limited in what they can learn/get from each other. -By allowing departments to have access to other departments’ citizen services data, it improves not only individual departments but the entire ecosystem of departments.
7. -For example, in Burlington, VT. -Facing HUGE heroin epidemic. -Increase in arrests, hospitalizations, need for care -ALSO a symptom are the dangerous littering of used syringes. -Burlington needed a way to locate & collect syringes in a safe, efficient way.
8. -Burlington collaborated with Health Department and Howard Center (work group tackling substance abuse issues) to create service request in SeeClickFix called “Found syringe”. -Now citizens who were better able to find these syringes but unable to safely throw them away could take a picture and report the syringe. -Burlington could forward and route these to the Health Department who could easily dispose of the syringes. -In addition, Burlington, Howard Center, & Health Department collaborated to use the data collected to better understand the nature of the epidemic. Where were these syringes being reported the most? Where were the hotspots? What neighborhoods were most affected? The data allowed the team to get a sense of problem areas to inform programming such as a dropbox system of posting dropbox posts where individuals could drop off used syringes. -Opening up data allowed departments within governments to connect to solve problems, allowing government to help government
9. -The 3rd reason to open up citizen services data feels like it has the most fascinating & potentially unexpected results: by opening up citizen services CITIZENS can help government solve more, better. -what makes this distinct from the other two reasons is that the other two reasons were talking about how governments can do the most with what they have. -this is about expanding the resources governments have by allowing citizens and outside groups to engage with government in productive ways by accessing citizen services data. -two examples:
10. two examples in raleigh, nc: -raleigh has this expansive network of 3800 acre 115 mile greenways -- which are tricky to connect together and even more difficult to maintain. -the city of raleigh needed some way to make sense of these greenways & keep up with them with limited resources, budget, and staff time. -citizens of raleigh built using SeeClickFix API RGreenway -in its most simple form, this app allows folks to get directions to the greenways, see pictures. -but even more than that, by working with the City’s open data portal and building off SeeClickFix API it has allowed citizens to report issues such as fallen trees directly from the app and into Raleigh’s workflow. -they dont even have to switch or leave the app! -this brings the Raleigh greenway closer to their goal of becoming America’s Smartest Park.
11. -Another quick example: Raleigh has over 100 bus shelters that are fantastic but again super difficult to maintain with a small staff. -So, a program was created that reported every single bus shelter to SeeClickFix. Then a separate app using SeeClickFix API was created that pulled this bus shelter data onto the app. Then, citizens could claim a bus shelter. -claiming a bus shelter means claiming responsiblity for the shelter’s monthly cleaning -- freeing up city staff time/budget, keeping bus shelters clean, & engaging citizens in their neighborhood. These two examples show how opening data allows osmosis between city efforts & citizen efforts. not only does open data allow governments to do more for their community or governments to help government do more for their community, but it can help citizens help government do more for their community.
12. -I’ll end by echoing Tim O’Reilly, that all three of these reasons fuel this idea of “government as a platform” -Government can do a lot by opening up their data to help themselves do what they love to do better. -But also it’s impossible to expect government to do everything. -In fact, that model might not even be desirable. -Government could be a platform that provides services that are foundational and provide inputs and channels to allow for tools to be built on top -- allowing for important, necessary, and interesting opportunities and projects to happen within governments and between citizens and governments. -and when there’s that true connection between citizens nad governments there’s better communication which builds stronger communities.