Presentation about open innovation at Dados Abiertos Costa Rich (Open Data Costa Rica) conference in July 2015.

1. Civic Tech Platforms & Coalitions
(or: Governments That
Work Like The Web)
Andrew Hoppin | @ahoppin
http://nucivic.com
(some content courtesy of Nick Grossman)

2. Falling Government
Budgets
Rising Government
Needs
We live in a time when government budgets are shrinking, but our needs for government services is increasing…

3. Better
Government…
…Less $
3
So what we want is a government that works better, but costs less money! How can we possibly accomplish this? With Open Innovation. Governments need to innovate faster, and
collaborate better— with the communities they serve, with the private sector, and with each other.

4. The Architecture of the Web
DNS
HTTP
IP
HTML
CSS
Standards
The Web has an “open architecture”
and serves as a “platform” to build on
The seminal example of Open Innovation is the Web itself. The Web enables innovation that scales commensurate with how many people participate in it, not just on how much money is
spent… The more people that participate, the most powerful it gets, because it is based on open standards like HTML, HTTP, IP, etc. These shared open standards and networked
architecture make it an open platform, vastly more powerful than any closed or proprietary system.

5.
creating the
potential for new things to happen
“The idea behind open innovation is as simple as it
is powerful: the creators of new ideas don’t have to
be within your organization in order to be helpful.”
– John Palfrey, Harvard Law School
Open InnovationOpen Innovation
This is the big idea: break down the wall between people inside your organization and people outside your organization, and join a larger network. It is a new way for you to scale your
impact as an organization. Entrepreneurial private sector companies know this, and government is no different.

6. Open Government Innovation
Transit
Open311
Let’s look at how some governments have used open innovation to improve transit.

7. Let’s take the example of transit— when your bus is late and you don’t know how long it will take to get there, it’s disempowering for commuters that rely on public transit.

8. SERVER
CLOSED
architecture
Integrated,
proprietary
USER INTERFACE
HARDWARE
← few
apps
STANDARDS & APIs
OPEN
architecture
Modular,
open source
STANDARDS & APIs
many →
apps
MTA (New York City Transit) built a real-time bus data system as a platform -- opening up the data, and providing it to developers via an Application Programming Interface (API). This stands in contrast to the
‘closed’ model, where a single end-to-end hardware+software solution stores, processes and serves all of the data. This open approach can often drive mean re-architecting IT infrastructure, but it’s worth it,
because it gets more people involved, and it can be iterated faster, making government work better, at lower cost.

9. And the system kept on improving, responding to customer feedback quickly and iteratively.

10. “I no longer sit with pitted stomach
wondering where is the bus.
It’s less stressful simply knowing it’s
nine minutes away, or whatever the case”
Source: OneBusAway
44% of respondents reported being
much more satisfied
The result: OneBusAway did a survey of riders, which shows what a powerful impact adding a simple information layer can have on riders.

11. Not only did this make a difference in New York City, but because NYC shared the code and adopted open data standards, this effort turned into a multi-city platform called “OneBusAway,”
creating an ecosystem of governments, entrepreneurs, data, and apps to inform and empower transit riders in many locations around the USA.

12. In Portland Oregon there are a whole library of mobile apps of different types to interact with the TriMet transportation system.

13. This baker used the data feed to display for his customers when their bus is about to come— from inside the store.

14. And this entrepreneur wrote an app to wake you up early if you’re going to need extra time to get to work, because there are delays on your bus… Innovations that help people’s lives that
government would not likely have developed itself, if it had kept the data to itself.

15. GTFS
2005
2012
GTFS
GTFS
GTFS
GTFS
GTFS
? ?
?
GTFS
General Transit Feed Specification
So how did this happen and how did it scale? A coalition of partners including New York City, a non-profit (NGO) called Open Plans, Google, and Portland TriMet collaborated to create a new open standard for
public transit data, called the General Transit Feed Specification. Government, NGOs, and companies collaborating together to make it possible to get put public transit schedules into maps and on to your phone.

16. And these organizations shared not only a data standard, but they also shared their code… They open sourced everything, allowing this innovation and collaboration to spread further faster.

17. Open Government Innovation
Transit
Open311
Let’s look at another example— what we call “311” data in the USA, which is the phone number that people can dial for non-emergency municipal services… to report a problem to their
local government, such as a pothole in the street, or a tree falling on a power line, or someone making too much noise!

18. New York City was the first city to implement this in the USA, but now 1000s of cities have implemented it. But its utility was limited until New York City opened up the data…

19. When they did, Wired Magazine visualized the data, and the city gained numerous insights, including the (now obvious) fact that most noise complaints happen at night. This allowed New
York City to improve its staffing- most people responding to noise complaints should be working at night!

20. It also allowed community organizations to assess quality of life issues throughout the city, by mapping the data.

21. 2009
311
311
311Open311
Open311
Open311
Again, New York City didn’t keep this to itself. Open Plans, Code for America, other cities, and startup companies combined to create an open standard
for 311 data…

22. The Open311 standard was used to develop specific tools such as an open API that facilitated the publication and sharing of 311 data, as well as capturing data from multiple sources.

23. This allowed other cities across the US such as San Francisco, and now worldwide including Buenos Aires, London, Santo Domingo, and others to more quickly and affordably roll out 311,
and to learn from each other’s municipal innovations that made their cities work better.

24. It allowed entrepreneurs to build new businesses providing better user interfaces to help citizens report 311 issues, and to help governments have better tools to manage the issues at scale.

25. And of course many of these governments and entrepreneurs shared their code, so that innovation could propagate faster.

26. Open Government Innovation
Transit
Open311
So how can a government set itself up to leverage and contribute to open government innovation?

27. Boston
27
Open Source Code
Open source code, and code repositories, are fundamental to government open innovation. Proprietary intellectual property simply creates friction that slows down open innovation. When
tax dollars are paying for this work in the first place, I believe that is unacceptable.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, there should be a common foundation, so different applications can focus on creating new capabilities rather than recreating core functionality. Create a
rich developer ecosystem.

28. App Stores...
App Stores, or Cloud Marketplaces, are also key to being able to find out about a solution— especially an open source solution— in an online vendor-neutral marketplace— and quickly and
easily researching it, procuring it, and implementing it. This speeds up the process of actually implementing in your own geography an innovation that has proven to work somewhere else.
Streamline procurement of innovative and open source solutions.

29. Facilities
Open Data...
Open data is of course fundamental to breaking down the walls between your organization and its peers and its customers and its partners, allowing innovation that helps you to arise
anywhere. Open all your data.

30. http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/
Open Standards...
GTFS
Using only open standards allows you to join and leverage the network, by speaking the same language as all of your peers and partners. Use open standards.

31. Talent...
Governments historically have a hard time recruiting and retaining the most innovative technical talent, but having a workforce and a culture that is passionate about open innovation is
key… Hire entrepreneurs… Hire coders that never thought they’d want to work inside government. Partner with NGOs. Work with small innovative companies committed to openness. Hire
innovative technical people.

32. Communities & Collaboration
By opening up your data, and inviting developers and other problem solvers to collaborate in solving your government’s problems, you can explicitly catalyze open innovation, though
hackathons and app contests. Encourage and incentivize collaboration from outside your organization.

33. Infrastructure & DevOps
Host in a cloud environment, but don’t lock yourself in to any particular cloud vendor… Strong cloud-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), and
contemporary “devops” tools, are key to allowing you to focus on solving the business problem you are expert in, rather than spending time trying to manage code, and keeping websites
online and secure at scale, which is not the core competency of most governments. Leverage commoditized technology infrastructure services that are not your core competency.

34. 2015 Ecosystem: 1000s of Cities, 10,000s
of Apps, 1,000,000s of Data Sets...
All these factors combined have led to a burgeoning civic technology movement worldwide, powered by open innovation, that is helping government to transform the lives of its
communities, and helping its constituent communities to help reform and transform government.

35. identifying
emerging
standards
success
stories &
lessons
learned
where are
there gaps?
sharing
software
building
practitioner
community
outlining the
core “civic
stack”
Supporting Open Innovation in Gov’t

36. EMERGING GROWTH
Open311 Transit??
What are the
essential civic platforms?
Weather
MATURE
GPSGov CMS

37. Distributed innovation
API
API
API
government
industry
citizen
With this structure, innovation can develop and spread organically, a software ecosystem can grow on a common foundation without reinventing the wheel, citizens get interoperability and
consistent interfaces, governments get more efficient internal processes, etc

38. But Most NYC IT Projects Still Look Like This...
One word of caution… even in New York City today, the birthplace of OneBusAway and Open311, and the longest running government municipal apps contest, most software projects still
look like this… This is hard, and it won’t happen overnight. Which is why its so important that conferences like this one are happening here today.

39. Andrew Hoppin | @ahoppin
andrew@nucivic.com
http://nucivic.com