Recap: Edmonton’s HealthHack Competition

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to help judge the City of Edmonton’s HealthHack Competition. Connected to Edmonton’s Smart Cities Challenge, the competition invited citizens to propose innovative approaches to improve the four health indicators of mental health, physical health, social health, and economic health. Nearly 40 proposals were submitted, and a previous round of judging (that I was not involved in) narrowed that down to the top 5, who were invited to spend a month working on a prototype which they demoed at the event yesterday.

These were the top 5 teams who presented a prototype:

Buddy Benches
Submitted by Troy Pavlek

“The City of Edmonton started the work on reducing social isolation with our buddy bench program, now I propose to take that simple act of saying “hello” online as well and make it easier and more persistent to connect with those around you. By connecting physical locations in Edmonton to a persistent online community we can reduce social isolation, improve mental health and get people out in the community.”

Cannabis Ecosystem
Submitted by Joe Dang and Reed Sutton

“With the legalization of recreational cannabis throughout Canada rapidly approaching, there is a significant lack of data regarding its use and effect on various aspects of health. By leveraging blockchain technology, Edmonton has the opportunity to shape a new national ecosystem surrounding healthy cannabis consumption and regulation, while simultaneously generating open and transparent data that will have global implications.”

Fitness App for Non-Athletes
Submitted by Dr. PJ Rawlek, K. DeZutter, N. Twal, C. Nicole, E. Barbaric and B. Poetz

“The current problem with the thousands of fitness app technologies is they’re designed to compete for that market of those 15% of Canadians, the highly motivated, exercise-experienced. Alternatively, the GoGet.Fit solution is designed to specifically target that 85%, the under-serviced mostly apprehensive exercise-naïve population. This solution will provide solid evidence-based strategies early-on to support the pursuit of a healthier active lifestyle and will optimize success through providing valued support from a professional team – their healthcare provider networked with a community-based exercise specialist.”

Urban Design/Mental Health App
Submitted by Fahim Hassan, Rokib S A, Mohib Khan and Hamman Samuel

“Develop an interactive web application that will collect geo-coded Twitter data, analyze the text and link it with socio-economic data. The insight will help planners and policy makers to improve urban design and achieve mental health outcomes.”

Wheelchair Accessibility Tracker
Submitted by Martin Ferguson-Pell

“We wish to make significant modifications to a research prototype to enable us to improve accessibility and provide information to wheelchair users about the physical effort needed to propel a wheelchair in our built environments (summer and winter).”

Thoughts on the competition

Picking a winner from those proposals was not easy! We scored each prototype on three criteria: health impact, innovation, and completeness. After each presentation, we had a few minutes to ask questions of the presenters. Everyone did such a good job of describing their prototype and fielding our queries.

Members of the winning teams

Congratulations to Martin Ferguson-Pell, who took home the grand prize of $5,000 for his “Fitbit for wheelchairs”. While there could be advantages to trip planning using the data that the device collects, I actually think it would be more impactful to map areas of the city and use that to improve infrastructure and design. Pushing around a stroller these past couple of months has made it clear just how difficult it can be to traverse our city sidewalks, so I can’t even imagine what it must be like for wheelchair users. Apparently 75% of wheelchair users report shoulder issues, so anything we can do to make the ride smoother would have a big impact.

I love the premise behind GoGet.Fit: that most existing fitness apps and technologies are targeted toward people who are already active. The other 85% of the population needs some help, or we’re all going to pay for it via increased healthcare costs. Rather than just count steps using a Fitbit, GoGet.Fit connects you with professionals (doctors, nurses, fitness instructors, etc.) so that they can take a more active role in ensuring that you get active! They already have hundreds of users, and have conducted a successful pilot with a PCN.

Troy’s presentation for extending buddy benches into the digital realm was very engaging. Using NFC to quickly connect you to a community of people who have physically been where you are is a great idea. A little like checking in on Foursquare used to be, I guess.

The “Urban Design/Mental Health App” was a neat use of Twitter data, and is something I have often thought about. What can we learn from geotagged tweets that could help us improve the way we build our city?

I’ll admit that a bunch of red flags went up for me on the Cannabis Ecosystem prototype. Blockchain and cannabis? Talk about going after buzzwords! That said, the application of blockchain technology to safely collect and share data on cannabis use is intriguing, and the system they presented seems to be very well thought out. I look forward to seeing how they take it forward!

This being the first year that the City has held the HealthHack competition, they opened it to everyone, which means we ended up with an interesting mix of both existing and brand new projects. We struggled with that as judges. In future years, breaking proposals into two categories would be a good way to allow for both while making the judging a little more fair.

Well done to the finalists and indeed to everyone who submitted a proposal!

Health Innovation in Edmonton

Though they share a similar objective – innovation in healthcare – the HealthHack competition should not be confused with Hacking Health, an event that first happened in Edmonton back in 2013. That said, both events help bring the vision that Mayor Don Iveson first shared in 2016 of “positioning Edmonton as a world class health innovation city” to life. It’s exciting to see some real on-the-ground activity!

Why Edmonton as a health city?

“The Edmonton ecosystem has a range of assets in the health innovation space. This includes Canada’s largest integrated health system and a readiness to diversify the economy; researchers and entrepreneurs who have created and will create new products, devices and system innovations; and a willingness to take risks in order to drive growth.”

You can learn more about the Health City Initiative here.

Edmonton wants to tap into local creativity with labs

The City of Edmonton is hoping to tap into the creative ideas and energy of Edmontonians with two new lab initiatives. Open Lab aims to “create unique technological solutions for municipal challenges” while CITYlab will “advance conversations around urban planning.” Both initiatives, if successful, will change the way the City does business. The hope is that a healthy dose of innovation will be injected into the organization to ultimately result in better, more efficient outcomes for citizens.

Open Lab

The program room at Startup Edmonton was packed yesterday for the launch of Open Lab. Mayor Don Iveson, Startup Edmonton’s Ken Bautista, a few other speakers shared an overview of what the program is and what they’re hoping to achieve with it.

So, what is Open Lab?

“A physical and virtual space where City employees and Startup communities can work together to create innovative solutions to municipal challenges. It is a unique continuous innovation program that combines local government, open data, smart creatives, and lean startup culture to build new products that improve the citizen experience.”

Open Lab is part of the Open City Initiative, which launched back in June. It’s also a partnership with Startup Edmonton, and that’s what makes it different from previous attempts at this same idea.

Startup Edmonton believes there are three main ingredients for a thriving entrepreneurial community: people & innovation, community & collision, and leadership & growth. They believe in the importance of thinking bigger, valuing community, and building to scale.

“Smart creatives solve big problems.”
“Entrepreneurship is a team sport.”
“Entrepreneurial leaders grow & scale companies.”

One of the ways Startup tries to implement these principles is via the lean startup approach. The goal with Open Lab is to add some of that lean startup culture into the City. There are three main components to the initiative:

Collision Days – Deep dive events where startups and SMEs discuss technologies, tools, and issues impacting a particular industry or community.
Open Lab Accelerator – Helping teams learn how to use lean startup methodologies, customer development, and validate what products to build in the first place.
Leadership Program – Developing product managers and leaders inside the city who build and test ideas like startups, using prototyping, behaviour science, and design thinking.

The Open Lab Accelerator is not unlike Preflight, the successful Startup Edmonton program that has helped local success stories like Poppy Barley.

Michael Strong, a planner with the City of Edmonton, was one of the speakers at yesterday’s launch events. He was sort of the guinea pig for Open Lab, and he described how the approach helped his team think about new ways of achieving one of their objectives, which is to get people using and thinking about LRT in a different way. They have mocked up an app that would combine the “get me from A to B” and “what’s around me” approaches to help people more effectively use the LRT.

As I indicated above, this isn’t the first time the City has tried to tap into the local startup community. I am reminded somewhat of the lackluster Leveraging Technical Expertise Locally program, for instance. I think what’s different this time is that everyone involved recognizes the biggest hurdle is culture. And certainly Startup Edmonton has demonstrated success with getting people to think differently in a way that gets results.

Another big difference from the past is that the City has continue to embrace open data and there’s a lot more to work with now than there was six years ago. There’s a greater understanding of what open data is, what the benefits are, and how the City can work together with citizens to get things done. Indeed the news release highlights the recently launched 311 Explorer as one example of “how City data can be useful to everyone.”

So I am optimistic about Open Lab. If you want to find out more in person, Startup Edmonton is hosting a series of Open Lab Meetups on the last Thursday of the month from 2pm to 5pm. Open Lab representatives will be there to hear your ideas and visions and to help guide you.

CITYlab

I have been hearing about CITYlab for months now, but no one could give me a clear description of what it was. In retrospect, that’s probably because no one knew! They had an idea but weren’t sure where to take it. Now CITYlab has found an anchor, in the Open City Initiative, and the City is ready to start experimenting with a new approach to placemaking.

citylab

From the news release:

“CITYlab will partner with groups and individuals on projects and events that test or support the City’s urban planning goals. CityLab will serve as a resource for Edmontonians with creative and new urban planning ideas.”

The aim is to be a “laboratory to support and create small, temporary projects, activities and events to advance conversations around urban planning.” They want to make urban planning fun, as difficult as that might sound!

You might expect a project like this to rely heavily on techology, but CITYlab’s first experiment is decidedly analog. Starting on March 7, CITYlab will be distributing self-addressed stamped postcards across the city. If you get one, they want you to write down your urban planning ideas or projects and send it back. All of the returned postcards will be used to make a temporary art installation, and CITYlab is committing to undertaking at least one of the ideas or projects suggested. If you’re so inclined, you can also submit a project idea online.

citylab

One of the folks behind CITYlab is Jeff Chase, a senior planner who you might know from Edmonton’s NextGen or #yegsnowfight. He is a big supporter of Make Something Edmonton and understands the value of a different way to engage citizens on urban planning. “These creative new approaches to planning will help us meet the challenges that our city faces as it grows,” he said in the news release.

CITYlab still feels a little nebulous to me, but at least it’s out in the open now. If citizens are willing to get involved, it feels like there’s an opportunity to help shape and define the initiative further.

You can follow @PlanEdmonton on Twitter for updates, or check out the #yegcitylab hashtag. You can also email citylab@edmonton.ca if you want more information or two request a postcard.

Taking steps to become an Open City

Here’s what I wrote about the Open City Initiative back in June:

“I like the direction outlined in the Open City Initiative, unfortunately I just don’t have much confidence that it’ll go beyond a report and lots of talk.”

I questioned whether the report would sit on a shelf or if its goals and objectives would be resourced and actioned. With the launch of Open Lab and CITYlab, I’m now a bit more confident that the Open City Initiative will have a real impact. These are tangible projects that I think will make a difference.

I’m excited to see how this unfolds!

Open Data in Edmonton is exciting again

After a few years of stagnation, I feel like open data in Edmonton is exciting again. This has been a great year for open data and open government in our city! Here’s an update on what’s been happening.

International Open Data Day really kicked things off back in February with a hackathon hosted by EPL at the new Makerspace. It was a great opportunity for developers to come together to take a fresh look at the municipal, provincial, and federal data catalogues, all of which have grown considerably in the last year or so.

In May, a group of interested citizens organized a hackathon called HackYEG. Mayor Iveson spoke at the event which was a great success and led to a number of really interesting projects. The event also led to a new citizen meetup, called Open Edmonton. The group was started by Lydia Zvyagintseva and David Rauch and meets at Startup Edmonton on the third Wednesday of every month. Follow them on Twitter for the latest events and other “open” news.

The City of Edmonton unveiled its Open City Initiative in June, which highlighted a number of principles, goals, and objectives that will help to make Edmonton an Open City. It’s heavy on talk and light on action, but it signals a renewed effort on the part of the City to support open data and related initiatives. Importantly, it also opened the door to a policy on open data and open government, which would change the dynamic inside the City from “we could support this” to “we must support this.”

The federal government began a series of consultations in February this year to gather input on Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2.0. Edmonton was included in those consultations, with a roundtable event that took place on August 27. Treasury Board President Tony Clement hosted the session that was attended by representatives from the City of Edmonton, Province of Alberta, industry, and the community at large.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement

MP Clement was also in Edmonton talking about open data last year, gathering input for the 1.0 verson of the plan. The draft 2.0 plan will be available for review and comment starting October 6.

At the end of August, I think open data scored a small but important victory when the results of the 2014 Municipal Census were made available. For the first time, the data was in the open data catalogue at the same time as it was released to the public in PDF and via the media. A sign that the Open City Initiative is being taken seriously, perhaps?

Earlier this month Edmonton hosted a stop on the cross-Canada motorcycle tour on open government undertaken by Richard Pietro. The whole idea behind the tour was to “ignite conversation about open government and open data” and to “encourage citizens to become more civically engaged.” A number of local advocates spoke at the event, which highlighted some of the success Edmonton has had with regards to open data. Here’s a recap from Richard himself.

Photo by Richard Pietro

Last week I was one of five speakers at the Lunchalytics event focused on open data. Chris Moore, Eugene Chen, Mark Diner, and Michael Parkatti also spoke about open data and analytics. The room was packed and some really great projects and initiatives were highlighted, such as the Alberta Economic Dashboard. There’s clearly a growing interest in such visualizations and tools.

Later this week I’m speaking at the Right to Know Forum, hosted by Alberta’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Jill Clayton. The event will feature presentations on right to access, information management, open data initiatives, and the benefits of open data. It’s a sign of just how far open data has come that OIPC is hosting a forum on the topic!

Throughout the year, the various data catalogues have been growing. And it’s not just Canada, Alberta, and Edmonton that are making datasets available. Other communities in the Edmonton Region are getting behind open data too, like the County of Strathcona which now has more than 100 datasets available to citizens. Even St. Albert has started experimenting with open data, through its Property Search tool (which allows you to export the data).

I know that some Edmontonians, like Matthew Dance, Chris Moore, and Mark Diner, have always been local open data advocates, even and especially during the years I’m calling stagnant. But lately it’s refreshing to see an entirely new group of Edmontonians getting involved. Just this evening I was at a meeting in which the City’s open data catalogue was referenced (and not by me!). There’s a growing awareness and interest that is encouraging.

If you’ve been on the fence about open data or have been thinking about learning more, now’s the time. Check out Open Edmonton and get involved!

Get engaged with the new Edmonton Insight Community

The City is unveiling the Edmonton Insight Community (EIC) today, its latest public engagement tool. It provides the City with another way to hear from Edmontonians on an ongoing basis:

“It’s a place to collaborate and communicate with us and others in our community. We want to hear your opinions, learn about your needs, share information with you, and ask you to express what’s most important to you.”

You can sign up right now if you want to (any resident over the age of 15 can join). Or if you prefer, try a demo first.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll see available activities (surveys), a quick poll, newsletters, and survey findings. That last one is launching in July, and I think it’s the most important. “Survey findings will be made available by default,” Cory Segin, Manager of the Office of Public Engagement, told me. He knows that closing the loop is critical. The tool also shows you a listing of all the surveys you have completed, but at the moment I can’t review my responses. That would be a useful addition.

Importantly, the tool is responsive and should work just as well on your mobile device as it does on your desktop. This has always been an issue with the tools selected by the City for public engagement, so it’s great to see that it has been considered from the start for the EIC.

The EIC will allow the City to ask citizens for input without being tied to a specific project’s public consultation plan. That will hopefully mean less “tick the box” consultation, and will potentially lead to new insights. But the EIC is less about replacing other methods of consultation and more about adding another way to engage the public. Not every user will receive every survey – some will only show up for users that have indicated an interest in a specific topic, others may be segregated by demographics. The other major benefit to the City is that they can look at trends, something that is currently very difficult to do.

Here’s what Mayor Don Iveson had to say about the EIC:

The tool is powered by Vision Critical, a Vancouver-based firm that provides “a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that allows companies to build engaged, secure communities of customers they can use continuously, across the enterprise, for ongoing, real-time feedback and insight.” Other cities using their technology include Vancouver, Surrey, and Burlington. Other cities are creating similar communities using alternative tools. It definitely seems like the trend lately is to establish communities that the municipal government can tap into from time to time.

Like most initiatives, the EIC is a pilot project. An internal soft launch took place on June 16, and an external soft launch took place June 19 (which is when many of you reading this were probably invited to join). Now the City is hoping to attract up to 5,000 people to join and take part in the surveys, though estimates have varied quite a bit internally (some feel adoption will be slow, others feel the goal is realistic). I really hope the tool proves to be popular, because I think it’s a big step in the right direction.

One challenge will be getting departments within the City to adopt the tool. There is no requirement that the EIC be used by City staff, and a lot of internal communication will need to take place to ensure they understand the benefits of the tool.

There are many other public engagement related activities in the works at the City, so don’t think of the Edmonton Insight Community as the end. I’ve heard more talk about Open City, Open 311, “Mobile City Hall”, and other technology-based tools and approaches in the last six months than ever before. Public Engagement is of course a new City Council initiative, but it’s also one of Administration’s big three areas of focus for 2014. I’m looking forward to many more innovations and opportunities in the months ahead.

Edmonton wants to be an open city

Edmonton was one of the first cities in the world to launch an open data catalogue and to embrace the notion of open government. But unlike in the world of tech startups, municipalities don’t enjoy much of a first-mover advantage. Edmonton’s data catalogue has grown slowly over the last four years, and there has been more talk than action when it comes to “open government” initiatives. Has anything been happening behind the scenes? What more can we be doing?

At its March 4, 2014 meeting, Executive Committee asked for an update on “how the City is improving transparency by provision of usable data through the Open Data Catalogue and Open Government approach” to help answer those questions. A report on the Open City Initiative is being discussed today as a result.

Open City Initiative

The Open City Initiative is described as follows:

“Edmonton is aspiring to fulfill its role as a preeminent global city: innovative, inclusive and engaged. Building such a city takes foresight, planning and active participation by its citizens. A great city is an open city.”

“The purpose of the Open City Initiative is to formalize the goals of the organization and empower staff to lead our transition to being an Open City.”

The twelve-page report on the Open City Initiative highlights five principles. As an Open City, Edmonton is transparent, participatory, collaborative, inclusive, and innovative. The initiative also encompasses five goals and related objectives, which I have listed here:

Information and data are managed as a strategic resource.
Edmonton is a connected city.
Employees act responsibly when managing, maintaining and making public information available.
The City will take a coordinated, consistent and strategic approach to public engagement.
The City will employ innovative approaches to engage with Edmontonians in ways that are relevant to them.
City data will be publicly available.
City data will be accessible and usable.
Build accountability and trust through ongoing reporting.
The City proactively provides valued information to the public in multiple channels.
Leverage technology and news business models to enhance service delivery for Edmontonians.
Support dialogue and consultation with constituents and stakeholders.

Collectively, the initiatives and programs underway to support those goals and objectives form the Open City Framework:

Click for a larger version

There’s very little to argue with in the report. Edmonton should be a connected city, the City should take a strategic approach to public engagement, City data should be publicly available, etc. Some of the initiatives shown as “current”, such as the Public Engagement Calendar, still need a lot of work, but the arrows suggest all of those initiatives are ongoing.

Open Data

Though the City first launched a data catalogue in January 2010, it was quickly replaced by the current Socrata-powered catalogue which launched in July 2011. That’s the catalogue they have been building on ever since. There are currently 437 datasets in the catalogue.

Here’s a look at the number of datasets that have been added to the catalogue over time:

It’s certainly not a hockey stick, but it is creeping up (at a rate of 2-3 per week). One of the great things about data catalogues powered by services like Socrata is that you can access a dataset about all the datasets they contain. Here’s the list of all datasets in the City of Edmonton’s data catalog.

Another interesting data point to consider is the freshness of those datasets. Some are historical in nature and don’t need to be updated very often, while others get updated frequently, perhaps every month.

What this shows is that 56% of the datasets available in the catalogue were last updated some time in 2014. My guess is a large percentage of the data managed by the City is more historical in nature, but the catalogue doesn’t reflect that. It’s an important point, because historical data is incredibly important for spotting trends that might result in “new insights and better decision making”.

The City estimates that it manages around 1.64 petabytes of data. If you download the entire data catalogue as it exists today, it’ll take up about 1.9 GB of space¹. That means that it contains just 0.0001% of all the data managed by the City. Not all of that data is appropriate for the catalogue of course, but it does show there’s lots of room for growth.

Positives

I think there are some key positives to highlight in the report. The Open City Initiative establishes a clear connection to The Way Ahead, which is important for ensuring that open data and open government are part of Edmonton’s future.

“The Open City Initiative articulates how the organization will advance the City’s Vision and strategic objectives defined in The Way Ahead and the Open City Principles.”

Another encouraging aspect of the report is how seriously public engagement is treated. There is of course a Council initiative on public engagement underway, and Administration itself has been undertaking actions to improve the way it engages Edmontonians (which at one point was known as the Corporate Approach to Public Engagement). It’s great to see recognition in a City document of the need to incorporate new tools and approaches, including social media, sentiment-analysis, and more. Importantly, the report also highlights the necessity of making the results of public input accessible and readily available to citizens.

I’m excited to see Open 311 mentioned as well. The City’s 311 service seems to have received more criticism than praise over the years, and I think that has slowed down the adoption of technology improvements to the service. I think 311 is an extremely strategic and valuable asset that should be expanded and opened up. There’s not nearly enough reporting back to the public on how effective 311 is, and clear opportunities for deeper and ongoing engagement with citizens are being missed.

Concerns

Though there are many positives in the report, I have some concerns too.

First and foremost, we’ve heard that the City wants to add more datasets to the open data catalogue for years, but as shown above, the pace has not quickened. Why should it be any different this time? Of the 35 data requests publicly submitted by Edmontonians, just 8 have been approved. Some have been open for nearly 3 years, without so much as a comment in response.

Another concern is that while the report lists a number of actions that will be taken to achieve the objectives of the Open City Initiative, none of those actions reference changes to resources. Will new people be hired? Will resources be shifted from other efforts? How is the City going to expand and improve on open data, public engagement, data analytics, and digital service delivery when it’s still the same handful of people doing that work off the sides of their desks?

The only large change that has happened recently was the departure of CIO Chris Moore early this year, which happened just months after the new General Manager of IT and Services Kate Rozmahel re-joined the City. She was formerly the CIO at the City of Edmonton, before moving to the Province of Alberta where she was Assistant Deputy Minister of Service Alberta. I can appreciate she’s only been back for six months, and perhaps needs more time to reorganize her teams, but it’s a concern nonetheless.

Both the provincial and federal governments have become increasingly active in the world of open data and open government, yet there’s no mention of those efforts in this report. Are there no opportunities for connection, or to learn from one another? There’s also no follow-up on previously announced initiatives, such as the G4 working group on a national data strategy or efforts to establish common data formats with other cities.

Most importantly, the lack of any public engagement on the Open City Initiative is really disappointing. There’s absolutely no suggestion in the report that citizens were engaged in the creation of this initiative. I was asked for a quote in March by the consultant that wrote the report, but that’s it. I didn’t provide one, and I see no others mentioned in the report.

The City was very active in 2009 and 2010 in reaching out to Edmontonians interested in open data and open government, but that activity ceased long ago. Aside from the launch of the Citizen Dashboard in 2012, there hasn’t been much action from the City on open data or open government. Yes they participated in International Open Data Day a few months ago, but it was the library that led that initiative. Likewise, the open data hackathon that took place in May was led by the community. There’s a small but growing community of Edmontonians interested in this work!

It doesn’t seem the principles of the Open City Initiative – transparent, participatory, collaborative, inclusive, innovative – applied to the creation of the initiative itself.

Toward a more open Edmonton

This report and the Open City Initiative continue an unfortunate trend: Council asks for an update on how open data is going and Administration replies with the equivalent of “it’s all good.” That’s why Edmonton has never adopted an open charter or Council motion supporting open government like some other cities have. As a result, buy-in from the various silos within the City has been difficult to achieve.

I’m very pleased that the City has identified and articulated a clear set of principles, goals, and objectives with respect to being an open city, but I don’t think that’s enough. The two key missing ingredients here are demonstrable buy-in from citizens, and measurable, impactful actions that will bring the vision of an open Edmonton to life.

I like the direction outlined in the Open City Initiative, unfortunately I just don’t have much confidence that it’ll go beyond a report and lots of talk. I hope Council and the City can prove me wrong, because I want to live in an open city.

The two largest are the Rooflines and Land Use datasets, which together in KML format take up 1.5 GB of space. ↩

Talking Open at Technocon 2010

I’ve spent the last two days at Technocon 2010, a technology conference jointly hosted by the City of Edmonton and the University of Alberta for their respective IT employees (about 450 of which have attended). With six keynotes and more than fifty breakout sessions on a range of topics (everything from “Fulfillment and Freedom” to “BlackBerry Enterprise Server”) there has been a little something for everyone.

I’m closing the show this afternoon with a keynote on the topic of “open”, which is one of the three themes for the conference (the other two are “world class” and “transformation”). Keeping in mind that I stand between the audience and home-time, I’m going to keep things light and brief. Here are my slides:

Technocon 2010: Openhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=technocon-100506134854-phpapp01&stripped_title=technocon-2010-open

View more presentations from mastermaq.

The key thought I want to share is that open government is fundamentally about the relationship between government and citizens and less about technology. And related to that, we should avoid the temptation to jump on the open government bandwagon just because it’s the hot new thing, and focus instead on making sure we improve that relationship. Both sides have a role to play, and I hope to bring some of the citizen perspective to the audience. And of course, one of my key messages is that we can work together.

You can watch it live here. Thanks to Technocon for having me!

Recap: Open City Workshop

Saturday’s Open City Workshop at the Art Gallery of Alberta was a fantastic event! Excellent turnout, great discussions, and lots of enthusiasm for the open data/open government movement here in Edmonton. We started the day with some opening remarks from Councillor Don Iveson, CIO Chris Moore, and FusedLogic’s Walter Schwabe. I really liked Don’s key values: transparency, empowerment, and collaboration.

Next up was the panel, featuring David Eaves, Nick Charney, Mark Kuznicki, and Alayne Sinclair. They talked about what open government meant to them, took an odd detour into voting, and took some questions from the audience as well. Here are a few of the key things that stood out for me:

The idea of government as a platform is not new!
It’s about empowering citizens to make the city their own, enabling them to go after their passions.
Engagement is often a sign that you need to do something differently, not necessarily that you’re doing something right.
Civil servants are citizens too!
Open government is part of a broader cultural shift, and citizens have a responsibility to become participants.

I really enjoyed the panel – it was the highlight of the day for me. It was great to finally meet David, Nick, and Mark in person too.

After some forced networking and a break for lunch, the unconference part of the day got underway. We broke into smaller groups to discuss things like the role of journalism and storytelling in open data, the digital divide, thinking beyond technology solutions, and timelines/deliverables.

I attended the role of journalism and storytelling first, and we seemed to reach the consensus that storytelling is vital for open data/open government to succeed. We need everyone to tell stories, so that we achieve a diverse range of views. We also felt that journalism has a role to play in bridging the gap that exists between those who “get it” and those who don’t. The second session I attended was on engaging residents not familiar with technology. We ended up talking a lot about deliberative dialogue, and I was left with a lot to think about – how will access to open data affect the way a citizen looks at the world? We’re naturally selective, does open data change anything in that regard? For some thoughts on the other two sessions, check out Stella’s recap.

Another really great aspect of the day was that it was streamed live online by FusedLogic in both English and French. There were dozens of people participating virtually, from Edmonton and around the world! I understand that they even held their own breakout discussion in the afternoon! Kudos to the FusedLogic team for taking on such a big task, and making it work so well.

At the end of the day, Chris Moore took the stage once again to make a few announcements:

An RFP has gone out for the design and implementation of the next generation of productivity technologies at the City of Edmonton.
The City of Edmonton is partnering on open311.org, to bring open standards for 311.
On April 19, the City of Edmonton is planning to launch an iPhone app called CityWatch, developed by local company Touchmetric.
The City of Edmonton is calling for the creation of a “Code for Canada” organization, modeled after Code for America.
There will be an Apps4Edmonton app contest in the near future, with the prizes and winners to be showcased at GTEC2010 in October.

Exciting stuff! Congrats to Chris and his team for putting on a great event.

Stay tuned to the #openyeg and #yegdata hashtags on Twitter for updates, as well as the City of Edmonton’s open city page. You can see the rest of my photos here, and you can see the City’s photoset here. You can see a list of the attendees on Twitter here.

I’ll leave you with this TED video of Tim Berners-Lee talking about open data:

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Bring on the data!

Open City Workshop & Participation Inequality

The City of Edmonton is hosting a workshop tomorrow at the Art Gallery of Alberta called Building Community through Open Information (on ShareEdmonton). It’s a follow-up to the open data workshop that happened last year and the conversations that have taken place since, but is focused on connecting stakeholders, increasing a shared understanding of Government 2.0, and planning the way forward. Devin wrote some great thoughts on the workshop here.

I’m really looking forward to seeing a diverse local crowd, representing a variety of agencies and interests. I’m also looking forward to meeting special guests David Eaves, Mark Kuznicki, and Nicholas Charney in person. All three are key players in Canada’s open government space.

And while I’m hopeful that we’ll see some new data released tomorrow, I’m mindful that data is not the focus. The three objectives listed on the event details page are about establishing Edmonton as a leader, and then lots of talk. I think the way you establish yourself as a leader is by actually doing things, but I’ll keep an open mind tomorrow 🙂

One thing I do want to talk about at the workshop is the divide that a number of people have picked up on. It’s great that Edmonton and other places are making progress on opening up data, but how does that impact the average citizen? There’s definitely a perception that only techies understand and can use open data. I don’t think that gives the average citizen enough credit, but I’m willing to concede that open data is not as accessible today as it needs to be. There’s lots of room for improvement.

Having said that, I think it’s important to keep participation inequality in mind:

All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don’t participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background.

If we think of open data (and open government) as a large community, then we should absolutely expect that a small subset of that community will be responsible for most of the activity. In the context of the 90-9-1 rule, 90% of the community won’t participate (they just observe or read), 9% will occasionally participate, and 1% will participate a lot.

Here’s one way to visualize the open community:

I’m sure there are other ways to break it down, but this makes the most sense to me at the moment.

Goverati: these are government employees, folks from related agencies, non-profits, etc.
Creative Professionals: these are people such as myself, developers, designers, etc.
Business: for-profit organizations.
Citizens: ultimately, the beneficiaries of all this open government stuff!

Of course, this picture is somewhat misleading, because all goverati, creative professionals, and business folks are also citizens, but let’s set that aside for now. I think the goverati and some creative professionals fall into the 1% category, the rest of the creative professionals and business fall into the 9% category, and citizens account for the 90% category.

The 90-9-1 pattern can be seen in action all over the web, perhaps most notably on Wikipedia. A tiny percentage of Wikipedia’s user base is responsible for the vast majority of all content produced. I think we can do better with open data/open government, however. Through applications, interactive visualizations, and the other interesting things that the goverati, creative professionals, and businesses build, I think more and more citizens will move from the 90% category to the 9% category.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that considering how the average citizen benefits from open data is important, but we shouldn’t let that hold us back from making progress at this point. We need to empower businesses and creative professionals to build things that the average citizen will ultimately benefit from. As we do that, there’s an opportunity to educate citizens if they want to be educated!

There’s only a few hours left to register for the event. Hope to see you there!

Edmonton Sun violates the EPS Crime Map Terms of Use

Back in July, the Edmonton Police Service launched its Neighbourhood Crime Mapping site. Like most people I was quite enthusiastic about the site, until I read the terms of use and realized how restrictive they were. Basically you can look at the numbers, but you can’t do anything with them (such as publish them on a blog). The Crime Mapping site is not open data. I emailed back and forth with the EPS, and was told that they wouldn’t be changing the terms of use. And, they haven’t.

That didn’t stop the Edmonton Sun, however. They apparently ignored the terms of use altogether, and published an article on December 20th summarizing a number of statistics from the website:

Some of Edmonton’s roughest neighbourhoods faced markedly fewer crimes in 2009, according to police statistics.

The statistics came through a new crime mapping system launched by Edmonton police last summer.

I had asked for permission to do something similar and was turned down. After reading the Sun article, I emailed the EPS to find out if the terms of use had been changed (despite the text on the website staying the same). Here’s what Acting S/Sgt. John Warden wrote back:

The Edmonton Sun did not have the EPS’ permission to use the information from the Crime Mapping website and the EPS is dealing directly with the Edmonton Sun in relation to this.

I emailed back a couple of follow-up questions, but have not yet received a response. The Edmonton Sun article is still active on the website, so I’m not exactly sure what “dealing directly with the Edmonton Sun” means.

I’m annoyed by this, obviously. Was it an honest mistake? Maybe. Is it a case of a large media organization getting off the hook? Maybe. Will it happen again? Probably. No one reads the fine print, we all know that.

I don’t think the current terms of use is appropriate, and I strongly urge the Edmonton Police Service to change it.

EPS responds to my query about the Crime Mapping terms of use

Last week I posted about the new Crime Mapping site launched by the Edmonton Police Service (EPS). One of my criticisms of the site was the very restrictive terms of use or disclaimer that you must agree to before you can use the site. In particular:

While it is acceptable to pass the website link on to others in your community, you will not share the information found on the website with others other than with members of the Edmonton Police Service or other law enforcement agencies; and

You will only use this website and the information in it so you can inform yourself of, and participate in, this community policing initiative;

This is problematic because it effectively means that you can’t do anything with the data that EPS has now made available. You can look at it using their site, but you can’t then blog about that data, or add it to a PowerPoint presentation.

I emailed a request for clarification and received a response from Amit Sansanwal, Criminal Statistics Coordinator at EPS. I asked for and was granted permission (by their legal department) to publish his response:

The EPS views the Neighbourhood Crime Mapping website as a valuable addition to our community policing initiative.

The EPS, however, is of the view that this tool can only be effective and achieve its community policing objectives if people seeking the information visit the Neighbourhood Crime Mapping website directly themselves.

By visiting the website, hopeful participants in this EPS community policing initiative can learn about what kind of information is available to them (e.g. crime prevention and partnership programs) and how it fits within this program.

We appreciate your interest in this program and hope that you tell others about the existence of the Neighbourhood Crime Mapping website.

In a later email, Amit pointed out that the current preferred way to get EPS statistics is through Statistics Canada.

The crux of their position, if I understand it correctly, is that they don’t want people looking for crime statistics to come across an inaccurate or malicious source. That seems reasonable. The problem is that such a position assumes people are actively seeking the information. By opening up access to the data and allowing others to make use of it, they can potentially reach far more Edmontonians, not to mention the benefits that could come from mashups or other data visualizations. Furthermore, it seems as though they just want to force people to use the Crime Mapping site so that they can promote additional programs to users.

The Crime Mapping site is fun to look at, but I would argue its utility is restricted by the current terms of use. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’ll be changing any time soon.

Thoughts on the competition

Health Innovation in Edmonton

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Open Lab

CITYlab

Taking steps to become an Open City

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Open City Initiative

Open Data

Positives

Concerns

Toward a more open Edmonton

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