21st Century Snow Removal

Snaps to the Mayor and to the terrific folks at D.C. Public Works. After 20 inches of snow fell for 26 hours through Saturday night, the street in front of my house--a side street no less--was plowed before 5 a.m. Sunday morning. (Maybe even earlier. No neighbors were awake to verify.)

This was very different from twenty inches of snow that fell on Washington in 1987. An absent Mayor and a bumbling snow removal process lives large in Washingtonians' memories as a symbol of political incompetence.

It's also a reminder that people care about things that affect them personally. As Tip O'Neill famously said, "all politics is local." This translates into helping people and providing services that have an immediate and personal impact. Sure, it's great if it helps "everyone," but what about ME?

Last week, the President announced the winner of the SAVE Award, Nancy Fichtner. Fichtner's idea was to allow patients discharged from VA hospitals to take home leftover medications, rather than throwing them out. Often, patients turned around to get the same prescription filled at the local pharmacy--the government paying twice. Fichtner's is a great suggestion, not only because it saves money, but because it also touches people directly.

Tucked into the President's remarks on the Save Award were other plans to make government more efficient, including information about a tech forum,

That’s why we’re holding a forum at the White House next month to seek more ideas from the private sector, specifically about how we can better use technology to reform our government for the 21st century.--President Obama

This is an opportunity to take another look at the services that government offers to citizens--especially the mundane transactions like filling out financial aid forms, paying taxes, getting passports, updating W-2 forms, signing up for health programs, disaster assistance, etc.--and making these transactions more efficient and friendly.

Treating people like valued customers--think Zappos or Amazon. Simplifying government transactions to save citizen time--think how easy it is to sign up for Netflix or build your network on Facebook. Helping people get to where they need to be--think Google.

Putting citizens first, making information easy to find, relevant, accurate and understandable; ensuring that common tasks can be easily completed online; being consistent across all channels, online and offline; opening up venues to receive and act on citizen feedback; and being accessible whether someone has a disability or isn't proficient in English--these are the opportunities to make technology work better. And, not just work better for government, but for the citizens, too. (These recommendations are from the Federal Web Managers white paper to the transition team from last year.)

Just a reminder to get down to brass tacks. We care about getting our snow removed. Like NOW!

Choir Boys and Rebels

The government meets web 2.0 conference circuit is getting tired.

All web 2.0 conferences are all starting to look exactly the same. Many speakers come from agencies that are boldly using social media in a new and exciting ways, and many more "believers," who are not allowed to use those same technologies, come to hear about it. But the status quo remains the same. NASA and DoD get to successfully use social media, and the rest of us, for the most part, don't. This is the divide that needs to be overcome. I understand that agencies like the IRS and SSA have intensely sensitive data and need to be extremely cautious. But there are a great many agencies that do not fall into this category that are prevented from using these technologies, despite any prior approval GSA may have gotten. My agency isn't even officially allowed to use Twitter yet...One panelist at a breakout session described how DoD is using "other transactions" to quickly fund new ideas to address current problems. While very interesting, this was less than helpful since DoD is the only agency that I know of with this kind of authority - everyone else has to use the traditional and time-consuming procurement system. For an expo, these are excellent speakers. DoD, NASA, The White House are getting things done, but as a method to further collaboration and expand the use of social media, it failed. We need specifics: case studies, business case strategies that succeeded to support any/all of these tools, etc. [emphasis mine]--More from Jaime Maynard on her GovLoop* blog.

The robust discussion that followed Jamie's post included more than a few frustrated voices lamenting the lack of process and policy that can allow and encourage the use of social media tools in government agencies. Bottom line, it's not fun to see what everyone is doing if there appears to be no light at the end of your own tunnel.

So, tunnel!

Here's the thing. We are just at the beginning of a social information revolution. The roads are more like ruts in the ground. There are no traffic signals. And, yes, in many cases, it's the blind leading the blind.

But, it's not just government. The private sector--outside of the social technology companies themselves--is also wrestling with the upheaval that social media brings.

The ultimate issue is, How do hierarchical, risk adverse and change-fearing organizations incorporate tools that are anti-hierarchy, risky, game-changers?

Funny thing, these conferences that are causing frustrations--what with all the preaching to the choir--are the venues to create and build the networks and common language that choir members take back to their day jobs. And, the rebellious choir members are singing to colleagues, bosses, and compliance professionals from this same hymnal. And, some of the people who hear the music feel the joy and join the choir, too. This process repeats.

This is a sea change that is disrupting the basic structures of our systems, from contracting and buying services to shining bright lights on moldy laws to upending command and control structures. These institutions--acquisitions, legal, management--are meant to withstand fads and the winds of change. But the change is happening from within.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, blogged on this earlier in the week.

We’re seeing movement from mere words to reality, and by bearing witness to that progress, I hope to help accelerate that progress, with actual results. Our goal involves:

• Increasing government accountability
• Everyday engagement between government workers and the public for customer service
• Everyday engagement between the public and their representatives regarding ongoing government policy

As a nation, we’re already heading to our shared goals, mostly via many grassroots, spontaneous efforts, often involving informal collaborations between the citizens and government workers. --[emphasis mine] Read more on FedScoop.

So, take heart and channel any impatience towards improving your own knowledge and networking with other choir members. See, for example, the terrific follow-on post by Jeffrey Levy with practical suggestions to build the community and help usher in the change.

Raise your voices. This is a choir like none we've seen in a very long time.

[* If you're not a member of GovLoop you can't see Jaimies post. So join GovLoop, it's a great social network tool connecting the government (local, state, fed, contractor) community.]

Thinking the Unthinkable in Gov?

Clay Shirky's latest blog post, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, has got me thinking and thinking, some of it may be unthinkable for dotgov.

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however...

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

While Shirky is talking directly about the newspaper industry, he is also talking about our current world and all our communications and interactions. Including those interactions that kept people at arms' length from government--finding the legislator, writing a letter, addressing and mailing the letter; or making appointments to stand in line at the DMV; or even knowing that there was a regulation that affected your neighborhood or industry that you might find, read, and write or fax a comment about--are falling around us.

The printing press didn't just give us books, it gave us literacy.

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify.

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

So when you ask me what this means, I can't tell you. We are living it. And it is happening all around us. And someday we will know the results. Right now, though, citizens are demanding services to be delivered with an immediacy they expect from Amazon or Craig's List or Netflix or Hulu or Limewire.

People will ask, why are you making a four color tri-fold brochure? I just want the information on my cell phone. Why can't I access my student loan information online from my own bank? Why do you have a paperwork reduction act and then make me fill out a form in triplicate, asking me for the same information I gave you before? Why can't I look at a bill 5 days before the President signs it? And more importantly, why can't it be written in English? Can't we get the clever bloggers to rewrite it?

And many people serving in government will be confused. Some will resist. Some will be the experimenters. But no matter what, we are living in a time of great change.

So, what are the unthinkable thinkings for our government?

Read Shirky's entire post here.

Insights from TIGR

Here's some flavor of what went into the President's transparency memo --from Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a member of the Technology, Innovation & Government Reform (TIGR) transition policy group. Wladawsky-Berger gives us an idea about the mission, structure and discussions of the TIGR group,

One of the first documents our new President signed within his first day in office is this memorandum on Transparency and Open Government...For the last couple of months I have been a member of the Technology, Innovation & Government Reform (TIGR) transition policy group focusing on innovation and government. This Presidential memo covers precisely the area that we worked on.

The TIGR group that I was part of was charged with developing "a range of proposals to create a 21st century government that is more open and effective; leverages technology to grow the economy, create jobs, and solve our country’s most pressing problems; respects the integrity of and renews our commitment to science; and catalyzes active citizenship and partnerships in shared governance with civil society institutions." We were organized into four sub-teams: Innovation and Government, Innovation and National Priorities, Innovation and Science, and Innovation and Civil Society. I was part of the Innovation and Government group....

Making information available is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient. There is so much data that it is often hard to find, let alone make sense of it. We need new ways to help us better analyze and understand what is behind all that information.

For example, one of the most innovative IT concepts that has emerged in the last few years is that of mashups. A mashup is a simple applications that that can be quickly developed and put into operation. The applications are typically written using a variety of open, web-based tools and combine data from different sources using open interfaces.

The biggest appeal of mashups is that rather than having to carefully pre-plan how data will be used and delivered, you can simply make that data available in industry standard formats and then encourage the public to apply their own innovative ideas to extract insights that the original data owners had no idea were there. These are the kinds of technology-based innovations that will take openness and transparency to a whole new level. More from The TIGR Group and the Gov.

This helps us build an idea of upcoming policies from this Administration.

[BTW on GP I hate acronyms, but TIGR is cool.]

"Process has Trumped Outcome"

The Technology, Innovation & Government Reform Policy Working Group (TIG-R group) is advising the Obama administration to help implement the Innovation Agenda--including a range of proposals to create a 21st century government that is more open and effective, leverages technology, renews our commitment to science, and catalyzes active citizenship and partnerships in shared governance.

A member of the group is Vivek Kundra, the CTO for D.C. government. He posted an absolutely terrific video on his Facebook profile about the work of the TIG-R that I was able to track down on YouTube. (Thanks Bev Godwin for sharing!)

Kundra nails one of the big challenges when he says, that one of the biggest problems in federal government is that "process has trumped outcome...everybody is focused on compliance. Nobody is thinking about innovation and how to drive change within the government."

Now, it's not there there is NO innovation in government--of course there is. And it's awesome. BUT, every day projects are dismissed, canned, discouraged, pooh-poohed because "it can't be done." (Don't get me started on implied endorsement, for example.) Innovators are "asking forgiveness." [Wait for a new government acronym for this one (can we get FU in it?).] Many are keeping things underwraps, diminishing the ability for others to share and copy--and potentially missing important caveats.

Overall, the video is very hopeful. The people on the workgroup fully expect that government CAN innovate and meet the challenges. I agree with this, too.

120 Day Countdown to Transparency and Open Government

The President published a Memorandum today outlining instructions and and three principles for open and transparent government. [bold emphasis mine]

1. Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.
   
   
2. Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.
   
   
3. Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation. --Read the whole memo.
   

The end result of this will be an Open Government Directive with instructions for all federal departments and agencies to implement the principles. In 120 days.

Note also that the yet-to-be-named CTO is on the hook for developing the open gov directive.

Last note, I can't seem to navigate to the page on whitehouse.gov--I can only get there from the link that I got from a tweet from the fabulous David Fletcher, CTO for the state of Utah.

The Change is Here

Change came today to whitehouse.gov, and I saw it happen live!

It was noon-oh-something, and I was looking at the site when it changed before my very eyes. I didn't refresh my browser. It was pushed new to my existing session. Pretty cool.

It's been a very long day, but I did want to acknowledge that in addition to a fabulous day on the mall--no arrests despite 2 million folks crowded on the mall and parade route--change is already happening.

Not so good, the new White House site deleted all the old pages so many federal sites--and other sites throughout the Interwebs--now have a bunch of broken links. The Good News, the White House site has a blog and other interactive and the promise of interactive features. Setting the bar for other government agencies!

See the quick change at www.state.gov, too. In addition to a nice and clean new look, they also archived the old Dipnote. It looks like they will continue to build on this popular destination. To the team at State: Nice work getting a half-dozen or so new blog posts up today! I hope State continues to provide a multimedia hub on the Dipnote site.

Change.gov coming to the White House

Reports that www.change.gov will be the new www.whitehouse.gov at noon tomorrow--"touted as a bold experiment in interactive government based largely on lessons learned during the most successful Internet-driven election campaign in history"--also talk about the effect of this shift in communications throughout the bureaucracy.

"According to some political analysts here, the biggest learning curve in the days to come is not for the Obama White House -- which already 'gets it' -- but for the entrenched Washington bureaucracy and members of Congress.

'Obama is going to change the game with government the way he changed the game with politics,' said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Washington-based progressive think-tank.

'We should expect that experimentation is not just going to happen in the White House, but there will be competition inside the administration,' he said at a panel discussion this week on the Internet and policy-making.

'Using these tools is going to become a critical way that Barack is going to evaluate the performance of his own team,' Rosenberg said. 'My joke is that at the Monday cabinet meeting the (agency) directors will be comparing notes on how many YouTube views they got and how many comments on their blog post.'" Read more. Change.gov coming to the White House

We know that many federal web managers have been preparing for this future, and many have been using social media tools--see for example work of CDC, NASA, and EPA. I guess it's on!

Wiki White House

The end of the crazy week meant that I got my weeks mixed up and missed the Wiki White House program sponsored by The New America Foundation and Wired at the DC Google offices.

The Command Line--Wiki White House has a great summary. I especially was interested in the discussion on public discussion.

"There was some good practical discussion of how to get the most value out of online action. Craig spoke about filters, putting tools into the hands of the public to vote up good ideas and vote down the noise. There are certainly many examples already of how such systems can work well. Sascha felt the key was to make the discussion relevant to as many members of the public as possible and was generally optimistic that the value of such interaction outweighed any inevitable trolls (Craig used the actual term) that may come along along with other risks, like inadvertent information disclosure. Sascha’s remarks also reminded me of Eben Moglen’s on pairing the best minds with the hardest problems. Sascha advocated for opening up information to get it into public hands, where it may be paired with deep interest for better analysis than either the government or private interests alone can achieve." --Read the whole summary here.

Better yet, New America Foundation YouTubed it (runtime about 72 minutes).

More on What is a CTO: What Vint Cerf Thinks

Trending on the talk about the new CTO--rumours abound that the announcement will be made on Wednesday, here is an excerpt from The Guardian (UK) interview with Vint Cerf, the real father of the Internet.

They asked Mr. Cerf, "What do you think the CTO's job will entail?"

The first problem is 'what's the job?' - it isn't 100% clear what is desired as an outcome. It's pretty clear just looking at the campaign rhetoric that there's a great apparent desire in the Obama administration to make better use of information technology throughout the government. And so part of the motivation, as I perceive it, is to take steps to improve that.

But the choice of the term CTO, I think, was very deliberate - and probably extends to a much broader range of technologies than what you and I might think of as information technology. The indications that I have seen suggest the broader interpretation.

...So what I think is going on here is a great desire to stimulate serious thinking about how to put technology to work - and in the current economic climate there are huge opportunities.

Think of all the infrastructure that needs rebuilding across the United States. Clearly we don't want to rebuild it using 20th century technology, we want to use 21st century technology. We get to reinvent a substantial portion of the American physical infrastructure, and I would include in that the telecommunications component – so we're talking broadband.

....What I'm sensing here is that there are many parts of the government interested in green technology or practices – and the CTO, probably, could be a very vocal proponent. --Read the entire interview.

Mr. Cerf identifies a big swath of potential responsibility for a White House CTO. He goes on to raise important questions about funding and policy making. The guy has been doing his homework and says nobody has asked him about the job.

Obama’s Bold Vision for E-gov

From the Federal Times:

Feds and outside experts are hopeful that the Obama administration will implement at least some of its proposals — and they’re excited about the potential impact.

Obama’s campaign has been widely praised for its effective use of the Internet, and he has pledged to bring that same savvy to Washington.

In a memo released last month, Obama pledged to require all of his Cabinet officials to conduct “21st century fireside chats” on the Web

Fireside chats online for all Cabinet officials? Better start getting that project plan together!! More at the Federal Times.

An Open Letter to President-Elect Obama: CHANGE COOKIE policy

In "An Open Letter to President-Elect Obama" Eric Peterson writing for Web Analytics Demystified blog writes:

Your [President Elect Obama's] stated goal is to use technology to create “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens” and will empower your CTO to “ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.”

As a member of the digital measurement community with more than a passing familiarity with some of the policies imposed on web sites operated by the Federal Government, I wanted to offer up a proverbial “slam dunk” for you and your CTO to improve the quality of the digital relationship citizens have with our government: Simply put, allow Federal Government web sites to deploy persistent, first-party cookies.

Read it all here.

While I take exception with Eric's comment that faced with the challenges of getting permission to use cookies Feds "do-nothing," he provides a very good history of the cookie policy and good reasons why it should be changed. Slam dunk indeed!

Obama to Pioneer Web Outreach as President

From the SF Chronicle:

Transition officials call it Obama 2.0 — an ambitious effort to transform the president-elect's vast Web operation and database of supporters into a modern new tool to accomplish his goals in the White House. If it works, the new president could have an unprecedented ability to appeal for help from millions of Americans who already favor his ideas, bypassing the news media to pressure Congress.

...Aides say the Obama team will staff a robust "new media" operation out of the White House and plans a complete overhaul of the White House Web site to make it more interactive and user-friendly. On the campaign trail, Obama promised to use the Internet to make his administration more open, such as offering a detailed look at what's going on in the White House on a given day or asking people to post comments on his legislative proposals.

...Obama's team is determining how best to convert his army of online activists into a viral lobbying and communications machine. Staffers are reluctant to discuss specifics, but Obama clearly is poised to become the first truly "wired" president of the digital age.

For legal and privacy reasons, Obama's campaign list must be kept separate from White House operations. Aides are figuring out if that list should be run through the Democratic National Committee or as a freestanding political entity that will eventually become his 2012 re-election committee. -- More at SF Chron.

Food for thought: How does this impact websites? What will be the expectations of members of federal Web teams?

Transition & Transformation

Like it or not, the next year will bring plenty of change to government web channels. There is going to be a new sheriff in town. Keeping an eye on the candidates websites and how they approach web communications is one way to prepare.

See, for example, Obama Campaign Masters Digital Media While McCain Efforts are “Old and Clunky."

Senator Obama has video channels on a multitude of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, flickr, digg, twitter, eventful, linked in, blackplanet, faithbase, eons, glee, mi genti, asian ave, dnc partybuilder and mybatanga. In fact, Barack even has his own social network site. Senator McCain … not so much. –The Shelly Palmer Report

So, do you know about Facebook? MySpace, digg, twitter, etc? Better find out.