Supporting local businesses and encouraging economic development are admirable, necessary goals.  Sen. Carroll deserves support for pushing those efforts.  But, the methods to achieve those goals in this legislation have significant shortcomings.

First, the state already has this information.  The Department of Revenue, the Department of Labor and Employment, and the Secretary of State’s office, already collect most of this data and could publish it online. 

Second, the private sector is already doing this (e.g., Yelp and Google Places).

Third, charging businesses to register and provide duplicative information is unfair and unnecessary.

Fourth, and finally, if the agencies just made the data available via an API or even by download from their websites, the private sector could make use of the data with less effort and little cost to government.

A more effective approach would be to direct state agencies to make their data available. For example, check out Data.Oregon.Gov.  At no additional charge, reporting requirement, or effort to businesses, Oregon has made business information available to the public and to the private sector.  Oregon’s data platform makes all of the things Sen. Carroll is promoting possible without extra costs.

Colorado’s proposal will limit innovation by restricting the data to a state agency that does not have the expertise or resources to create and maintain apps and other economic tools.  David Eaves, an open government expert, recently wrote about the economic potential of open data and helped plainly describe the benefits of government releasing more data to the public.

There are experts who can do this sort of thing.  Government doesn’t have to.  Government just needs to provide the tools and resources for the private sector and individuals to do what they need to do.

The Myth and Reality of Innovation – Brian Gryth

Title: Founder and Vice-President, OpenColorado
Twitter: @briangryth
Title: The Myth and Reality of Innovation
Description: How generate ideas and create an innovation organization

What would happen if… – Karen Suhaka

Title: Founder and President, LegiNation
Twitter: @smoodle and @billtrack50
Title:What would happen if
Description: A discussion about a new platform for political speech, among other things.

State of Colorado, Data Sharing – Case Studies – Barrett Blank

Title: Principle, BeInventive
Title: State of Colorado, Data Sharing – Case Studies
Description: High level review of successful data sharing projects in the State of Colorado projects

Connecting Citizens and Policy – Scott Primeau

Title: Founder and Director, OpenColorado
Twitter: @scottprimeau
Title: Connecting Citizens and Policy
Description: The benefits of collaborating with citizens to make policies and how to do it.

Beyond Technology: Strategies to effectively engage citizens online – Chris Haller

Title: Founder and CEO, Urban Interactive Studio
Twitter: @challer and @EngagingCities
title: Beyond Technology: Strategies to effectively engage citizens online
description: This session will highlight key elements of effective process design to make your online civic engagement efforts a success.

Connecting the government with the governed, and the governed with each other – Jeff Mooney

Title: Partnership Development Director, SeeClickFix
Twitter: @jeffmooney and @seeclickfix
Title: Connecting the government with the governed, and the governed with each other
Description: An overview of SeeClickFix citizen and government engagement channels

Collaboration – One Piece of the Puzzle – Tammi Dorsey

Title: Manger, IT Business Services, City of Lakewood
TITLE: Collaboration – One Piece of the Puzzle
DESCR: Delivering higher levels of service while budgets are shrinking demands more collaboration within and between organizations.

Attitude…is a choice – Andy Atencio

Title: Chief Technology Officer, City of Greenwood Village
Twitter: @aatencio
Title:Attitude . . . is a choice.
Description: Exploring how attitude is a choice and how leaders need to choose to have a good attitude.

When: Friday, October 28, 2011

Where: Jefferson County Administration and Courts Facility 100 Jefferson County Parkway Golden, Colorado 80419

Hashtag: ccCO

Organized by: OpenColorado

—

The 2nd annual CityCamp Colorado was held on October 28, 2011, with about sixty participants from eighteen cities and counties around Colorado, several private IT sector leaders, members of academia, and the engaged public.

Here’s a rundown of how the day went…

Opening Keynote:

CityCamp Colorado 2011 started off with Tom Downey and Stephanie O’Malley from the City of Denver setting the stage for the day’s theme: enhancing access to government. Read more at OpenSource.com’s blog post of the event:  Tom Downey on The Power Shift Effect of Open Government and Stephanie O’Malley on Combatting Duplication with Open Government.

Ignite:

There were eight presenters in this year’s installment of CityCamp Colorado Ignite, and they covered a variety of topics.

• The Myth and Reality of Innovation – Brian Gryth
• What would happen if… – Karen Suhaka
• State of Colorado, Data Sharing – Case Studies – Barrett Blank
• Connecting Citizens and Policy – Scott Primeau
• Beyond Technology: Strategies to effectively engage citizens online – Chris Haller
• Connecting the government with the governed, and the governed with each other – Jeff Mooney
• Collaboration – One Piece of the Puzzle – Tammi Dorsey
• Attitude…is a choice – Andy Atencio

Breakout Sessions:

• Open Data Licensing
• Mobile Apps v Website Apps
• Access and Privacy
• Best Practices – Past, Present, and Future
• High Value Data
• Crowdsourcing
• Shared Service Data
• Sustainable Collaboration
• Revenue
• Streamlining Bureaucracy
• Apps for Colorado
• The Digital Divide
• Recruiting and Retaining Great Staff
• Improving Communications
• Launching a Data Catalog Using OpenColorado.org
• Promoting the Model Local Open Government Directive
• Culture Change and Code for America Effect
• The New RFP – Request for Partners
• Planning the Next CityCamp

Photos:

View and download the the CityCamp Colorado 2011 photos on the OpenColorado Flickr
account.

Notes:

Open Data Licensing (Leslie Labrecque – City of Boulder):

• Best practice is to tell people what they can do with the data
• Arvada is using the Creative Commons 0 licensing
• Some organizations (in California) are using Google Fusion tables to store data they want to share
• DataSF has a terms of use policy we can borrow language from
• OpenColorado has 50 different licenses to choose from
• We need to agree on either a standard license or standard terms of use language

Open Data Licensing (Tom Charkut – City of Lakewood):

• Disclaimer is risk mgmt. tactic in case of lawsuit.
• Think about value added versus take data and resell
• Think of data types and ways to publish data
• License type is public then fully open
• If people use it, and resell it then it creates jobs that are potentially more sustainable than the basement style app
• Creative commons license is copyright license which data is not considered copyrightable material
• Would like to at least have some terms for risk mgmt. tactic

Terms
Colorado law
Jefferson

High Value Data (Leslie Labrecque – City of Boulder):

What defines high value data? Some suggestions:

• high use data
• Data mashed with other data to make high density data
• Accurate and up-to-date data

Sunshine ranks data sets by transparency at sunshinereview.org
We need good visualization tools.
Standards can slow things down.
It would be interesting to compare commonly requested files from each of our records offices to find similarities
If you put the data out there in a non machine-readable format and someone wants to use the data they will find a way to convert it.
You can have users help determine high value data but providing a rate this data set and comments boxes.

High Value Data (Steve Moore – Larimer County):

• What is high value data?
• Who determines what value is?
• Existing data that is easy to produce. Already on web site.
• SunshineReview.org rates governments on transparency.
• Suggest a dataset feature on website.
• Ask staff what people ask for.
• Open records requests.
• Put everything out there. It’s all public data.
• What metrics are there to analyze access?
• Publish these metrics on website to see what data the public is using.
• Common way cities categorize crime which makes crime data easy to analyze and compare to other cities.
• Location data is easy to integrate into apps.
• Accurate data is important. Don’t just post once then forget.
• Comments on the data itself are useful to users. Quality of data. Update frequency.
• Think about making data available as your developing internal applications.
• Are there commonality/standards to the format/content of published data across organizations to make data easy to integrate by developers?
• The standards develop as people use the data and the most common usage emerges.
• Many times the community will convert the locally formatted data into a format usable by developers.
• Arvada: crime, building, financial data are most popular (guestimate)
• Colorado: projects related to jobs created and tax revenues.
• That which public perceives as proactive government and increased transparency.
• Opendata.socrata.com shows popularity of their datasets.

Crowdsourcing (Leslie Labrecque – City of Boulder):

Some examples of crowdsourcing tools: kickstarter.com or donorschoose (both are ways to crowdsource funding)
UserVoice is free for public engagement
Omaha uses crowdsourcing at Omaha insight
Google places is a bad example of crowdsourcing because enough people can change an address even if it’s not to the right address
Google maps is a good example of crowdsourcing such as the FourMile Canyon Fire
You can do a Google search for User Voice Case studies for examples

Sustainable Collaboration (Leslie Labrecque – City of Boulder):

How do you keep people engaged?
Listservs have been successful for many projects.
No one had done a listserv with both government and city employees on it
How could a government add to their website a way to send users information on all the areas they are interested in? RSS feeds could be used but want a way to send all subscriptions in a digest format. (Subscribers could organize into a folder on their RSS reader.)
Can you outsource essential services to the cloud to free up time?

Apps for Colorado (Michele Hovet – City of Arvada):

Do we do an app contest?  Is it really sustainable?
What about Hack-a-thon?
Look at highly requested data set – marijuana sites
What about CORA requests for all jurisdictions
How do you start with hack-a-thons?  Maps on walls?  Processes.  Set a goal for the event.
Weekend events – Open Colorado can help with $ – get food and space
Sustainability for this?  How do you keep it going.
You need awareness and education around this –
Is the data available?  Is enough data available?  Is it in the right format?
Maybe a design-a-thon to come up with API – maybe not create it?
CORA is one idea – what else?

• Give them data sets and see what they come up with?
• How do we do data standards and structures across Colorado?
  • Then it can be re-used and replicated
• Ask citizens what they want – survey them
• Work with “meet ups” – tap into entrepreneurs
• Visualization contests – create graphics
• Work with State Web provider and have them help or provide them the developed app for sustainability
• Stumble safety idea
• Map of fire stations in state and found avg resp times – created an app called will it burn – put in your address and see
• Use twitter API with enabled location – who is my rep or senator for districts
• Tech stars bunker in Boulder – throw some ideas down to them – but need data to use first
• Invite database guys – have them help too

Action item –
Success stories – NYC – PDF map and it took all site down from traffic – someone
Data sets
Idea-a=thon or sponsor infographic contest on idea from data that is available on the site.  Cash prizes for teams with best ideas by the end of the day with proto type.  Teams formed during city camp. Look at Raleigh CityCamp
Have a hack-a-thon with city camp next time.

Improving Communications (Scott Primeau, Open Colorado):

The behind this topic was “Governments write excessively (white papers, Web content, forms, instructions, etc.) and the readability and quality of govt publications is sometimes questionable. How can governments improve their communications? Plain writing; a personal, informal style; employ professional writes; create citizen review groups; etc?”

The discussion started with the idea that government needs to write more clearly and needs to tell people what they need to do, without sending them in circles.

Some ideas were:

• Use multiple channels (website, e-mail, RSS, text messages, Facebook, Twitter)
• Follow the 5-55-5-55 Rule
  • You should be able to deliver meaning in 5 seconds.
  • More meaning should be possible within 55 seconds.
  • Additional information should be available for people willing to spend 5 minutes reading.
  • In depth information should be available within about 55 minutes of reading.
• Most importantly, government needs to add value to communications before they are sent.

Adding value to communications would mean:

• Funneling communications through a central value adding layer
• Combining related communications into one message
• Incorporating standards, sharing & voting, GIS information, and other data

Often, content creators are responsible for sending their own content.  This can result in incomplete and duplicative communications.  Incorporating a value adding layer may force some content creators to give up control, but it would improve the quality of communications.

This value adding layer would be a form of PIO on steroids.

Here’s a visual of this communication reformation.

Promoting the Model Local Open Government Directive (Scott Primeau, Open Colorado):

The Model Local Open Government Directive was started during the first CityCamp Colorado and published in January 2011.  Since then, the Local Open Government Directive has been adopted in Cook County, Illinois, has been promoted in San Francisco, and has reached the Raleigh, North Carolina, city council.

The next goal for the Local Open Government Directive is local adoption in Colorado.  Achieving local adoption will need a grassroots type of effort to identify and reach out to local government leaders—directors, managers, policy makers, other non-IT supporters.  Reaching out to news outlets, community groups, and elected officials will also support the effort.

When promoting the directive, it is important to highlight the simple benefits of open government.  For example, “If your city publishes responses to open records requests, you will save resources on processing future requests.”

Finally, the Model Local Open Government Directive is just a model.  Local governments can adopt as many pieces of the directive as work for them.  If a local government wants to take a smaller step first, there is also a Declaration of Open Government Principles available to serve as a policy guiding first step.

Thanks Again to Our Sponsors

Thank you to the sponsors who CityCamp Colorado possible:

1.  The events really get started tonight, with a happy hour / GovUp brought to you by DotGov and Govloop.  Please join us at the Hornet, 76 Broadway, Denver, at 7pm.  If you haven’t already, please RSVP at http://citycampcogovup.eventbrite.com/.

2.  The camp will start with registration and breakfast from 8-9 on Friday.

Jefferson County Administration and Courts Facility
100 Jefferson County Parkway
Hearing Room 1
Golden, CO 80419

Directions are available at http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/directions.htm.

3.  We’ll have breakfast, lunch, and snacks so you don’t need to worry about travelling during the day.

4.  Check out some of the session ideas at https://citycampcolorado.uservoice.com/forums/75329-enchaning-access-to-government-.  Feel free to vote or add more.

5.  After a quick opening, Stephanie O’Malley, Deputy Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, and Tom Downey, Director of Excise and Licensing for the City and County of Denver will be speaking.

6.  Next, we’ll have the 2nd CityCamp Colorado Ignite.  We have some excellent presenters lined up and expect several inspiring ideas.  Check out last year’s CityCamp Colorado Ignite presentations at http://www.youtube.com/user/opencolorado.

7.  The rest of the day is up to you, so bring your ideas and plans for improving access to government.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow at the camp!

Sincerely,

The CityCamp Colorado Team

Please RSVP at http://citycampcogovup.eventbrite.com/.

We’ll have more updates over the next few days.

The CityCamp Colorado Team

Ms. O’Malley has an extensive career of serving the people of Denver.  Most recently as Denver Clerk and Recorder where she oversaw Denver elections and the many record keeping duties for the city and county of Denver.  As clerk, she helped to streamline the office’s processes and to eliminate backlogs and inefficiency.  Before becoming clerk, Ms. O’Malley served as the Director of Excise and Licensing under Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.  

As Deputy Chief of Staff, Ms. O’Malley is aiding Mayor Hancock to deal with the many challenges facing Denver and the metro-area.  On the 28th, Ms. O’Malley will speak to us about the future of Denver’s government and how it will affect Denver and the broader metro community.

Mr. Downey oversaw the turn around of the Colorado Children’s Museum when the future of the museum was in jeopardy.  Mr. Downey worked with the Museum’s staff, board, and community stakeholders to rebuild the institution and make its future sustainable.  Mr. Downey has also served as the Chair of the Colorado Nonprofit Association and Colorado Children’s Campaign.  He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the College of William and Mary, as well as a Juris Doctor from the Villanova School of Law.  He is also a graduate of the Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.

As Director of Excise and Licensing for Denver, Mr. Downey faces many challenges to the efficient administration of city government.   Mr. Downey will speak to us about his department’s plans to offer online services and how that effort will benefit citizens and the government.

1.  Stephanie O’Malley, Deputy Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, and Tom Downey, Director of Excise and Licensing for the City and County of Denver will be speaking at the camp.

2.  We’ll also have the 2nd CityCamp Colorado Ignite.  This hour of Ignite shows will kick off the camp with some inspiring ideas.  We encourage you to present.  It’s just 5 minutes after all.  Check out last year’s CityCamp Colorado Ignite presentations at http://www.youtube.com/user/opencolorado.   

3.  Tell us what you want to talk about at the camp.  After all, this event is about your goals and your ideas.  If there’s an issue or idea you want to discuss, post it at https://citycampcolorado.uservoice.com/forums/75329-enchaning-access-to-government-.

4. We’d like to hear more about you and why you’re coming to the camp.  Please contact us if you’d like to write a short blog post about who you are, what your job involves, why you’re coming to the camp, and what you hope to get out of the camp.

5. And, we’d like to thank our sponsors:  Red Hat/Opensource.com, Tropo, BillTrack 50/LegiNation, CornerAlliance, DotGov/Youtown, and SeeClickFix.  Without them, this event would not be possible.

We still have space left.  We are about half way to our goal of 100 campers.  So please invite friends, colleagues, and anyone interested in better government and communities to register and attend.  Please check out the camp’s website, http://opencolorado.org/citycamp-colorado/.

We look forward to seeing you at the camp and we’ll have more details soon.

Sincerely,

The CityCamp Colorado Team

In Cook County, Illinois, a community leader, a County Commissioner and the County Board President used the Local Open Government Directive as a template to create the Open Cook County Plan, which called for the release of county data.  

Cook County answered the call today with the public launch of the Cook County data catalog at data.cookcountyil.gov.  This launch represents a success for both open government and, more importantly, the citizens of the second largest county in the United States.  Cook County citizens now have ready access to data and information maintained by their local government.  Furthermore, enterprising people can now use the data to improve their community and connect with their neighbors.

The launch is also validation of the Local Open Government Directive and the idea behind the work my colleagues and I started in December of 2010.  Our goal was to create a starting point that would level the obstacles and allow local leaders to move forward with enhancing government.  

Board President Preckwinkle and Commissioner Fritchey used our work to serve their community.  Cook County represents an open government best practice of using what already exists to create significant positive change.  Rather than recreating the wheel, Cook County leaders were able to focus on their open government goals.  Once those leaders defined their goals, the Local Open Government Directive simply needed to be adapted to their needs.  

Today is a good day for open government and the citizens of Cook County because they have a more transparent county government and that transparency will hopefully lead to a more informed citizenry that can hold their government accountable.  As Thomas Jefferson said, “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

As I said, today is validation of the work of my colleagues and me, but our work is not done.  We will continue to lend aid and support to local governments as we continue to add to the open government toolbox that has grown to include the open government candidate pledge and a declaration of open government principles.  So today we raise a glass to the leaders of Cook County and tomorrow we get back to work.