Overview:

Denver City Councilwoman Robin Kniech excited the crowd to start the day: “We still have a digital divide. How do we reach the kinds of citizens who are very thoughtful, very dedicated, but not the kind of everyday user that might be using the Internet? Where does technology come in and how can it help them engage with government? What are we doing to challenge ourselves?”  

Then, Brian Gryth from OpenColorado and Jason Lally from PlaceMatters talked about the future of government innovation and sustainable communities.

Former Denver CIO Chuck Fredrick talked about expanding Denver’s online services: “eDenver: Doing business with Denver easier, electronically, making government accessible to our citizens anytime, anywhere. A call to action for us—our investments in the ways our citizens want to interact with us is going to increase.”

Denver’s Business Process Improvement Manager, Scotty Martin, shares the business perspective on innovation.

Government’s sharing data creates many opportunities for transparency, collaboration, community building, and economic development. There have been many papers, articles, blogs, and opinions that illustrate the benefits of open data.

Still, I am always excited when I see the benefits of open data in my own life. In this case, my excitement came from using Denver’s Crime Map while looking for a new house. I was getting ready to make an offer on a house, so I wanted to look up information about the neighborhood. Crime was one of the key pieces I wanted to check.

Here’s what I found. First, crime near my current home:

Next, crime near the new house I was looking at:

When I scrolled over a bubble, I could see the types of crimes committed at an address or location. I could click the bubble for more details.

Great! Now I can compare the crime in different areas. In this case, it looks like there was less crime in the new spot. But that’s what happens when you live near Colfax in Denver. By the way, watch out when you park at a light rail station.

This is just one of many opportunities and benefits that can come from a city sharing its data. And OpenColorado is very happy to have Denver sharing its data through our data catalog.

We chose the CKAN platform for our data catalog because it provides a lot of flexibility and very low cost. In the past, the catalog only linked to data sets that a jurisdiction hosted.

Supporting data uploads which will make it much simpler for smaller organizations to participate.  At the present time we have 100GB of storage available and individual file uploads can be up to 50MB. For perspective, the City and County of Denver’s entire catalog is about 2GB, so we have a lot of storage capacity.

We’re excited to expand this data sharing opportunity to our existing partners and groups that will join in the future. This is a significant step toward expanding transparency and supporting economic opportunity through data-driven innovation.

Attendee stats:
Over 130 attendees – 104 attended their first CityCamp
91 attendees from government organizations
45 attendees from the City & County of Denver
11 attendees from Boulder (city or county)
7 attendees from Arvada
6 attendees from the State of Colorado
3 federal government attendee

46 attendees from private organizations

94 organizations were represented
32 government organizations
62 private organizations

We were privileged to have attendees from all around the country:

Remarks from the organizers, courtesy of GovGirl, Kristy Fifelski:

Denver8 News Coverage:
Please keep an eye on Denver8 news for some coverage of CityCamp Colorado:
Nov. 17 at 1:30 PM
Nov. 20 at 5:30 PM
Nov. 24 at 2:00 PM
Nov. 24 at 9:30 PM
Dec. 1 at 8:00 PM

And, we’ll have more updates soon.

CityCamp Colorado 2012 Budget:

Thank you again to all of our sponsors:

This event, the third annual CityCamp Colorado, will again bring together community leaders, government employees, technology experts, and citizens to share ideas to enhance government transparency, citizen participation, and accountability. The overall goal is to create solutions to support more informed, healthy, and livable communities. Over 150 people are registered to attend CityCamp Colorado, which will be held in the Atrium of Denver’s Wellington E. Webb Building.

The Webb Atrium is a wide open public space, which will make for an engaging and accessible camp. “The Webb Atrium will give both attendees and the public a glimpse into civic innovation in Colorado” OpenColorado President Brian Gryth said.

Starting at 8:30 AM, we will host breakfast for Denver Startup Week. At 9:00 AM, we will kick the day off with coffee and inspiration with Ignite CityCamp Colorado. The Ignite will celebrate ideas and innovations that are transforming our communities. We have seven presenters who will provide thought fuel for our day. Denver Councilwoman Robin Kniech and Chuck Fredrick, the City of Denver Chief Information Officer will then take the stage to make remarks about the future of Denver government.

At 10:30, Brian Gryth, OpenColorado Preseident, and Jason Lally, the Leader of Colorado Code for Communities, will announce the 2012 Roadmap: an aggressive plan to kick start a transformation of Colorado government.
We will also have demonstrations from several groups showing off civic websites and mobile applications that are improving Colorado communities.

More information about the event is at opencolorado.org/citycamp-colorado/.

Michele’s forward thinking leadership style and openness to different approaches empowered her staff to create cutting edge solutions to persistent problems. It allowed her staff to create an open source content management software, call Xpress CMS. Xpress is a tool that is sharable, flexible, social, transparent, secure and scalable. Arvada also aims to deploy the system to other communities. The City of Boulder will be the first partner and plans to launch Xpress CMS in early 2013.

Michele’s openness to new thinking also allowed Sean Hudson to move forward with building a platform that has become a community asset for all of Colorado. Thus, the idea of OpenColorado was born and in September of 2009 Michele and Sean along with Brian Gryth and Scott Primeau founded OpenColorado. Since that time our organization has grown and brought innovation to life. Michele’s foresight and leadership were invaluable to making our efforts possible.

The OpenColorado leadership team is happy to congratulate Michele Hovet for this awesome honor that is so richly deserved.

The event is being presented by PlaceMatters with support from the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.  For 36 hours, event participants will hack on applications that will improve the lives of people living, working and playing in the Denver region.

The OpenColorado data catalog provides a wide variety of regional data for the event and we are looking forward to seeing the ideas that are implemented.

There are a few spaces left so sign up now if you want to participate.

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: