New Ways for Citizen Engagement

Citizen initiatives are transforming the discourse, even the relationship between citizens and their governments. The most recent installment of evidence of this transformation came at this month's Unfinished Business Lecture at OCAD's Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) on October 20, 2010.

SeeClickFix Platform

The invited speaker of this lecture was Ben Berkowitz, CEO of SeeClickFix. I had the pleasure of attending Ben's presentation about the story behind his organization at the Collaborative Innovation Summit (BIF6) in September of this year and was happy that he could tell this story to a Toronto audience. Kudos to Michael Dila and his team at Torch Innovation for taking the initiative of inviting Ben to speak at the Unfinished Business Lecture that they sponsor. The series has been exceptional in the selection of topics and the quality of speakers.

Ben told the story of SeeClickFix. It started as an initiative to fight unwanted graffiti in his neighborhood, morphed into a web application for reporting pot holes that needed repair, grew into a tool for alerting government officials to public works needed (pot holes and others), and blossomed into a global web 2.0 platform for citizen engagement and for citizen self-organized action.

Government Evolving

What I found interesting is that what started as an application to collect information locally about unwanted graffiti evolved rapidly not only as a platform for the distributed collection of needed public works, but also as a tool for governments to cut their cost (roaming inspectors to identify needed repairs). Even when governments were short of resources to address the needs, they found open communications with citizen to provide transparency about the allocation of resources and to help dispel perception of preferential treatment of particular neighborhoods. The tactics of subscribing government officials to receive alerts generated within their jurisdiction without first asking for their permission, have increased pressure on officials to engage their citizens. Those who resist and resent the service provided by SeeClickFix are quickly identified by their citizens as non-transparent bureaucrats who are providing inadequate service. In return, the site's ability to display the status of reported issues (open, acknowledged, and closed) on a Google map is providing public works staff with a capability to publicly display their own work and performance.

Self-Organizing Citizens

Furthermore, citizen started using the platform not only for reporting issues but for peer-to-peer communications in order to organize their own actions addressing the issues reported. Examples ranged from a woman, who spray-painted the fading stripes of the pedestrian crossing on her street to Washington citizens posting what resources they can offer and organizing in small groups to help neighbors clear their driveways and sidewalks during the snow storms of the past winter. Some local governments are starting even to offer "civic points" for citizens reporting required works and organizing to help with addressing them.

Toronto's 311 Service

In the Q&A following the lecture, Peter Rose, a graduate student in OCAD's Strategic Foresight & Innovation program, asked Ben if Toronto, which has a 311 service, is using SeeClickFix. Ben mentioned having a phone conversation with someone in the Mayor's office. That person (Ryan) turned out to be among the audience. Peter then put Ryan on the spot asking him to provide the audience with an update on Toronto's government activities in that space. Ryan did not have detailed information (being away for 6 months and at the end of his term with the elections on October 25th), but he deferred to Dave Wallace, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the city, who was also attending.

Sure enough, Dave came forward and provided an interesting insight into Metro Hall's plans and activities around open government and the open data movement. One of the new applications of open data is Toronto's road closures information to help you plan your movement around the city.



What followed was a lively and informative conversation, typical of the Unfinished Business lectures. This and other open-data city activities will be the subject of another posting in the near future as I get more details, so stay tuned.

The Ups and Downs of Policy Innovation

One of the defining characteristics of change of the past decade has been without doubt the growing trend towards collaboration. Assumed by many to be driven by technological advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) this trend has reflected itself in many aspects: from an abundance of collaboration tools using voice, video, white-boarding tools, desktop sharing etc. to the more interesting appearance of collaborative production models such as open source software, open source hardware, co-creation, crowd sourcing and the many other names assigned to various aspects of this phenomenon.

Policy - The grass roots road

The policy development area has not escaped this trend. We witnessed the proliferation of grass root movements aiming at reclaiming control of at least certain elements of the policy articulation and development processes. This was the decade of Orange Revolutions and of the Obama campaign that redefined citizen engagement in the United States. One example much closer to home of such movements is Change Camp, an "unconference" organized in Toronto (Canada) in 2009 with the stated goal: "Re-imagine Government & Citizenship in the Age of Participation".

The ideas and methods of Change Camp Toronto quickly spread to other geographies and became a full-fledged movement advocating radical improvement in citizens engagement, change in how policies are developed, and building tools that enable better organization and mobilization of citizens. These grass root movements constitute a new and innovative bottom-up approach to collaboratively articulating needs, developing solutions and defining policies.

Policy - The Hierarchy Road

Meanwhile government institutions at every level continued their traditional century-old top-down planning approach to policies development, and while some efforts were made to increase consultations with constituents (the traditional town-hall meetings or the occasional costly public hearings), it can be argued that no significant systemic improvements in the participatory nature of these processes were achieved.

A Dangerous Gap

There is an inherent problem in that no one has figured out yet how to link the bottom-up approach with the top-down one. These two processes are currently not sufficiently communicating and have definitely no designs for convergence or integration. In his recent Unfinished Business lecture at the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) of the Ontario College for Arts and Design (OCAD), David Eaves summed up this problem as "digital citizenry trying to work with analog government". He warned that this gap is dangerous and cannot continue. The question is whether it will be closed peacefully or violently.

Changing Government from the Inside

Not everything is bleak. In July 2009 the Canadian federal government published a report titled "Canada@150: Towards a New Era of Collaboration & Innovation in Government". In it are the findings of a year-long internal initiative "to help build cross-cutting, horizontal networks that could unite people, issues, expertise, and departments in new and innovative ways". While this initiative provides some hope for the evolution of government, it is clearly limited to internal multi-disciplinary government collaboration.

Making Ends Meet

Still, Eaves gap analysis resonated well with me. In the context of developing a syllabus for a graduate course on Business Model & Policy Innovation, I have been discussing with Mark Kuznicki (one of the founders of Change Camp) and others how to connect these two fundamental approaches to policy development and innovation. We will have an excellent opportunity to advance our thinking on this issue in the upcoming Change Camp 2010 which is being designed in the context of the Ontario municipal elections scheduled for late October of this year.

I am looking forward to Change Camp 2010 and to participating in finding solutions and designing processes to close this gap, at least in the City of Toronto.

The not-so-secret Overlap Unconference

Business Week published on August 3rd, 2009 a guest blog by Venessa Wong titled "Inside the Secret Overlap Conference". Being an Overlap 2007 participant, I felt the Overlap concept would be best served and explained through a post I wrote immediately following my participation. That post is published on the Ning Network's Overlap site, which is accessible only to members. Although membership is open, it may be an inconvenience to have to register in order to read my writing from June 17, 2007. I am therefore providing it here for convenience:

From Overlap 07 to Overlaps

Just got back, fully charged, from Geneva Park where Overlap 07 was held over the weekend. I must admit, it exceeded all my expectations. And no, it's not the post-conference or post-vacation euphoria that often befalls people who extract themselves from their busy lives to attend an event. My enchantment has its roots in the unique blend that characterizes the concept of Overlap: An invitation only event, where a limited number of participants with a broad range of backgrounds, specialization and experience, selected carefully to have vivid minds and an overlap in their interests, are brought together in a pleasant and relaxed environment to engage in a conversation about a chosen subject.

The limitation of the number of participants provides the intimacy required for meaningful conversations and deeper understanding of the various contributions. The broad range of backgrounds and experiences available ensures that those conversations are inherently interdisciplinary and at the frontiers of each specialty. The pleasant and relaxed environment optimizes the collaborative potential of the group. The declared (initial) theme of the gathering provides an easy starting point for the various conversations, which are allowed to evolve the theme further by mutual agreement. Last but not least, the very thoughtful selection of participants guaranteed high caliber conversations (literally) every minute of Overlap 07. I believe I speak for all participants when I congratulate the organizers of Overlap 07 for the exceptional job they did.

This year's theme started with the overlap of design, business, and innovation and expanded in the process to include communities and sustainability. So what was the outcome? Here is my personal take on it. I am sure that many of the friends I made at Overlap 07 will be writing soon their own conclusions.

For me Overlap 07 is a new form of intellectual exchange, firmly anchored in a peer-to-peer model. Contrary to traditional conferences and symposiums with static structures and deterministic outcomes, Overlap 07' agile and dynamic structure results in a broad range of outcomes. Peter Evans was the first to point out the agile nature of this gathering. Like the other participants I will take out those elements of knowledge and insights that fit best my own interests and needs. Some of the knowledge and insight obtained at Overlap 07 I will use immediately in current projects; some will be the subject of collaboration with one or more members of the gathering; others will only come to bear in time or in indirect way, cross pollinating my own thinking and my future projects.

Overlap 07 was a wonderful journey full of wonderful discoveries. As Manuel Toscano pointed out, we are nomads thirsty for knowledge and wisdom. We discovered this magic place we didn't know existed. Could there be others waiting to be discovered? Well, the mystery of the recipe for this magic place is starting to unravel. Perhaps many others will try their magic wands and build many other wondrous Overlaps. I can't wait until I meet some of my fellow nomads on the next journey.

What's Happened Since?

Now two years later, I am glad to observe that many overlaps have indeed emerged. The yearly Overlap event continued in New York in 2008 and California 2009, quite a feat considering there is no organizational structure or set leadership. More interestingly, an Overlap Toronto chapter emerged few weeks after the 2007 event and has evolved since into a persistent and dynamic community in Toronto, centered around the two organizers of Overlap 2007: Michael Dila and Robin Uchida of the Torch Partnership.

Not many people realize that many of the creative initiatives and activities in Toronto are emerging from that community: OCAD's sLab (Strategic Innovations Lab), the famous Torch Lectures series, the Innovation Parkour concept, Unfinished Business project, the Wicked Brown Bag Lunch events, and the situate.us initiative to name a few.

I am certain similar activities and results were generated by Overlap participants in other geographies and areas of activity. I would love to hear from other participants about the impact it had on them and their communities.

So the "Secret Overlap Conference" is inviting you all to organize your own Overlap Unconference and start your journey of discovery. Every true "Overlapper" will be willing to help you in your efforts because the rewards are in the learning created by new overlaps and the opportunities generated by intelligent conversations with other creative minds.

Overlap has been kept "secret" on Ning, Google Groups, Facebook, Twitter (#overlap09), on a web site and who knows how many personal blogs! Take a peep at the secret. Perhaps that will inspire you to some action of your own?

Of Permaculture and the Second Renaissance

Through a tweet by my friend Mat Milan (@mmilan) I got to read Robert Paterson's interesting post "Is this the time for a New Renaissance and Reformation", in which he discusses Permaculture vs. industrial food production and extrapolates to other areas of human civilization.

While I agree with Paterson's analysis on how we got ourselves into this mess and was thrilled to learn about Permaculture as an alternative, his post triggered a number of questions in my mind, mostly about why we developed industrial production methods and if the transition to a Permaculture society is reasonably possible.

Root Causes

Let's consider the first question. Yes, human ego is still at the center of the universe and we still largely subscribe to the notion that we are masters of nature and we can form it to our will with our technology. But the continuous drive of labor division and specialization had started long before medieval times and is still going strong. One of it's roots is the consumerist culture that has become the expression of this iteration of human civilization. Another is the unchecked growth of population, which demands ever higher productivity in goods and services, and particularly in food production. This in turn leads to industrial-type agricultural and animal production with high-yield single-crop/animal multiple harvests requiring high levels of energy input (fertilizers, machinery etc.). This need for continuous productivity improvements drives the necessity for specialization in knowledge and skills.

As the population and consumerism pressures continued unabated, further productivity gains could only be achieved by expanding the level of specialization from local to national, to regional, and ultimately to global scale; hence what we refer to as Globalization. The structures that developed for this labor division and specialization were mostly hierarchical in nature with the unavoidable centers of wealth and power that are integral to hierarchies. As Ronald Wright describes in his book "A short History of Progress" these civilization structures emerged in a particular location of Earth, grew rapidly until their natural resources were exhausted and then faltered or moved to a different location.

As long as these structures operated at the local level they had a possibility to move to a different location. As the structures became global in scope they had less and less options to relocate. hence the current global crisis. The central hierarchical system is reaching its limits because it cannot consolidate to less than one center!

The Emerging New Structures

As the old system reaches it limits a new system with a fundamentally different structure must emerge, which most probably will not be hierarchical. Recent events seem to confirm this trend: traditional global systems are failing while decentralized, peer-to-peer, and local systems seem to succeed overnight: Skype, Twitter, Craig's List, micro financing, eat local, open source concepts, creative commons, community initiatives etc.

The catalyst in this transformation seems to be the Internet. At the recent Toronto Planners Unite 2009 event Mark Earls author of "Herd" spoke about the crucial role of copying in human behavior. Copying requires seeing what's to be copied; and if nothing else, the Internet is making all sorts of new ideas and initiatives visible to a global audience. The flock behavior can only accelerate and the importance of communities will explode.

Values Convergence

Interestingly, the values embodied in these emerging new structures seem to be converging. In a recent Twitter conversation with Alexander Osterwalder, Peter Jones and others about how a sustainable business model can be defined, we converged that it is the sustainable value that an organization provides to its "stakeholders, the community at large, and the environment". I was pleasantly surprised while reading about Permaculture to find out that its core values are "Earthcare, Peoplecare, and Fairshare". Do you recognize a pattern?

We could be at the cusp of a major transformational step in our evolution, which we usually call a revolution. The changes coming are going to be radical and difficult, possibly violent. I hope they will lead to a New Renaissance and Reformation!

Google Portrait - under the internet magnifying glass

On January 7th, 2009 the french magazine Le Tigre published what it termed the first Google portrait of Marc L. a pseudonym for a randomly selected 29 years old young man. Using information publicly available on the internet and common sense an amazingly accurate and detailed profile of that person was constructed. The magazine wanted to illustrate the dangers of collating personal information spread all over the web.

The french daily Le Monde picked up the story on January 17th, giving the subject the pseudonym Jule. The young man was told about the article by a friend. He initially did not take it seriously, but once he started reading, he was shocked. There were so many personal and even intimate details (his travels, his love affairs, his friends etc.) that he contacted Le Tigre and asked that the article be removed. Legal opinion told him that there wasn't much to achieve through courts, as all information was from public sources. Le Tigre sanitized the web-based article by anonymizing further details other than the name, but for the paper based article not much could be done. But even after the sanitizing the article makes for interesting reading (if you read French or like Google translation).

Some juicy extracts

Here is the English translation of a short section of the lengthy article, addressed in letter style to the subject:
"Let's get back to you. You are single and heterosexual (Facebook). In spring of 2008 you had an affair with Clauda R***, who works at the French-Austrian Culural Centre in Bordeaux (I did not find her immediately because the character ü has to be spelled ue for Google). In any case I can confirm, she is charming, small breasts, short hair, nice legs. You give us the address of her parents, V*** Boulevard in Bordeaux. (...) Please note that I have her work telephone number (opening for a pedagogic assistant position at the Cultural Center; she works in recruitment)."

What an innocent message reply can do

Another section is revealing of how easy personal information on Facebook is released. The reporter accumulating the profile created a fake ID on Facebook and asked to become friends with Marc or Jule. The young man was suspicious and did not accept. However, he replied with a message "Hi Who are you? Regards, Marc". The reporter was about to reply with some invented story, when Facebook alerted him that when he sends a message to someone on Facebook they gain access to his list of friends, his core, work and education information for a month. The reporter realized he did not even need to reply and gained access to Marc's information!

Morale of the story

As The Foush recently recommended, you should do self audits on the internet, not only for the sake of verifying correctness or reputation management, but more importantly from a security perspective. Look at all information (text, pictures, videos, tags by third parties) and ask yourself, what can a third party do with it. Clean up where possible, although with more and more sites including in their agreements (yes, those you don't read and just click "accept"), "perpetual and irrevocable" rights to anything you post on them it is becoming increasingly difficult to remove your information.

The 27 European CNIL (Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés) are debating some safeguards including imposing guidelines enabling web users to erase their personal information when they so desire. My take: even if legislated, it's going to be a long up-hill battle, as information moves across systems and jurisdictions globally. That's not even taking into consideration the drooling marketeers, organized crime, and intelligence services all over the world.

Arguably, you always give up some privacy when you join a community, but the surrender of private information that we're witnessing is a "strange phenomenon of shared exhibitionism and mutual narcissim" as Alex Türk, president of the French CNIL puts it in Le Monde. So, where to draw the line when you are part of multiple global communities, when public spaces are increasingly privatized, and private spaces are shrinking continuously?

Openness and the Agile Learning

I recently blogged about moving from "micro-blogging to micro-learning". Since then I have come to think about this process as Agile Learning. Through a tweet on Twitter today I found new contributions to the analysis of deep changes that are going to hit the education sector.

It is a slide deck by David Wiley of the Department for Instructional Psychology and Technology at the Brigham Young University. In his presentation titled "Openness and the Disaggregated Future of Education" Wiley presents a comparison between the current educational system characteristics and those of the open connected world of today.

Measuring against six core descriptors:

• Digital
• Mobile
• Connected
• Personal
• Creating
• Open
  

Wiley highlights the shortcomings of the current education system including those of e-learning!

It became clear to me that any method that allows agile learning will be quickly embraced by many people, particularly the millennial or Net generation whether they consciously understand the deficiencies of the current educational model or not. They just intuitively sense that it is a more efficient way for them to learn what they are most interested in learning.

Highly recommended reading if you wish to understand why the Agile Learning is emerging. Click here to see the full slide deck.