….::: VOX POPULI :::….

NYC 311 Gets Skyped, Twittified!

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government, Twitter, VoIP

I’ve seen Tweets all morning coming out of the Personal Democracy Forum Conference about New York City’s 311 service. Looks like NYC 311, in addition to being on the web, is now also on Skype (user name is nyc311) and on Twitter.

I’m following @311NYC on Twitter now, and I’ve also added it to my Skype contacts (not sure yet if they support voice/video calls, or chat).

Now, if they’d open up their 311 service via an API (like Washington DC is doing), then they’d be cooking with gas. Good stuff! Hope to see more of this.

Building an IM Bot for the NY Senate OpenLeg API

Posted by Mark Headd under Development Tools, Open Government, Open source

The NY Senate made an exciting announcement today - a host of new open source software and services are being deployed to enhance transparency in what the Senate does.

This is big news, and a major tip of the hat goes to the NY Senate CIO, Andrew Hoppin, and his staff. They are doing amazing work in advancing transparency in the Senate - an organization that has traditionally been as closed as closed can get.

The announcement by the NY Senate has many different components, but the one I find most exciting right out of the gate is the release of an API to query the Senate bill tracking system. I’ve had an idea for a while now to do an Instant Messaging (IM) application that would let someone query the status of a bill, and get a bill summary, using an IM client.

Because the bill tracking system is now exposed via an API, building this kind of application is easy — so I went ahead and did it. Alltogether it took about 2 hours to build, test and deploy.

The code for my sample application can be downloaded here.

You can test this application out by adding opensenate@bot.im to your Jabber IM client (Google chat will work just fine). If you send an IM with a Senate Bill number (e.g., S2111) you will get a response with the bill sponsor, summary and the last action taken on the bill.

Here is what I used to build this application:

• The NY Senate Open Leg Service API (note - at the time of this writing, the API documentation appears to be offline. Hope this is restored soon.)
• PHP (however, since we’re justing hitting a REST API using HTTP, there are a host of different languages that will do).
• The IMified platform - more on IMified here.
• A simple PHP class for building IM applications - more on this class, and a primer on building IM apps here.

That’s it! Its admittedly simple, and there is no real error handling in the app just yet, but if you give it a live bill number it works just fine. I’ll probably do some more work to build this example app out as the Open Leg Service API matures.

Now you can get the status of a bill and summary information quickly and easily using an IM client. This is just a quick example of what can be done when an organization like the NY Senate has forward thinking IT leadership, that embraces open standards, open source and open information.

UPDATE: Twitter support added to NY Senate Bill Status Bot.

Because of some awesome new functionality added to the IMified platform, I’ve added Twitter support for the NY Senate bot. Now you can get the bill sponsor and bill status by sending the bill ID (e.g., S2111) to @opensenate.

@opensenate S2111

I’ve also updated the code sample provided above to reflect the changes to the IMified API. This significantly enhances the usefulness of the application, and allows you to turn inquiry into advocacy (can you say Retweet!). I’ll be writing more about this shortly but for now I am working on some minor tweaks to the sample bot.

Enjoy!

My Letter to Governor Markell

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

This is going out today via snail mail.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to request a list of the names, titles and contact information of the personnel currently employed in the Office of the Governor.

I have attempted to locate this information on the State’s web portal (http://delaware.gov) and in the Online State Telephone Directory (http://phonedirectory.delaware.gov/). This information does not appear to be available through these, or any other online resource. However, if I am mistaken, and this information is available through an online resource, I would appreciate if you could direct me to the appropriate State web site.

In lieu of providing this information to me in written form, should you wish to simply publish this information to the official State web site of the Governor’s office (http://governor.delaware.gov/) that would be acceptable.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Mark J. Headd

I never received any response to the numerous requests for this information sent in via the hugely unhelpful web form on the Governor’s web site. We’ll see if I have any luck with this approach…

Delaware Government on YouTube

Posted by Mark Headd under News, Open Government

I think it’s great the Delaware Government has an official channel on YouTube, I just can’t find anything to watch on it.

The most obvious omission from the Delaware Government YouTube Channel seems to be any coverage of official government business (unless I’m missing something). I want to see committee meetings, legislative and executive hearings, courtroom drama, etc.

Delaware should take a hint from New York, where the State Senate has launched a significantly more advanced site devoted to live video streaming of Senate sessions and a beefy library of committee hearings and other important content. Hell, even the recent coup in the Senate, which was orchestrated by Republicans and two breakaway Democrats, was streamed live and available for viewing later.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s nice that Delaware government has its toe in the water on video coverage of state government - now its time to jump in with both feet.

Reluctant Transparency

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

The Joint Finance Committee of the Delaware General Assembly got a free pass this week from the new open meeting requirements imposed by HB 1 courtesy of Governor Jack Markell:

“The Joint Finance Committee convened for about four hours after dinner Wednesday, discussing the proposed 8 percent pay cuts for state workers without reaching a resolution.”

“With House Bill 1, the open-government legislation, still unsigned by Gov. Jack Markell after sitting on his desk for more than a week, the committee held all discussions Wednesday in private meetings. At one point, members even kicked out their staff and representatives from the governor’s office. Markell said he will sign HB 1 at 2 p.m. Friday.”

The interesting thing about the announcement of when the bill will be signed is that it works out to be 9 days after it was delivered to the Governor’s office (previous reports have stated that the bill was delivered to the Governor’s office last Wednesday, June 3rd). Under the Delaware Constitution, any bill delivered to the Governor and not vetoed becomes law within 10 days of delivery (excluding Sundays):

If any bill shall not be returned by the Governor within ten days, Sundays excepted, after it shall have been presented to him or her, the same shall be a law in like manner as if he or she had signed it…

Friday, June 12th, is the absolute latest point at which the Governor can sign this bill without it becoming law despite him. A cynical person could very easily jump to the conclusion that the fix was in early on this, and that there was never any intention of signing this bill quickly in order to give the JFC every last second of time they could to close out the public from their discussions.

Governor Markell seems to be ushering in a new era of “reluctant transparency” in Delaware. One wonders what he will drag his feet on next.

Measuring Gov 2.0 Performance

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government, Standards, Twitter

If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

- Lord Kelvin

There is a lot of exciting news lately coming from state and local governments about innovative new uses for social networking and Gov 2.0 tools. Even the smallest burgs and hamlets in our fair nation are on Twitter, and even the lowliest first-term legislator has a Facebook page - sometimes before they have an office assignment.

But before governments go too far down the road of building Gov 2.0 tools into their business processes, it may be worth exploring if conventional performance measures are adequate to measure if (and by how much) Gov 2.0 tools are improving the job being done by governments. As Lord Kelvin said - “To measure is to know.”

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s many governments implemented new e-Government services to their citizens, and reorganized service delivery around Internet-based functionality. Government performance measures were infused with terms like unique hits, click-troughs and the like to more adequately track performance through this new channel.

Does the advent of Gov 2.0 and the increased use social networking tools warrant a re-examination of the ways that governments evaluate how good a job they are doing? How do you measure customer satisfaction when a government interacts with a citizen via Twitter, or leaves a comment on a blog or Facebook page?

More importantly, how do government measure (and capture) the cost savings that may be brought about by using social networking tools, and approaches like “Wiki-Government“?

Some things to think about as Gov 2.0 gets more mature, and more widely used.

Silly Games Stall Transparency in Delaware

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

Last week, open government advocates in Delaware were overjoyed at the passage of House Bill 1, which would subject the Delaware General Assembly to the requirements of Delaware’s open meeting laws. Although the bill was passed past week, it has yet to be signed into law by Governor Jack Markell.

At the time, I found it a bit odd that the Governor’s legal counsel mentioned a need to “review the bill.” Consideration of this bill by the Delaware State Senate was well known in advance, as the Senate Majority Leader announced plans to take the bill up when the General Assembly returned from its most recent recess. Since passage seemed fairly likely, and since signing this bill would be a major feather in the cap of the new Governor (who has promised to increase the transparency of Delaware government) I wondered what stopped the Governor’s office from reviewing the bill in the weeks leading up to the vote?

This morning, the Joint Finance Committee of the General Assembly acted in defiance of the spirit of HB 1 and closed its doors to outsiders. In the words of JFC Co-chair Representative Dennis P. Williams:

“It’s not the law.”

Even more galling, we now find out that the bill has not yet even been sent to the Governor:

The governor’s spokesman Joe Rogalsky said last week the legislation had not yet been sent to the governor’s office by the Legislature, a procedural process that moves the bill from one branch to another. Rogalsky said after the governor’s legal counsel reviewed the bill this week, Markell would sign it.

And now, the comments by the Governor’s office last week become much more clear. When the Governor’s staff said they needed to “review the bill” they were telling the members of the JFC that they had a limited window of time to get their business done in secret before the Governor have no choice but to sign the bill (he has 10 days following the delivery of the bill to his office). The members of the JFC heard this message loud and clear, and it seems pretty obvious that the codification of HB 1 will have to wait until the people’s business is done (once again) in secret.

If Governor Markell really and truly cares about transparency in Delaware Government, he should immediately and publicly condemn the actions of the General Assembly in general, and the JFC in particular. He should also demand that the General Assembly send HB 1 to his office for immediate signature.

Enough of these silly games and insider baseball in Dover. Its time for real transparency in Delaware state government.

Odd Tweet of the Day Award

Posted by Mark Headd under Twitter

Although it seems a bit early to be handing out an award that could cover the entire day (and it’s only 9:30 AM EST), the Odd Tweet of the Day Award goes to:

@femainfocus

I have know idea what this Tweet means, and suspect it was posted in error - perhaps someone at FEMA though they were typing into their IM client.

It’s the Little Things

Posted by Mark Headd under Development Tools

OK, I’ll admit it. I’ve said some things about Twilio in the past.

To be honest, initially I viewed Twilio as a low-rent competitor to VoiceXML and the family of W3C languages designed to support telephony applications. However, although I still harbor some doubts about Twilio, my attitude is changing - largely based on some of the features that Twilio now offers.

Voice Transcription:

Now this is pretty boss. The Twilio XML Markup language (TwiML for short) not only allows developers to make a recording of what a caller says (pretty basic functionality that’s been in VoiceXML since 1.0), it also lets you have this recording transcribed (up to 2 minutes of speech). Now this is an exciting feature, and although this is a paid feature it is one that I will be trying out in the near future.

Geographic Information:

When a call comes into your app, Twilio attempts to look up geographic data based on the ANI and DNIS used. This allows developers to have access to to city, state and zip of the calling and called party. Pretty sweet!

Yes its the little things like these that are making Twilio more attractive, and more likely to be used in an upcoming project. Lets hope some of the big VoiceXML hosting providers stand up and take notice, and start to offer similar features to developers.

Automatic for the People

Posted by Mark Headd under News, Twitter

Like lots of others, I think its worth noting San Francisco’s innovative use of Twitter. San Francisco residents can now use Twitter to send a message to an operator at the City’s 311 call center and receive a Tweet back.

This is exactly the type of interactive use of Twitter by governments I had in mind when I wrote about Twitter 2.0 for the public sector a few months ago. Still, now that I see an actual use of Twitter by a government to interact with citizens, I’m wondering if this approach can be improved upon, to make it more efficient for governments and still user friendly for citizens.

While San Francisco’s use of Twitter is indeed convenient for citizens, it has many of the same cost implications for government. Tweets to 311 operators must still be processed “manually” - someone has to read the content of a Tweet (even if its prefiltered based on message content) and assign a follow up action, or respond directly if its been assigned to them. And even though San Francisco is reportedly using the very interesting Twitter-CRM product CoTweet to make this process more efficient, I wonder if there isn’t a better way to do this.

I think this would be a perfect scenario to deploy an interactive IM/SMS BOT. Citizens could interact with an application to report common 311 service requests - potholes, traffic-light outages, abandoned vehicles, etc. As long as certain keywords / hashtags are used in the message content (something that probably needs to be done if Twitter is used instead anyway) it should be pretty easy to process reliably in an automatic way. Moreover, using an IM/SMS BOT would allow the process to have multiple steps, where the application and the citizen could exchange information successively.

For example, a citizen using a BOT to report a traffic signal outage could receive a an automated response asking if there are any noticeable power outages in the vicinity, or telling them to send a follow up message when the repair crew arrives (to audit response times). The possibilities are enormous.

Requests that could not be processed automatically could be routed to a live operator and handled the traditional way. This would more efficiently allocate the finite resource of 311 operators — human operators would only intervene in the processing of 311 service requests when they could not be processed automatically.

Here’s hoping that someday very soon, we’ll see a government go “automatic for the people” with 311 service requests.