….::: VOX POPULI :::….

Sunlight Creeps In…

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about a now infamous land deal in Delaware between the state’s Department of Transportation and a close personal friend of the former governor, Ruth Ann Minner.

Following a series of scathing newspaper articles and editorials about the deal, the current Administration began constructing new regulations to govern the long-term lease of public lands by the Department of Transportation.

My post was written primarily in reaction to comments made by the current Secretary of Transportation (who, by the way, was the Secretary under the former governor when the sweetheart deal was granted) which suggested that she did not want to see an outside body review potential lease deals.

At the time, I suggested that this was a defining moment for the current Governor, who campaigned on opening up state government to more scrutiny and enhancing transparency:

I would suggest that this is a litmus test moment for Governor Jack Markell on transparency. It’s time for him to put his actions where his rhetoric has been.

Governor Markell should immediately direct DelDOT to develop a system for leasing public land for private development that is open and accountable. The current system used by DEDO should be emulated with an emphasis on public review of proposed leases with an opportunity for Delaware citizens to access details of proposed leases and raise questions.

In reviewing the proposed regulation submitted by the Department of Transportation in the wake of this scandal, I’m pleased to see that a some public review mechanisms have been included, despite the earlier comments of the Transportation Secretary. It’s also somewhat reassuring to see that the responsibility for determining if a below-market value lease of publicly owned land is approved rests with an oversight body - the state’s Council on Development Finance.

Having said that, there is room for improvement. For one, I can’t figure out what decade this regulation was written for.

The State of Delaware has spent millions on an infrastructure for publishing and managing state agency web sites. The State (including the Office of the Governor itself) has devoted countless hours to using social media platforms, including a massive overhaul of the State’s web site to highlight the social network accounts of state agencies.

And yet, nowhere in the proposed regulations does the word “Internet” appear. Or the word “website.” The regulations would require only that the Department of Transportation advertise a proposed lease of public land at a below-market rate in a “newspaper of general circulation in the county in which the parcel is located.” How 1975 is that?

It’s worth noting that the current Governor campaigned on his record as a technology executive, and his past participation in efforts to modernize the state’s IT workforce. It seems somewhat ironic then that this proposed regulation (written in concert with the Governor’s own legal counsel) could — from a technology perspective — easily have been written for a time when the Governor was in high school.

I guess I’m just curious why Twitter is appropriate for telling Delaware citizens to conserve water, but not to inform people of a potential lease opportunity of public lands.

Sunlight is indeed creeping into Delaware Government. Very, very slowly…

How Not to do a State Website Makeover

Posted by Mark Headd under News, Open Government

The Twitters have been abuzz lately with news of lots of state government websites being updated. California, Texas and Massachusetts have all made dramatic changes to their state websites to better serve citizens.

One recent state website overhaul was of particular interest to me - that of my current state of Delaware.

Before I offer my critique and tell you what I like and don’t like about the new Delaware.gov website, I should say that my opinion is somewhat biased. I was the Director of the Delaware Government Information Center during a previous Administration and the project manager of the effort to overhaul the old Gov 1.0 state web site and create a new citizen-focused web portal. The project I oversaw resulted in the first Delaware state web site to use the “delaware.gov” domain name.

The project I worked on was difficult - it took a lot of effort to get buy-in from agencies and agreement from them to relinquish some of the control they had over their old stovepiped web sites and work to incorporate their information into a centralized portal. For it’s time, it was a dramatic step forward and the state received national recognition for its efforts. The project had strong support from almost every elected official in the state. In particular, the effort was spearheaded by then State Treasurer Jack Markell - the man who is now Governor.

It should come as no surprise then that I have strong feelings about how the Delaware web site is designed, and how well it serves the citizens of Delaware. In my opinion, the new site design has a number of issues, and lags far behind some of the advances being adopted in other states.

Lack of Mobility and Accessibility

Right of the bat, the site runs into issues with mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone. How ironic is it that there is a graphic in the site header of a woman looking into a mobile device…

The iframes that occupy most of the real estate on the new site cause all sorts of problems with these devices, and the state should have explored other ways of displaying the information in these frames if it deemed it critical. Sadly, that is not the only issue caused by the use of iframes on the site.

When you use the site’s translation feature (located at the very bottom), you see that most of the content in these iframes resists translation to different languages, making it useless to non-English speakers. This problem is particularly acute because the non-translatable portions occupy such a large percentage of the real estate on the main page. What is the state trying to say here? Our social media content is so important we need to use the majority of our homepage to display it, but pay no mind if you speak Spanish?

Additionally, the site has some basic accessibility issues that can cause problems for people with disabilities. These issues are easy to fix, and its kind of embarassing that they were overlooked before the changes went live.

It’s troubling to see Delaware take steps backward in disability access and language translation on its official state web site.

Social Media or Propaganda

The social media content that is so prominently displayed on the main page is intrusive and crowds out much of the useful content. People use a state web site because they have a transaction they need to conduct, or information they need to find. There is a shockingly small amount of real estate devoted to things that typically bring most people to a government web site (and that’s the opinion of a social media fan).

In addition, all of the social media content that occupies the bulk of the site’s main page looks to be of the propaganda variety. Most of it looks to be recycled RSS feeds from agencies. (Note to other governments that may be watching, this is how not to do engagement via social networking.)

Show me the Data!

When I look at the new Texas and California web sites, here’s what I like. Both have ample links to their social media directories, but they don’t shove it down your throat like Delaware does - implicit recognition that people typically come to a government web site because they have a problem or need to conduct a transaction with government.

In addition, both have prominently displayed links to their government data catalogs. Both Texas and California recognize that a central element of Gov 2.0 websites is data.

It’s somewhat alarming to see Delaware falling so far behind this trend that is being embraced in so many other parts of the country. A lot of effort and time went into the redesign of the delaware.gov site and not a single open data set is to be found anywhere.

Sad.

Walking the Talk on Government Transparency

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

I pledge that my administration will be more transparent and accountable than any that have come before.
– Delaware Governor Jack Markell, January 21, 2009

When he assumed office in January 2009, Governor Jack Markell made a strong pledge to make Delaware government more open an accountable.

There are those (myself included) who are still waiting for concrete evidence of the Governor’s commitment to transparency and openness in state government. Some would argue that the Governor has not yet had enough time, nor been presented with the right opportunity to institute really meaningful change that dramatically changes the way state business gets done.

That argument (as lame as it is) goes out the window with reports recently by the Delaware News Journal of a sweetheart real estate lease deal provided to one of the “friends” of the former Governor, Ruth Ann Minner.

The details of the deal provided to the former Governor’s friend and supporter are pretty ridiculous, and were obviously never intended to be scrutinized by outsiders or the public. That’s one of the reasons why the deal was allowed to happen in the first place – far too many people including the former Governor, and the current Transportation Secretary (who was also Transportation Secretary under the former governor) have essentially been allowed to plead ignorance of the deal.

“I did know about it,” [Transportation Secretary] Wicks said. “I was not part of any communications that went a long with it. I was not part of any details or execute it.”

In a story today, the Transportation Secretary – Carol Ann Wicks – stated that her Department will review its processes for leasing land for economic development purposes, but will not open the process of leasing land to outside review.

“What the mechanism is, I don’t know yet,” Wicks said. But she said DelDOT will make sure there are “enough checks and balances in place.”

Other state agencies do it differently. The State’s Economic Development Office (DEDO) employs a system whereby economic development assistance is reviewed by an outside body (the Council on Development Finance) whose meetings are open to the public and whose minutes are open to review.

I’m not suggesting that process used by DEDO is perfect, or that it could not be improved upon (it certainly could), but it is a world apart from the system used by DelDOT, where details of hugely lucrative deals or known to only a few staffers and there is no outside scrutiny or accountability.

I would suggest that this is a litmus test moment for Governor Jack Markell on transparency. It’s time for him to put his actions where his rhetoric has been.

Governor Markell should immediately direct DelDOT to develop a system for leasing public land for private development that is open and accountable. The current system used by DEDO should be emulated with an emphasis on public review of proposed leases with an opportunity for Delaware citizens to access details of proposed leases and raise questions.

A failure to do this will most likely mean more sweetheart deals for political insiders somewhere down the road. Hopefully there is enough political courage in the Governor’s office to prevent this from happening. We’ll see…

A Governor Tweets: Propaganda or Engagement?

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government, Twitter

According to the one and only tweet in his account, Delaware Governor Jack Markell will “officially” join the Twitterverse at an upcoming event on February 3rd.

Although I imagine the public relations potential of Governor Markell joining the scores of other federal, state and local officials on Twitter is not lost on his staff, if the Governor is serious about embracing Twitter it could open up a new way for citizens to engage and communicate with him.

So, as the Governor prepares to “activate” his Twitter account, it makes sense for the citizens and taxpayers he serves in Delaware (particularity those of us that tweet) to ask whether this will mean propaganda or engagement.

WonderTwit powers, activate!

The Governor’s first tweet doesn’t bode well (in my mind anyway) for those of us eager to see his new account used to engage citizens and encourage communication with taxpayers.

I find the notion of “launching” a Twitter account that has already been created a bit odd. There is no way that I am aware of to create an “inactive” Twitter account – inactive accounts are those that Twitter considers abandoned.

By virtue of having a Twitter profile, the Governor’s account is indeed active. He could send tweets from it now, and could have sent tweets from it starting on the date it was first activated - June 19th, 2009 - a full 228 days prior to the date of this post.

However, even if the Governor has chosen not to tweet since last June, because his account is active anyone that uses Twitter can send a message directly to him by formatting a Tweet as a @reply (technically referred to as a “@mention” by Twitter).

I did this very thing not too long ago, sending a link I hoped the Governor would read before “officially” joining the Twitterverse.

Still waiting on a response…

Twitter engagement and communication

The @mention feature of Twitter is not one that can be turned off. Everyone has the ability to view tweets that @mention them by simply going to the proper tab on their Twitter home page (its worth noting that any one of the many Twitter clients can make checking, organizing and responding to @mentions quite easy).

It is this feature that has attracted people (like myself) interested in leveraging Twitter as a way to send messages directly to elected officials.

In early 2009, I develop a service called Hear Me Say This which uses IVR technology with Twitter to allow people to send recorded messages to members of Congress. Other people have taken this same approach to send messages directly to elected officials on Twitter using @mentions.

The critical issue for any elected official that uses Twitter is how they will handle tweets that @mention them. They are a potentially useful tool for citizens and activists because they can be sent directly to the official who owns the account (unless that official wants to fess up that someone is ghost tweeting for them). They can also be used to develop support for a cause or issue because friends and followers can retweet status messages (including those that @mention others).

Some elected officials may bank on the fact that responding directly to @mentions from their constituents can be portrayed as being unreasonable burdensome. One can certainly understand why the Governors of California or Michigan (both of whom are prolific tweeters) might be able to get away with not reposing to @mentions (for the record, I don’t know that they do).

However, most Delawareans have different expectations about personal interactions with their elected officials.

Only in Delaware…

Delaware’s small size, concentrated population and cordial political environment come together to create an atmosphere where it is not uncommon to bump into an elected official on the street, or at the gym, or in a store and engage them in a conversation.

Its not uncommon to bump into a Governor, a U.S. Senator or a Member of Congress while out for a jog (I once passed Congressman Mike Castle running at a park near my house), at the gym (I had a nice conversation with Senator Tom Carper between reps at the YMCA about the health care bill several weeks back) or at a gas station (I once stood in line with Joe Biden at a Greenville gas station).

Delaware isn’t a place where elected officials can get away with being insulated from citizens by surrounding themselves with an entourage or a group of handlers. People here aren’t surprised when they run into an elected official at the gas station or the corner store, and I think many expect to be able to interact with them.

So its only logical to ask whether this same type of interaction will work when Governor Markell officially “launches” his Twitter account.

It can work if the Governor decides (as many forward thinking politicians on Twitter already have) that using social networking services like Twitter will provide new opportunities for transparency and citizen contact.

Will the Governor respond to the following when he attends the upcoming Delaware Tweetup on February 3rd:

• Does he intend to use his Twitter account personally (even if he isn’t the exclusive user of the account) as a way to make his administration more open, transparent and receptive to citizen communication?
• Will he commit to responding to Twitter @mentions that appear to be from legitimate Twitter users, or from Delawareans that have an actual question, problem or complaint?

Whether or not Delaware’s somewhat unique brand of political interaction will work when our Governor starts tweeting is entirely up to him, and how he decides to use his newly “activated” Twitter account.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the event on February 3rd, but I sure would appreciate a response to my tweet.

Delaware Checkbook a Step Backwards for Transparency

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

Earlier this year, the State of Delaware added a new section to its official website - the State of Delaware Online Checkbook.

If you like this website then you can probably hear “I Want it That Way” playing in the background as you vigilantly prepare your desktop PC for the onset of Y2K. But while you’ve been jamming to the Backstreet Boys and getting ready to party like its 1999, the e-Government movement has been chugging right along.

Don’t get me wrong, I think its great that the State of Delaware is making more information public - all things being equal, more public access to information about how state government conducts its business is a good thing. However, I take issue with the way that Delaware is doing it.

To deploy the State of Delaware Online Checkbook, state officials have sanctioned the creation of one of the worst web sites I have seen in a long time. Aside from looking like the work of someone who has only recently discovered AJAX (and wants to add as much hip new AJAXian elements as possible to impress the ladies) it’s a horrible mishmash of inline CSS and nasty table-centric layout. I haven’t tested it formally, but I’d be willing to bet that this website fails every conceivable test for access by the disabled that there is. I doubt very much that this site meets the state’s own standards for accessible web content.

Even for those without impairment, this website presents challenges for anyone who wants to take a critical look at state expenditures. The data is not downloadable - you can’t click on a link and download a CSV file for an agency (at least nowhere that I could find). Instead you have to navigate, page by page, through arcane listings of expenditures - many with highly non-descriptive summaries. If you want to download this information and use it in a spreadsheet to compare spending across agencies you’re out of luck. Because of the cheezy AJAX pagination that litters the site, you can’t link to anything meaningful either, instead users are simply forced back to the summary for a particular agency. This is one of the most unusable site I have seen in a very long time.

Contrast this with what is occurring in the District of Columbia, New York City, San Francisco, Vancouver and even at the federal level courtesy of the Obama Administration. These governments are providing public access to raw data sets, making it easy for anyone (or anything) to consume this information, slice it up, analyze it and create interesting mashups. Delaware’s lame attempt with the Online Checkbook is like a time warp back to the very early days of e-Gov 1.0, when governments hid their data behind an opaque web facade that dictated how citizens would get to access it. It hasn’t been done like this in a long, long time.

Not only are other governments posting data online in highly usable formats, many are also asking citizens what they want to see next. In the last few weeks, the Obama Administration has set a new challenge for federal agencies through the Open Government Directive, which encourages agencies to publish information online in “machine readable” formats and to solicit input from the public on how to enhance the quality of government data.

The State of Delaware’s current attempt at publishing open data is so far away from what is considered standard in the current e-Government environment that it must be viewed as a step backwards. This is almost worse than having no data available, because it lets state leaders claim they are making government more transparent when all they are doing is muddying the waters.

The irony here is that it was the state’s then Treasurer (and current Governor) Jack Markell who took up the cause of e-Gov 1.0 during the early days of the Minner Administration. Apparently, his thinking on e-Government has not changed much since then.

Maybe he just wants to keep spinning those Backstreet Boys records as well…

Stumbling Towards Transparency

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

It looks like my repeated attempts and letters to the Governor’s office have finally resulted in the publishing of a staff list for Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s Office.

I do find it a bit unusual that they decided not to respond to me directly, or to provide any feedback whatsoever to my multiple e-mails and letters (even a shallow courtesy response to a Delaware resident and taxpayer), but whatever.

Since it looks like the Governor’s office is finally starting to bridging the gap between what they say and what they do on being open and transparent to the citizens of Delaware, I’m going to encourage some next steps:

1) Can you please join the 21st century and add e-mail address (even if its just one generic address for the entire office) to your website? I would hate for people to think that Ruth Ann Minner was more technologically advance in this regard than Jack Markell.

2) Can you stop channeling Dick Cheney and add the office of the Governor’s staff to the statewide telephone directory? This is an important public resource that citizens and taxpayers use to communicate with their government. There is no reason for the Governor’s office staff to not be listed there.

Keep plugging away - one day your office might actually be as transparent as you claim it is in all your public statements. I’ll be watching…

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…

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.

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.

Citizens are not LinkedIn to Governor Markell’s Office

Posted by Mark Headd under Open Government

I’ve noted before the conspicuous lack of any information on Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s website listing anyone that works in the office or any contact information that can be used by Delaware residents to contact a member of his staff with a question or problem.

Turns out, however, that there is a web site that has some detailed information on members of the Governor’s staff and their job descriptions. Unfortunately, its not the Governor’s official state web site - its the social networking site LinkedIn.

Apparently, some high-ranking members of the Governor’s staff have updated their LinkedIn profiles to describe what they do for Governor Markell. Most notable - Joe Rogalsky, who appears to be the Communications Director for Governor Markell, and Brian Selander, who appears to be the Chief Strategy Officer for the Governor (whatever that is). There may be other members of the Governor’s staff listed on LinkedIn, and they may even be in the LinkedIn networks of Messrs Rogalsky and Selander. Since I’m not connected to either one of these guys on this social networking site I have no way of finding out. Moreover, since I am not connected to either one, I have no access to contact information (e-mail or phone) that I might use to pose a question or report a problem to the Governor’s office. (More on “connections” shortly).

I find it somewhat disturbing that members of Governor Markell’s staff have sufficient time to update their profiles on social networks but that no time at all has been invested in listing the Governor’s staff, or any contact information for his staff, on his official state website. How is the average Delaware citizen expected to find out who works for Governor Markell, what they do for him and how they might contact them with a question or problem? I also find it interesting that these two gentlemen appear to be the members of Governor Markell’s staff that help craft press releases and public statements — they are more than likely to have had a hand in crafting the line Governor Markell delivered during his inaugural address:

“I pledge that my administration will be more transparent and accountable than any that have come before.”

Can it be that neither of these gentlemen see the conflict between this statement and the conspicuous lack of any public information on the Governor’s web site concerning who works for him, what they do, or how the average citizen might contact them? Particularly since Governor Markell’s two immediate predecessors both listed their entire staff along with job titles and contact information (both phone and e-mail) on their official websites:

• Governor Carper’s staff listing
• Governor Minner’s staff listing

What’s even more shocking is that both Messrs Rogalsky and Selander have chosen to provide detailed information on their job responsibilities in Governor Markell’s office on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social networking site that operates on the principle of “connections” — the value of the network you develop on LinkedIn is a function of how many connections you have, and how many connections your connections have, etc. If you want to connect with someone, you usually have to have had a previous relationship with them (i.e., worked in the same place together, went to school together, etc.) — you send a request for the other person to join your network, and they can either accept or decline. You can also request an introduction to a LinkedIn member through another member, if you both share a mutual friend or acquaintance.

Frankly I find it somewhat disturbing that the most detailed information on the job responsibilities of Governor Markell’s high ranking staff appears to be on a website that requires you to have the proper “connections” to interact with them or contact them directly.

I can’t think of anything that reminds me more of the typical way that business is conducted in Dover: if you have the proper connections, you get access to people that can help you — if you don’t, you’re out of luck. This is something that Governor Markell spoke out against during his campaign for office.

Since I’ve already spent more time writing blog posts about this than the Governor’s office has spent publishing a staff listing with contact information, I am now formally requesting that they publish such a list on the Governor’s official web site. I will attempt to send this request via the utterly useless web form on the Governor’s site (from which I have received no response to my previous questions), but I’m not holding out much hope for a response.

If they continue to drag their feet on this, one could jump to the conclusion that they have something to hide.