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What we learned at Glen Cove about transparency and technology

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February 21, 2012
accountability, communities of transparency, international, NGOs, open data, politics, technology
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The Transparency Policy Project’s dual role as an organizer and participant at the Bridging Transparency and Technology workshop in Glen Cove, New York gave us an opportunity to reflect on this emerging field at many different levels.

Prior to the workshop, our conversations with the NGOs that participated revealed that their organizations were wrestling with similar tensions in their advocacy work. Common themes included:

  • Sustaining public interest in tech-transparency projects beyond the novelty of a first website visit.
  • Targeting tech-transparency projects to citizens, but finding that the media and other NGOs were the primary consumers of information.
  • Weighing the strategic advantages of open data approaches versus embargoing information to generate maximum accountability outcomes.
  • Linking online transparency efforts with offline accountability effects.
  • Finding the right metrics to capture the impact of their work.

These themes helped us shape the “arc” of the Glen Cove event. As Allen Gunn of Aspiration Tech noted in How we are designing the agenda for our Bridging Sessions, we aimed to “match needs to knowledge”.

At the workshop we saw a lot of cross-pollination take place between the advocacy strategies of groups working in natural resources governance and the extractives industries, and all the amazing tech tools that already exist for collecting, displaying and disseminating information. We were inspired by the passion, skill and ingenuity everyone brought to the table, and we are motivated by the potential harbored in proposed collaborations between NGOs and technologists that emerged at the workshop.

Based on workshop discussions and post-event conversations with participants, we put forth three lessons to inform the Bridging effort going forward:

  1. Articulate your strategy. Advocacy groups and technologists alike gained an understanding of the challenges and opportunities that exist in the growing technology for transparency space. A desire remains to delve deeper into deconstructing different types of strategies for transparency advocacy, and understanding how technology can be a lever in achieving accountability.
  2. Context matters. A lot. Discussions reinforced the importance of understanding the political environment and context within which technology approaches are implemented and advocacy groups operate. A greater diversity of perspectives – particularly from the developing world – would enrich this discussion and help in evaluating the impact of technology for transparency.
  3. The data exists, so hack! The hands-on opportunity to “hack” transparency projects and demonstrate how existing technology tools and approaches can be implemented quickly and effectively was a valuable experience for participants. Interactions between technologists and NGOs that lead to concrete projects and outcomes must be supported and sustained.

As we move forward with the Bridging initiative, the Transparency Policy Project will engage the Glen Cove groups in reflecting together on how to implement transparency and accountability projects. We are also keen to develop more innovative, and tailored approaches to measuring the impact that this work is having in advancing transparency and accountability. By articulating strategies, understanding context, and hacking projects, we hope to sharpen our collective understanding of how to best leverage technology tools in improving outcomes for arguably some of the most wicked problems on this planet.

Francisca Rojas, research director, Transparency Policy Project (original post)

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Transit Transparency: Open Data in Action

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January 30, 2012
communities of transparency, data, open data, open government, technology, transportation
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A much talked-about innovation in public policy has been the push to achieve greater transparency and accountability through open government strategies, where the public has access to government information and can participate in co-producing public services. At the Transparency Policy Project we have been investigating the dynamics behind one of the most successful implementations of open government: the disclosure of data by public transit agencies in the United States. In just a few years, a rich community has developed around this data, with visionary champions for disclosure inside transit agencies collaborating with eager software developers to deliver multiple ways for riders to access real-time information about transit.

Transit agencies have long used intelligent systems for scheduling and monitoring the location of their vehicles. However, this real-time information had previously been available only to engineers inside agencies, leaving riders with printed timetables and maps, that, at best, represent the stated intentions of an complex system that can be disturbed by traffic, weather, personnel issues and even riders themselves.

Recognizing the need to be able to access this information on-the-go and in digital format, Bibiana McHugh of Portland’s TriMet agency worked with Google in 2006 to integrate timetable data into Google Maps, eventually becoming Google Transit. McHugh went further, publicly releasing TriMet’s operations data: first the static timetables, and eventually real-time, dynamic data feeds of vehicle locations and arrival predictions. Local programmers have responded with great ingenuity, building 44 different consumer-facing applications for the TriMet system, at no cost to the agency.

Transit Apps and Ridership by City

Other transit agencies have adopted this open data approach with varying outcomes. The most successful agencies work closely with local programmers to understand which data is in demand, troubleshoot and improve the quality of the data feeds. Programmers also make the link between end users and transit agencies by filtering up comments from apps users. This iterative feedback loop relies on a champion within the agency to build strong relationships with the local developer community. Of the five transit agencies we studied, Portland’s TriMet and Boston’s MBTA exemplify this approach and have generated the highest ratio of apps per transit rider (see table). Meanwhile, the most reluctant agency to adopt open data, Washington DC’s WMATA, only has eleven applications serving its customers.

The number of apps built by independent developers is important, indicating the variety of options riders have in selecting which interfaces (mobile, desktop, map-based, text, audio) and platforms best fit their needs to access transit information. As we have learned from our research on what makes transparency effective, simply providing information is not enough. Format and content matter, and should address the needs of a targeted audience. What we have seen in our study of transit transparency is that local programmers have been the critical intermediaries, taking raw data and generating a variety of information tools that transit agencies could not have imagined on their own. For other open government initiatives to spark this level of innovation and public benefit, they must identify their audience of information intermediaries and foster those relationships.

Francisca Rojas, research director – Transparency Policy Project
Original post on Google’s Policy by the Numbers blog (January 27, 2012)

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