CTO Design Challenge II

10.15.09

The Challenge

"How do we promote intelligent discourse and decision-making on regional and national civic issues, given the deterioration of newspapers and other media and the polarization of politics?

Can technology assist in the promotion of rational discussion?"

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The Team

Host: Brenda Cooper, CIO, City of Kirkland

Sailesh Chutani, Senior Director, Microsoft Tricia Duryee, Principal Correspondent,

Moconews Joe Heitzeberg, VP, Whitepages Sajal Sahay, Executive Director, T-Mobile Bill Schrier, CTO, City of Seattle Chetan Sharma, President, Chetan Sharma

Consulting

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Agenda

The Problem State of the Media Potential Solutions

Leveraging existing government touch points Introducing a closed-loop framework for civic

discourse Incentivizing Civic Participation

How will this actually work? Recommendations How can you get involved?

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The Problem: Public Input is Broken

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The Ideal

The Reality

The Problem: Lack of Discourse

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Citizens Queue to Speak to Elected Officials

The State Of Journalism

• 40% get news from Internet (Pew)• 2.9% read newspapers online (Scarborough)

New Information Sources

EveryBlock Neighborlogs SeeClickFix.com

SOLUTIONS9

1. Increasing engagement in discourse

Goal Dramatically increase input, debate and

dialogue between citizens and government at all levels

Current Challenges Existing, e.g. town hall has very limited

participation Only the dissatisfied engage Social media favors the upper echelon

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“No Taxation without Representation”

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Leverage existing touch points The “widget” strategy

Leverage existing tech

Reward participation

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Locally relevant viaduct survey data?

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Cheap hardware upgrade: stickers!

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2. Citizen Input Framework15

Cloud Services/

Data Host

Govt funded & independent 3rd party administered

Public Affairs Social

Networking Site

Media Outlets

ThinkTanks

Government

Private Enterprise

Citizen - Local

Private Citizens

Citizen - State

Citizen - National

Compilation & Analysis Of Public Input

KEY

Expert Panel (Private Citizens)

Citizen Input Citizens Nominate & Vote in/out

Panel Annually

Public Policy

Local/Regional/Natonal Government

Non-binding Policy

Recommendations

Closed-loop Presentation of Adopted Recommendations to Citizens

Information

Experts chosen by degree of

complexity of the issue

Public Hearing of

Recommendations

3. Incentives and business model

Successful examples and parallels: citizen science a la SETI@home and Salmon watcher program of King county; Co-ops for day care; Wikipedia, FourSquare

Assumptions: platform exists, citizens are aware of the tools and know how to use them, participation is open to all

Citizens Nominate & Vote in/out

Panel Annually

Use of Gas Tax for Light Rail17

Cloud Services/

Data Host

Govt funded & independent 3rd party administered

Public Affairs Social

Networking Site

Media Outlets

ThinkTanks

Government

Private Enterprise

Citizen - Local

Private Citizens

Citizen - State

Compilation & Analysis Of Public Input

KEY

Expert Panel (Private Citizens)

Citizen Input

Public Policy

Local/Regional/Natonal Government

Non-binding Policy

Recommendations

Closed-loop Presentation of Adopted Recommendations to Citizens

Information

Experts chosen by degree of

complexity of the issue

Public Hearing of

Recommendations

Criterion for Success

Higher satisfaction with the public policy and the process

Increase in civic participation and engagement by a quantifiable metric

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Recommendations

Save the Journalists (not the print media) and engage them to do analysis, investigative work for think-tanks, policy making

Set the public data free and encourage use Leverage existing tools, touch points, and

organizations to implement the framework e.g. SMS, Twitter, Facebook

Ensure Closed Loop Creative Incentives Invite State and City govt. to prototype the approaches

to test their usefulness to address an actual issue

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Join the Conversation

@ mygov.webpaint.com

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Social Media as a Solution?21

Other examples

U2 using SMS at concerts so fans can pledge support for poverty campaigns Why not: Metro bus tunnel SMS campaign

for alternative energy? Ubiquitous: 96% of wireless phones have

SMS, 87% of people have wireless Adoption of blogs, twitter, facebook by

celebrities and media is rising….but govt? Representatives in government “Promote

policy and respond to needs of citizens”

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