Today I am formally announcing my candidacy for South Orange Village President

To read the announcement and watch the announcement video please head on over to my campaign site at: http://alextorpey.com/announcement. I will updating my blog from there for the next two months, I hope you'll check it out and connect with the campaign!

What Community Truly Means To Me

Sitting in Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel last week on Martin Luther King Day reminded me why I am so proud to call this area my hometown. A celebration of Dr. King’s legacy — primarily organized by the Community Coalition on Race — the event was about as quintessential Maplewood-South Orange as it gets.

The event included not only a performance by Columbia High School students, but uplifting talks by local religious leaders from a diversity of faiths who approached reflecting on Dr. King’s message and legacy by helping us gain perspective by lending us their own.

There are not many places in the country — really in the world —where a minister, an Imam, a reverend and cantor could all gather in such an absolutely positive environment. No tensions, no judgments and no negativity. I’m not sure about everyone else, but these days, that environment is an oasis of understanding and positivity compared to the relative divergence that exists in media, government and culture in our state, our country and frequently around the world.

And we are among the luckiest because we actually live in a community where not only this happens, but where it is encouraged and valued. Going to colleges in other states and meeting people from across the country both in undergraduate and graduate school reminds me that not everywhere is like our area. And when people from other places hear two CHS (Columbia High School) alum talking about how we grew up in these two towns, for example, they are immediately captivated by the stories we tell, want to know more, and often, even want to visit and see for themselves what these towns are all about.

Friends of mine who have visited often head back to their hometown filled with thoughts of picturesque gaslights, open space and parks, downtowns that should be in movies, and often are, and a community that is genuinely diverse, creative and passionate.

Now, finding a place to move to without breaking the bank is another challenge perhaps only matched by the challenge of figuring out a way to ensure that people who grow up here can afford to continue to live here, but clearly we have a rising demand as more people realize how unique our community is.

And perhaps I am just feeling reflective because it is a new year, or maybe it’s just that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and talking about our towns lately, but it seems reasonable to try and take a moment to step back and place our experiences here and now within a greater geographical and historical context.

Anyone who is reading this has probably at this point realized I am, well, a bit of a nerd about government.

And one of my favorite case-studies is the constitutional convention — an event where people from grossly different walks of life came together for a common goal, and even through disagreement and differing ideology of literally the most fundamental nature, were able to compromise and create arguably one of the best governing documents ever written. A powerful lesson indeed.

The idea that regardless of peoples’ differences - no matter how superficial or deep they may be at any given time - unity around something we all care about is the most powerful force of all.

Throughout political times that seem to favor divergence instead of convergence, remembering this theme seems of even greater importance than ever. And these towns, more specifically, the people who live, and work and go to school in these towns, should be an example for other communities.

Until then, I hope this week’s column can at least serve as a little thank you to people who make events like last weeks’ celebration and reflection happen. And again, in a national culture that seems to favor rabble rousing over civility and progress, it is inspiring to be reminded that my roots are in a place that is above the fray and sets an example of what community actually means.

Government Innovation: Pursuit of Happiness (Part 3 of 3)

When people talk about government innovation the discussion tends to revolve around new projects, new buildings and new technologies that the public sector either should be creating or should be directly investing in.

But one of the most potentially breakthrough innovations that our government could do to be a Gov 2.0 leader in arts and culture doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t expand the government at all.

Copyright laws, often thought of as laws meant to protect those who invest time and money into creating something new or unique from others financially gaining off of their contribution for free, were actually created under more utilitarian principles, not personal or commercial interests.

The ‘Copyright Clause,’ Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

An idea like this would probably be called socialist by mainstream media or an equally superficial source today. However, between James Madison and Charles Pinckney, the idea of allowing the government to grant someone temporary ownership of, at the time, mostly literary creations, was born on August 18th 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, and solidified when the Constitution was written.

But the goal wasn’t necessarily protecting private financial gain, but rather a larger societal advancement of ideas and innovation, and the constitutional framers recognized that providing some protection was necessary towards that end.

In this spirit, I think it’s necessary to re-evaluate what exactly copyright laws are doing, and to make sure they are accomplishing what the people who created the law intended them to. Let me ask you this: Could you see James Madison cheering the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on when they sued a 12 year-old girl who lived in subsidized government housing with her single mother for damages up to $150,000 per song that she downloaded over a service she paid for and thought was legal? Doubt it.

Although the RIAA, or sister organization for the movie industry, the MPAA, claims these lawsuits aren’t about money, does anyone actually believe them? They are upset because they haven’t been able to keep up with changing technology and consumer landscapes and have lost business to a totally economic market-generated solution, which is online file sharing and DRM-free (Digital Rights Management) music and video downloading. Yet, so far they have been fairly successful in using the government to promote their own financial interests.

However, if the government wants to spur innovation or the progression of culture and the arts, they could start by standing up to these special interests and creating a legal landscape where kids aren’t afraid to use their favorite song in a spontaneous YouTube video or school project.

Relatedly, one of the interesting ideas floated out recently in the spirit of helping leverage the public sector to advance culture and arts is creating a cabinet-level position of “Secretary of the Arts.” Qunicy Jones, all around music/arts mogul and winner of 27 Grammys (79 nominations) said, “My passion in life now, and one of the first conversations I’ll have with President Obama, is to beg for a Secretary of the Arts.”

When looking at public sector innovation, people tend to imagine a great behemoth of a federal program slowly eating up tax dollars while providing either very little or very specific benefit to certain people. But it doesn’t necessarily have to happen that way.

Perhaps just having a public advocate for the arts, which we are seeing getting cut left and right from public school, even though studies routinely show the enormous benefit of music and arts education, might be enough to spark larger change.

I’ll leave you with a story from a professor from George Mason University, that my father mentioned to me recently: In the 1700s as England was shipping off inmates to Australia, routinely 1/3 of the passengers died and the majority of surviving passengers were sick or badly beaten and injured.

They tried everything, except talking to an economist. And when they finally did, the economist suggest one simple tiny change: Instead of paying shipping companies for number of passengers they took on the ship they should instead pay based on how many got off the ship. The next voyage had a 99% survival rate.

Sometimes it just takes a small carefully thought-out change to provide the impetus for a groundbreaking innovation.

Government Innovation: Liberty (Part 2 of 3)

“There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.”

To ensure the liberty of our people, and indeed all people, we have created a democratically elected government split into three branches each which balances the others, created publicly funded education, infrastructure, information, public safety and military resources and reshaped our public policies —albeit often slowly — as people realized we could do better.

Our ability to progressively re-evaluate current practices is based on the assumption that people have access to all of the information available and are best able to use that information to move forward a new idea.

But, throughout the past few decades, our values have shifted. Creativity has become bogged down by drudgery, thoughtfulness by superficiality and education by bureaucracy. The most interesting classes are getting cut from curricula, national debate is shaped by sound-bites not real discussion and our process of educating young people, so that they can overcome these challenges, has slowly been re-focused. Our attention is no longer on what knowledge and values we are imparting or what people need to learn to be successful in our times but rather on how we can most efficiently measure what we are doing. But there is hope, and it has a lot to do with leveraging new technology.

Technology, Entertainment, Design, or TED, as many of us know it, is an organization that fosters global innovation through the inspiration of, aggregation and mass free distribution of some of the most brilliant talks on pressing issues that exists on this planet. All of TED’s content is made available online for free and has been translated into more than 50 languages by a corps of volunteers.

The lesson: Education doesn’t always need to take place in a classroom or by a textbook. Sometimes a media platform delivers information better than a book can, and if it can reach people a classroom textbook otherwise wouldn’t, so much the better.

Does this mean all schools should take place online? Certainly not. But does it mean that through public schools the government should invest in ways to inspire, education and connect people using the internet, much like many colleges have been doing for years? Absolutely.

Public schools should be our most connected institutions, using online media, social networking, online games that foster curiosity and real-time audio/visual communication to connect students with all of the resources the world has to offer. Schools don’t need to offer every single class in every single subject. Just by having a well-connected accessible library or study space, schools could connect all of their students to nearly infinite outside resources. Yet many schools still operate under primitive IT policies that often prohibit students from accessing the most valuable online platforms, and few go as far as to actually encourage them.

In another field that is one of the most productive to invest in, we see libraries across the country getting their funding cut, even as patron usage steadily increases.
Even in South Orange, where the library has taken many proactive financial steps already, it voluntarily eliminated a full-time staff position worth $62,000, and is forced to cut another $25,000 out of the budget between 2009 and 2010.

People need these knowledge centers where they can perform research, connect with other people and be linked to the rest of the world, especially if they cannot afford home broadband access.

Guaranteeing both that all people have equal access to information and know they have such access is one of the best safeguards against tyranny, ignorance, polarization and hatred, all things that I know I am not alone in seeing more and more of in national debate these days. A truly excellent education will allow people the chance to rise above this.

Education is our assurance that when, for example, looking at racially-biased drug laws, the complex implications of immigration policies or military strategies that will influence decades of international relations, that we can approach these issues in educated, nuanced and thoughtful ways with the shared values of progress, community betterment and rationality. That is what the founding fathers meant by liberty and that is what we must work towards. And the first step is education.

Government Innovation: Life (Part 1 of 3)

Life. I’m not talking about Oprah’s version of the BBC and David Attenborough’s Planet Earth. I’m talking about what is perhaps the most fundamental of rights granted to any person by positive law, natural law, social contract or any other system we could use to quantify rules and rights.

Our right to live is the cornerstone of ensuring a prosperous and sustainable society. Animal hierarchies decide and categorize social interactions to lessen violence and death and our laws seek to do the same. Life, however, has not always been a given right in human civilization and has not even extended to all people for the entire history of this country.  People from various political persuasions would argue that today, in the United States, our right to live is threatened by either the death penalty, poor healthcare, violence terrorism and war, abortion, poverty, poor nutrition and the list goes on.

And we expect our government, even the most libertarian among us, to protect our lives. We generally expect police/fire/emergency management services, a military and the most basic regulations to ensure that we don’t die as easily as some wouldn’t mind us to.

Personally, I would consider that protection of life extending to healthcare, including diet and nutrition, certain consumer regulations, like seat belts and pharmaceutical regulation, and the ability for us to live in a society where violence and death are not accepted forms of social dynamics.

So, we have arguably the most powerful military in the world. We have over one million police officers employed throughout the country. We have an unbelievably responsive 9-1-1 system that sends emergency personnel to your doorstep in minutes in most of the country - without asking how much money you have or insurance information or whether you paid your taxes or even voted (Except in South Fulton, TN). Not bad.

But the biggest gap that is readily visible is the health of our country. This lack of attention being paid to health is causing epidemic obesity and diabetes rates, steadily climbing rates of sexually transmitted diseases, emerging strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria and exploding rates of conditions, from cardiac issues, strokes, cancer, and of course, traumatic injuries.

And we don’t even provide the infrastructure to encourage people towards preventative care and personal responsibility.

Some argue the market will handle this. However, the facts are simple: We spend more per-capita and get less than other developed countries because we are allowing the private sector to cash in on our lagging health by discouraging cost-saving preventative measures.

We are putting the onus on the emergency medical system to pick up this slack, which ends up being astronomically more expensive and time consuming than if we had approached these problems from a proactive perspective. 

But by using technology, without even tackling the larger issues that are wrapped up in the all too ubiquitous mindless political posturing of our time, the government can take major steps towards improving this system and helping us improve our health and reduce the strain on our economy and healthcare system.

Allowing consumers total control over their healthcare information, as the VA is beginning to do with their ‘blue button,’ where people can download all of their medical history from the VA website, and then take that information, do with it what they will, is a great way to put a little control back in our hands. 

Modernizing patient care by switching to electronic charting, where medical records are kept on computers, will prevent errors from being made, save medical staff time and will save us money. Electronic records are cheaper, easier, transportable, downloadable and secure. We need to re-imagine the government’s role in e-charting as a springboard for developers to create the innovations that we can use to modernize our healthcare system. Should we tell the government to create this system? Not necessarily. But should we tell our government to ensure that data is accessible so that 3rd parties can create new innovations? Absolutely.

Even by expanding broadband internet, public libraries and educational resources to more people, we can help ensure people have all of the information to make the right decisions. Of course wrapped up in a larger discussion of a failing education system that doesn't teach people how to (a) find information and (b) make their own decisions, the idea that people should be able to realize what is healthy is critical. By releasing government data for reconsumption and sharing, we can allow third party innovators create meaningful web-based informational resources on personal health, how to choose the best healthcare providers and more.

None of these issues will solve the problem. They are but the tip of the iceberg of apolitical technology-based solutions that save money, improve efficiency and make the government more transparent and accountable.

Todd Park, the Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it best with an interview with NPR, "I think everyone, I would presume, is in favor of better informed consumers. Everyone's in favor of healthy Americans, everyone's in favor of more functional marketplaces. I mean it's not a political thing, it's an American thing."

Furthermore, healthcare is but one of a dozen fields that we can improve the government’s life-saving directive by using open technology. What are some ways you think government can better protect our lives using technology?

The Declaration of Independence as a Framework for Modern Government Innovation

After spending the better part of the first week of September in Washington, DC for O’Reilly Media’s Gov 2.0 Summit, I am re-invigorated and re-energized as to the enormous potential that exists for innovation in the public sector, especially as it relates to using technology as a springboard for innovation.

Although the public sector is not always the first place one thinks of when considering innovation, especially with technology, it has always been there, directly or indirectly since the beginning. So many technologies — GPS or the internet itself even, have been offshoots of government projects, usually coming from the Department of Defense. And understandably so,  what is more fundamental and important in government than protecting its own citizens from harm?

Now, however, new technology offers something so much more than advancement of military technology or public safety functions. Technology, if properly implemented, has nearly limitless potential for improving our quality of life, maximizing educational opportunities, improving the efficiency of government services, connecting people who otherwise could not have been connected and boldly offering the promise of actually ensuring what could reasonably be considered our most fundamental trifecta of basic rights: Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Perhaps one of the most well-known phrases in the English language, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” a guarantee of one’s unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, is the perfect way to think about how important and profound the government’s role in technological innovation can be.

A theme of the Gov 2.0 Summit, and a generally interesting concept to consider, is rethinking how we get the public services that we increasingly demand. Traditionally, government is looked at as a vending machine of services —where we put money through tax dollars in and get services out. But we would be missing an opportunity if we didn’t at least attempt to re-conceptualize that relationship.

What if the government provided the ability and platforms to allow us - the citizens - to innovate and improve our quality of life? What if ‘public’ didn’t mean the government but if it actually meant the public: us?

Over three forthcoming posts, I will focus each one on how the government is, can be, and should be innovating in each of those sectors, taking care to ask how best we can accomplish guaranteeing each of those rights and what role the government should actually play in:

Life: This analysis will focus on the military, public safety, medicine  and healthcare, emergency services and consumer regulations. In 2010, how can we re-guarantee the live’s of our citizens and what role should the government play in doing so?

 

Liberty: This will focus on criminal justice, judicial equality, ensuring social equality and freedom and the ability for all to succeed to the degree to which they desire and work towards. In 2010, how can we re-guarantee liberty, justice and equality for all of our citizens?

Pursuit of Happiness: This will focus on providing the platforms for our continued engagement in the arts, culture, shared experiences and leisure. In 2010, how can we re-guarantee the ability for all of our citizens to be part of activities and legacies which they most enjoy and which provide cultural value to our society?

Each of these fields is worth a volume of encyclopedias and I will barely do justice to each by limiting them, for now at least, to a singular article.

I do not claim that any of these analysis will answer all of these questions. In fact, I would prefer if they raised more questions than answered, as asking questions, and figuring out how to ask the right questions is, or at least should be, a precursor to progress and innovation, especially when it relates to blindingly fast moving technological innovation that can easily change fundamentals of our society without us even noticing.

Day Two of the Gov 2.0 Summit

Yesterday, Tim O'Reilly kicked of the Gov 2.0 summit by saying that we must end the era of the vending machine services government and move to an open collaborative platform.

And the lineup of speakers for the day reinforced that theme. From, Ellen Miller from the Sunlight Foundation who spoke critically of the accuracy of some open government initiatives like usapspending.gov to Todd Park, a conference favorite, who spoke about reforms that were happening at the Department of Health and Human Services, one thing was clear: progress will come to government only through the engaged action of its citizen and through the inspired act of the people who work in government and can move forward policies that harnass the power of people.

The talks and presentations yesterday, which fell under the categories of "The Power of Platforms," "Fueling the Innovation Economy," and "Improving Government Effectiveness" certainly brought some of the brightest minds to the table to bring their ideas to the forefront on how to capture the knowledge of the crowd.

And with new health reforms like the blue button for VA care, collaborative national security and emergency response frameworks that were discussed by NSA Director General Keith Alexander and Donna Ray (The CIO's Executive for Information Sharing for the Department of Homeland Security), and other new government initiatives aimed at bettering this connection between citizens and governments, an innovative open government model seems more promising than ever
Today, I'm excited to see panels on, for example, using technology to better improve air traffic control, discussing the legal issues around social media use for government and talks on how the relationship between citizens and government is forever changing in fundamental ways due to technology advancement.
There is streaming video available here: http://en.oreilly.com/gov2010/public/content/livestream
And don't forget to get involved with the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #g2s.