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.

Day One of the Gov 2.0 Summit

First up at the Gov 2.0 Summit is O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly who just finished welcoming guets to the event. The clear theme of the conference is looking at government not "as a vending machine of services" but rather as a platform on which society can build upon. Using transportation as the first example, Tim O'Reilly set the stage for what should be a dynamic showcase of how the opening up of data can lead to true innovation across the public sector. 

Currently, Carl Malamud is discussing the historical context to the importance of open data and the downfalls the government faces today by not being caught-up to what possibilites are available. Ensuring food safety and efficient government operations, for example in taxes, are two huge pieces to government operation that could benefit from better cooperation and communication among various agencies in a growing and incresingly fragmented and specialized federal government. He says "If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can open up the Library of Congress."


My day will be spent attending dozens of panels, workshops and lectures, recaps of which I will write up at the end of the day.


In the meantime, make sure to check out the Gov 2.0 Summit conversation on twitter using the hashtag #g2s and follow live updates of the event on my twitter at: www.twitter.com/alextorpey. Additionally, visit http://governingpeople.com/gov20summit for a list of all posts related to the event.

NJ Receives $40m for Public Safety Wireles

Today, Congressional representatives announced a plan that will bring $40 million of federal funds to New Jersey - the country's most densely populated state - to improve public safety, emergency response and law enforcement communication networks.

The new system, which will be built off of existing networks as much as possible, will help 167 law enforcement agencies and 224 fire departments communicate with each other on a high-speed network. This will allow mapping data, records, reports, images and video to all be transmitted between agencies and operations workers faster and more reliably than before.

In my experience working in emergency medical services, many agencies, especially paramedic agencies, use e-charting to take down patient information, for example. However, outdated IT infrastructures that exists throughout the state usually makes it impossible for this information to actually be electronically transferred from an arriving ambulance to hospital staff. This new network hopes to update the infrastructure to provide smoother operations on all public safety fronts.

This network will also help get emergency personnel out faster, too. Reported on NorthJersey.com "[The network] will also assist with dispatching responders and mapping, Senators Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez, both D-N.J., said in a joint announcement."

The grant is part of a $1.47 billion stimulus grant for improvement of wireless/IT public safety infrastructure going to 65 other regions across the country.

How Important Are Our Values in Education?

Watching Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s campaign director talk about their campaign strategies earlier this summer made me realize that something really profound was taking place in our country.

As he detailed all of the innovations their campaign used to try and convince people to vote for their candidate I couldn’t help but wonder why it was so difficult to get people out to vote, an activity that is most certainly in their own best interest. And then I took that question one step further - why is so much time, energy and money spent attempting to convince people to do things that are in their best interest?

Whether it is a get out the vote campaign, public service ads telling people to stop smoking or to eat healthier, government mandated programs that force people to save money (which the majority wouldn’t do otherwise) or any other host of initiatives aimed at bettering people’s lives - Why is this costly practice of convincing necessary? Why don’t people know they should vote, know they should eat healthy or know they should be responsible with their money?

In a rare, and hopefully not precedent-setting, occurrence I actually would like to answer the question I raise. And I believe that the answer, sadly, is that these values, though perhaps once of import to our culture, and certainly valued in some sub-cultures or other parts of the world, are just not part of our process of socialization anymore.

For some strange reason, being raised in this country doesn’t guarantee you will understand the stock market, marketing and financial decisions, how to choose a healthy diet, how to exercise your political rights much less global economic and political dynamics.

Schools incessantly pound facts into young people while imparting very few, if any, practical skills or critical thinking concepts, not in a dissimilar fashion to Ray Bradbury predictions in Fahrenheit 451. True, many kids can do math at a level that would have surely categorized them as a witch in the not too distant past, but have they the same ability to question the world around them or an understanding of the complex and serious issues that they will have to grapple with throughout their lives?

If anything, school curricula have become even narrower because of the monumental over-standardization that has taken place over the past decade. The focus of our public education seems to have shifted from helping educate and socialize our youngest to just measuring the ‘quality’ of schools as to determine next year’s federal funding.

The idea of socialization, whereby the eldest help teach the youngest how best to survive and develop in a given environment is an incredible process. Humans spend more time on this process than any other animal by far. Our youngest today spend often 18 years or more under supervision, far greater than even our mammal relatives like dogs who spend only a few months or dolphins, perhaps the closest, who spend 3-6 years. This enormous focus humans have had on raising offspring is one of the primary reasons we have such robust culture - an incredible amount of information is passed from generation to generation, even before written or recorded materials existed. And now that we have such accesible and global mediums to record and share information, we should be able to further improve upon this practice.

For the first time in human history, we have unprecedented opportunity (resources and incentive) to enter into an entirely new level of thought, discourse and freedom. Critical thinking combined with vast and easy access to information is a powerful tool of democracy, science and thought that we have yet to tap into fully.

Perhaps we would not need so many complicated laws around financial markets if people simply were too well educated about finances to be tricked into poor decisions. Or if we had a better understanding of our bodies and diets we would no longer need the government to intervene for us. And if we could better engage with public policy issues, we wouldn’t need voter registration drives or overly-complicated (and ineffective) election rules.

Instead of attempting to solve all of these problems by creating cumbersome government interventions after the problem has arisen, we should, as a culture, take a more proactive approach and re-shape our education and enculturalization processes to better prepare people to make these decisions themselves.

South Orange National Night Out

So this is a few days late, but South Orange (and thousands of towns across the country) held their National Night out this past Tuesday.

South Orange's event had all of the public safety departments down at floods hill for some informal hanging out before the main feature - Shrek. Read more @ Patch here.

I was down there on behalf of South Orange's Community Emergency Response Team with Tom Giordano from Seton Hall. We got more than a dozen people who said they were interested in potentially working with CERT or in some related volunteer public safety capacity. Hopefully we can really turn South Orange's CERT program into an example of how municipalities across the state and country (who are facing tough budget problems now more than ever) can leverage the energy of their residents and volunteers into helping keep their communities safe. More to come on the progress of CERT in South Orange soon!

Photo Credit: Marcia Worth of South Orange Patch

The Importance of Debate

Disagreeing with someone is not easy. Nor is it easy when someone disagrees with you. In fact, constructive disagreement could probably be classified as a serious skill, one that few of us truly possess.

However, in our most tense moments, where disagreement is prone to be least subtle is of course the time when that skill is most important.

Groups of people with varying perspectives, experiences and ideas are time after time found to be more effective at solving problems than groups of homogeneous experts, and that is the theme of what I want to briefly explore here.

The impetus for writing this probably has less to do with any recent events, such as the lack of a climate bill or similar national political boondoggles, but may actually be more so due to a recent West Wing marathon. But regardless of the reason, I feel inspired to share a remarkable document produced by a past president of my undergraduate alma mater, Hampshire College, called the Principles of Discourse:
1. That we value truth and the process of seeking truth as ends in themselves;
2. That we accept responsibility to articulate a position as close to the truth as one can make it, using to the best of one’s ability, available evidence and the rules of reason, logic and relevance;
3. That we listen openly, recognizing always that new information may alter one’s position;
4. That we welcome evaluation and accept, and even encourage, disagreement and criticism, even to the point of seeking out for ourselves that which will disprove our position;
5. That we refuse to reduce disagreement to personal attacks or attacks on groups or classes of individuals;
6. That we value civility, even in disagreement;
7. And, that we reject the premise that ends, no matter how worthy, can justify means which violate these principles.

Disagreement should not be feared. Nor should being questioned, or someone else’s doubt, skepticism or hesitation. Whether it is working out an issue in one’s personal life, discussing the merits and downfalls of local policies or debating the most prominent national and global issues, which are far too many to even begin to list here, there seems to be a growing culture of silofication - the idea that we are becoming increasingly isolated, largely due to the organization of various online mediums, from basically things we don’t like.

Maybe I’m wrong, in fact, I hope I am wrong. But it seems as though disagreement, even though prima facie accepted in our culture is just that, merely a superficial symbolic gesture. Disagreement is loosing ground as a fundamental piece to the culture that formed one of the most free democracies in the world.

Perhaps today there are more stakeholders who are more invested, and therefore have more to lose. But people seem to have picked a “side,” like Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative, pro-choice versus pro-life and now appear unwilling to reassess their position based on a fear of seeming weak.

I think the idea here is that something like the Principles of Discourse mentioned above can be a truly powerful encourager of constructive debate, disagreement and increased understanding, and from that, more thorough, long-term and nuanced problem-solving.

Some online platforms provide the opportunity to create environments where these discussions are encouraged, but they are not the answer, merely a tool. The answer is a change in education and culture.

When delegates from up and down the coast met in Philadelphia in 1787, they represented an incredibly broad range of values and opinions and were still even in a fairly revolutionary mood. Yet, throughout that summer, those delegates crafted arguably one of the most democratic foundations to government ever seen on this planet.

And they did it without any technology, tools or modern conveniences. But what they had, which often seems to be lacking in 2010, is a common purpose. And although we may have disagreements, the de facto trust that we are all working towards a better future in a genuine way has been lost.

So I leave you with not an answer but a question: If we want to move forward, on whatever level, with comprehensive solutions to our most pressing problems, how do we restore the trust and culture needed to have constructive and nuanced discussions?