How Can New York City Use Technology to Serve Citizens?

The following question was recently posted by the new Chief Digital Officer of New York City on Quora:

“How can New York City use technology to serve citizens?”

The inquiry generated a variety of responses:

Steve Ressler, Founder of GovLoop.com:

To me, I like two buckets

1) Technology to improve service delivery process - this can be as simple as paying parking meters or tickets via text message, paying bills online, get updates on where they stand on applications very easy, get reminders on things like DMV renewals or property tax statements via emailt instead of by paper ($/environment) 2) Technology to build engaged citizens - technology can help get more citizens engaged with city information if done in the right way (great compelling content in consistent way in channels people want -email/text/FB/twitter/web/etc - I wrote up my 4 part gov’t engagement funnel here (http://www.govloop.com/profiles/...). Once engaged, work on leveraging them to solve problems - for example, can you build a 5,000 person volunteer core that can help out on civic problems (check the snow volunteer example here - http://jamaicaplain.neighborsfor...)

I also asked this question to my community of government leaders - some good responses there too.

http://www.govloop.com/forum/top...

Not NYC focused but we asked what should newly elected officials do w/ new technology? Some tips were:

-Using new tools - make sure what you say adds value and is engaging

-Provide clear guidance to deparments

-Find who is already doing awesome stuff in the agency (there is probably a bunch)

http://www.govloop.com/group/gov...

Lori Gama, Social Media Strategist:

Here’s my advice:

• New York city needs to find out what its citizens need and want. One of the best ways is via social networks so the citizens can actually be asked. The next step is to show them you are listening by acting on their suggestions.

• First, NYC needs its Social Networking goal defined
• You need a Social Media Policy in place
• Educate and train Social Media officers/directors on how to properly use social networks
• NYC needs to find out where most of its citizens are hanging out on the Internet (I’m guessing it’s Facebook). There are many different groups you should check out, too. Don’t forget about NYC’s diverse population. You might need to hire bi-lingual Digi-Officers.

• Several Facebook fan pages would need to be set up: ideally one per department. Each Facebook manager would need to be thoroughly trained for all types of situations so s/he could properly handle things. For instance, when confronted by a specific complaint, take the conversation offline immediately and address the complaint and follow up later.

• Quite a lot of your engagement may turn into customer support types of situations. Be prepared for that because it WILL happen. I’m sure you know how well Comcast and other corporations handle this via Twitter. Just have a plan and be ready.

• Use http://uservoice.com/ to allow citizens to submit and discuss their suggestions. With UserVoice, you’ll be able to sort through feedback and organize it efficiently.

• Make it easy for developers to get access to your data (Open Data) so we can create solutions via apps and websites.

• Read Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and The World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.http://www.macrowikinomics.com/

There are so many ways you can use technology to serve citizens...so much so that it’s mind-boggling and exciting.

Adam Fields:

I’d like to see more anonymous data collection and analysis to improve the city’s services. The recent Times piece on the lack of cabs at shift change was pretty enlightening, and it would be nice to see the city sponsor and use more research like that to see how city resources are actually being used. A variety of apps could also be deployed to help with that (i.e.: one that lets people notify someone “I’m waiting on a corner and I’ve been trying to find a cab for 20 minutes” or “My street hasn’t been plowed yet”), but even without that it seems like there’s plenty of data there for the picking that hasn’t been mined yet.

The 311 App seems to have the potential to be very helpful, but it really needs to be more full-featured (support all/more of the possible reasons you’d want to notify 311) and allow submission of pictures. The app should also support commendations and information requests. I can currently use the phone system to ask a question about city services, or report something that someone’s done well, but the app is all about complaints.

I’d like to also really see some discussion about what complaints have beenreceived and what the official response is. For example, if I report to 311 that my local playground is really dirty and needs to be cleaned more often, I currently have no way to tell if anyone who cares is actually listening, I have no way to tell if anyone else is complaining about it, and I don’t have an easy way to tell other people who might care about the same thing to easily add their vote (and just telling them to report it to 311 has the same black hole issue).

I think what I’m getting at here is that when I register a complaint, maybe that shouldn’t be the end of it - the system should give me more information about how to follow up, how to get more involved in the process (if it’s a long-term thing), and how to stay more informed.

For example, an intersection near me has a lot of accidents - there have been two this year already. Is anybody looking at those kinds of statistics to try to figure out why? I assume somebody is, but I have very little visibility into that process, and it certainly hasn’t addressed my concern that there’s an obviously dangerous intersection near where I live. People want to have all kinds of interactions with city services, but it’s very much a black box at the moment.

Daniel Latorre, Founder of The Wise City:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast!” - Peter Drucker

4 suggestions related to socio-cultural dimensions. Probably not where you want to start out, capacity building would be a better focus, but something to consider and plan for sooner than later.

1. “How to engage with City Staff” tech training info for *both* tech-innovator citizens and city staff on how to work together on Open Gov tech projects. Speaking from my experience with city staff on http://fixcity.org, I found that the biggest bottleneck to civic innovation is informing & training of civil staff about OpenGov concepts. OpenGov needs to become part of the civil employee culture. This is a new interdependent virtuous cycle type of relationship between citizens & city staff that many excellent city staff veterans are not used to. Behind great tech are great ways of working with people to do it.
2. Add qualified social/anthro ethnographic tech researchers to city staff.

   Since many civic tech projects are social tools about social life in this city huge quality improvements could be made with wise understanding of Urban dwellers & tech. Who to hire? Start with Keith N. Hampton at U Penn. See his research on “The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces” and PEW reports. The city’s investment in research entrepreneurs often can’t afford, for social human understanding technologists are often not aware of would be a great service. These researchers could also provide the best approach for success measurement. Keith’s site. ttp://www.mysocialnetwork.net/ I can also recommend others.

3. Weave in human-centered Placemaking approaches and assessments for projects related to actual places in NYC. What is Placemaking? http://www.pps.org/placemaking/a...
4. Work with Meetup.com to learn best strategies to encourage bringing people together face to face in the places they care about. This must be key. As Douglas Rushkoff simply put it, digital media have an inherent bias towards dislocation-- using dislocation technology for local connection has a built-in trap. The solution? Use it to get people to meet together.

David Wees, Learning Specialist: Information Technology:

I’m going to speak from the perspective of an educator on what NYC could do to improve the use of technology in the public schools.

Make your data systems talk to each other. I remember working in the public schools and wanting to set up online attendance back in 2004 and not being able to because there was no way to get the data into the attendance program without entering it manually.

Promote the use of open source technology where applicable. NYC has a gigantic community, most of whom are very outspoken. Tapping into this community could be a terrific way to reduce the costs of creating new software. Right now schools are using software which hasn’t really been updated in eons, and costs a fortune in maintenance & upgrade fees. You could spend a similar amount of money on open source software development and share the software you create with other districts, saving both you AND the other school districts lots of money. You could do this with textbooks as well, and then not have to worry what Texas thinks should be in the curriculum.

Set up donation systems for computer hardware so that the only-slightly-out-of-date computers that are being upgraded each year in the numerous office buildings around the city get donated to the city’s schools.

Set up ways for the educators in the city schools to be able to talk to each other more freely. Some schools have obviously figured out what works, but obviously not all schools have. It should be an expectation that educators share their expertise in NYC, instead of thinking that somehow they will benefit from it later.

Tom Touchet:

Some great suggestions here. Makes me excited for the change an informed, empowered community would make.

To me, the one key area where we all need to focus is building that informed community -- and not a segmented one, but one that provides information access for all. That means information without restriction -- across all platforms and demographics -- because there really shouldn’t be any second-class citizens in the digital age.

“To achieve the promise of democracy, it is necessary that the creation, organization, analysis, and transmission of information include the whole community.” --Knight Commission “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age”

My personal experience is that at the highest level the City already gets it better than anyone. They know that information is essential to community vitality. The Bloomberg administration has actually done a great job opening up their data and building partnerships to better utilize the information. The Big Apps program immediately helped smart devices, and jump-started the open process that’s now rippling across

other media. 311 and 511 are becoming the gold standard. Love the hiring of a new CDO. And, they’re also now working to use the City’s existing infrastructure to deliver information and services where and when it matters most.

In my humble opinion, it’s the private sector that’s actually been myopic. All the focus has been on the hyper-personal level, and not on the larger community interests where technology advances could make the most difference.

As the center of the media and communications world, New York City companies need to step up.

The focus needs be on important information that is:

* More Helpful -- timely, relevant information that helps create and grow a true connected community

* More Local -- targeted neighborhood information that ports across any platform.

* More Interactive -- fully integrated across mobile, online, social and interactive outdoor

* More Inclusive -- (and perhaps most important) this must be built

to provide access for all -- without restrictions or bias - to fully ensure a connection between the city, its residents and visitors.

I believe it’s time for this new focus. It’s time for new ideas and new action to improve the information opportunities available in our community. It’s time to tap the full potential of emerging media to connect and service our community. There are many ways to speed this information revolution for all our benefit-- the city is already working on some. Now it’s time for us to do our part.