We’ve been working on building community online – starting at the neighborhood level for some years now. Our Town 808 was built on the premise that people are more likely to Do Good when they are connected to their neighbors.
Devise a policy whereby all Honolulu websites are constructed atop a standard platform
There are multiple barriers associated with online community building. One of the main problems is access to public data stored away in city computers. At City Camp Honolulu, concerned citizens will be coming together to discuss issues and opportunities with the current administration’s willingness to open City data to the public. There have been numerous good ideas on what we could do with this data, and they are being voted on for discussion.
Having been on this path for years now, I believe the biggest issue is ensuring that citizen programmers have access to the data. Once access is guaranteed, much good will come of it. There are dozens of very effective ways that city personnel can and will block access to public data. Its not necessarily for any particular evil reason, but think about it, how many job descriptions have you seen that include “help the public access data via API”? At the very least, providing access to data means someone in that department has a little more work to do that they didn’t have on their task list previously.
Therefore, I propose that the first order of business is to ensure that there is law behind the movement to access our public data. Please take a look at these ideas regarding providing access to data. If you agree, please vote for them.
Devise a policy whereby all Honolulu websites are constructed atop a standard platform
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The sites need to be set up for better referencing and cross referencing. First when I search for a law/ordinance/rule very rarely, if ever even when putting in the specific code of the law, does the law itself come up first. It’s usually buried in the search results. Then when i look up an ordinance get me to the ordinance specific text instead of a PDF where I then have to search through trying to find the specific section/part that I need. Then when I look at that ordinance and it references another section, there should be a hyperlink bringing me right to that ordinance and again, not a PDF where I then have to go search for the specific. A user should be able to go easily between the ordinances and rules. This would fall under the standardization of all the web sites via a standard platform.
Joel, I’d like to refer you to the official citycampHNL site where ideas can be posted and voted on.
http://citycamphnl.govfresh.com/
Here is a direct link to the citycampHNL registration page: http://citycamphnl2011.eventbrite.com/?ref=ebtn
Link to Peter Kay’s blog which has some concrete calls to action:
http://www.yourcomputerminute.com/2011/11/22/platform-first-engineering-a-robust-government-web-ecosystem/