Open Government Archive

Open Data, Open Government Awards

John.Weigelt

Published: October 6, 2010Posted in: Open Government

I had the privilege to attend the GTEC awardspresentations on Monday evening. It was great to recognize the many great IT projects and initiatives across the Canadian Public Sector. Having been part of a team that was recognized with a GTEC Medal, I know how great it is to be recognized as a leading team. There is no cash prize associated with the medal, and aside from the hors d’oeuvres, no fancy victory dinner, just the recognition in front of your peers and a medal that your team can hang in the office.

The GTEC awards ceremony is also a great time because it brings together thought leaders from across the country and it provides the opportunity for some great casual conversations and a chance to reconnect with friends that you might not have seen for a while.

The mix of the GTEC awards and my conversations with some of Canadian open government community got me thinking that there might have been a bit of a gap at this year’s award ceremony. What about the Open Data community? Since the GTEC award process really isn’t set up to recognize the “best screen scrape hack” or similar categories, maybe there could be a community driven award process. No big cash award just the great feeling of satisfaction that your peers have recognized accomplishment. (Well, there could be a tiara and a sash if people really wanted it)

As I was thinking about this a little more, the idea of a sort of “Stanley Cup” for Open Government, Open Data came to mind. An award that would be passed from winner to winner on an annual basis in recognition that these aren’t one time efforts, but a sustainable effort that continues to evolve over time. In chatting with David Eaves he suggested that there might be different categories of awards and that a part of winning the award could be an opportunity for the winner to have a 1:1 with an IT great. Both cool ideas worth chasing down. I guess I was more fixated on the form of the trophy. Big, bad silver cup? Silver plated spade? WWE style belt?

What do you think?

Things are coming together

John.Weigelt

Published: May 21, 2010Posted in: Canada Gov Camp, Open Government

Well, it has been a very busy week and I am pleased to note that we have secured our venue, panelists, keynote speakers, webcasting, host and worked out many of the finer details for GovCamp.

On the 31st of May we have our Welcome Reception from 4PM to 6 PM at University of Ottawa, 12102 Desmerais building, 55 Laurier East, Ottawa, Ontario.

Jerry Mechling of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government will be keynoting.

On the 1st of June, our day gets started in Colonel By Hall, Auditorium C03, with a fantastic panel of experts. We have:

Marj Ackerley, Executive Director of the Organizational Readiness Office within the CIO Branch of the Treasury Board Secretariat
David Eaves, Public Policy Entrepreneur, Open Government Activist and Collaboration Expert
Ross Hodgins, Senior Advisor, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Guy Michaud, CIO City of Ottawa
Eric Sauve, Vice President Newsgator

Following this exciting panel, participants will have the opportunity to propose and pursue conversations in an unconference format under the stewardship of Mark Kuznicki, principle of Remarkk Consulting and the thought leader behind ChangeCamp.

After an afternoon of discussion, groups will report their ideas back to the plenary. The day will be wrapped by David Eaves, after which everyone will be able to relax with a beverage at the event.

We are pleased to be able to webcast the event and provide simultaneous translation and will get the details out soonest.

Remember to register @ govcamp.eventbright.com

Learning from US Network TV

John.Weigelt

Published: April 23, 2010Posted in: Open Government

Like many Canadians, I grew up watching some, ok a lot, of US network television. I admit that there wasn’t a great deal of educational value there. Perhaps an episode or two of School House Rock that told me what a conjunction is, but not much more. Now that Saturday morning cartoons don’t dominate my weekend schedule, although I can’t pass on the Simpsons, those “educational” experiences are less overt. But they still come up on occasion.

One such occasion happened a few years ago during the US mid-term elections. It just so happens that the US network stations that we get here in the Nation’s capital herald from Detroit. We Canadians were bombarded with campaign commercials from any number of candidates seeking seats on the US Congress or US Senate and perhaps even a few seats in important places. Of course I can’t recall any of their names, nor tell you who won the important jobs. I can tell you what struck me most was the commentary from the many autoworkers that lent their support testimonials in the TV ads. Most of these people were supporting particular candidates for helping provide funds to keep their particular automotive plant open. It struck me that perhaps these hardworking people would have been better served by funding training programs to prepare them for today’s evolving job marketplace. The recent turmoil in the US automotive industry, personalized by the Oscar nominated HBO documentary “The Last Truck” suggests that perhaps more could have been done to better prepare these communities for the Digital Economy. Let’s keep a close eye to make sure we really learned this lesson.

The second learning came more recently, well actually earlier this week when I saw another commercial. Yes I only pay attention to the commercials. This commercial from the Detroit Medical Center promotes a web-based real-time Emergency Room wait times at their five hospital facilities (http://www.dmc.org/ERwait ). As we all know, ER wait times are a key concern here in Ontario as well http://www.health.gov.on.ca/transformation/length_of_stay/index.html .

Before you jump to conclusions about the results on either site, stop. There are too many differences between the measurements to even start to make any reasonable assertion. What we can learn is that someone, someplace in Michigan has found a way to report useful data about the ER in what seems to be a real time basis, and that the data is useful for the community to help them make an informed decision should they have the luxury to plan their visit to the ER. This is a lesson of making data more readily available to empower individuals to make more informed decisions. And that’s one to grow on…

Canada Gov Camp

John.Weigelt

Published: April 14, 2010Posted in: Canada Gov Camp, Open Government

I’ve had the opportunity to connect with a number of innovative thought leaders across Canada and engage in many of the local Open Gov activities that they are leading across the country. Since many of these activities have been focused on specific local regions, I’ve been thinking that perhaps it’s time to broaden the conversation and include all three levels of government. This Canada Gov Camp will follow the successful changecamp model and seeks to foster a dialogue between thought leaders in the community, government and industry in an un-conference format. Here is a brief synopsis:

Date: early June 2010, (Welcome keynote – evening prior)

Location: TBD – Central Ottawa Location

Précis:

A number of municipalities have embraced the concepts of open government and government 2.0. There have been a number of community driven events where interested individuals have come together to progress the thinking in this area and explore tangible activities under the umbrella of change camps or citycamps. While interested individuals have travelled across the country to participate in these unconferences, the focus of the events have been local or community oriented. We think that these discussions are of critical importance to the future and are keen to support and encourage the conversation at a broader level. We feel that by providing an environment for a discussion at the national level, to explore the interactions between cities, provinces and the federal level, these conversations can expand and bring together all jurisdictions that support Canadian individuals and businesses. We expect that participants will explore the role of provincial and federal governments in cultivating the growth and prosperity of Canada’s vibrant communities.

Watch for more info once the location has been fully secured.

Grow Your Technology Shop with Distributed Empowerment

John.Weigelt

Published: April 13, 2010Posted in: CIO Toolbox, Open Government

CIOs continue to be under pressure to do more with less as businesses and governments look to reduce costs. With shrinking workforces and almost endless opportunities to leverage technology for the organization’s goals, what’s a CIO to do? Harnessing the creative energy of people outside of the CIO’s immediate circle of influence can help build out the capabilities to transform how you do business.

Set the Vision

How do you get hundreds or thousands of people to help you reach your goals? Clearly, reaching out individually to each and every person would be prohibitively time consuming. And then, how to manage the many questions that arise along the way? Setting a well-defined vision establishes the direction for the extended community and the common goal that the community is working towards. In the face of uncertainty, the community can return to the vision and independently perform the course corrections to arrive upon the goal. This frees the CIO from having to intervene with every individual project while allowing the adoption of the collaborative efforts of the community.

The Heath Brothers remind us what makes a good vision statement and those that perhaps are less compelling. I would simply note the advice of a past mentor of mine passed along, namely that “there’s a fine line between Vision and Hallucination.” Articulate your vision with care and the community will follow.

Empower the Community

Whether the CIO has a large distributed organization, works with a small team with relationships though peer associations or has a small team but wants to leverage the skills in the community, empowering the extended community broadens the reach of the technology shop. Many organizations have established cultures where people will actively work to shut down useful projects that are perceived to encroach on their particular turf, often spending more time to block the work than growing the capability. Not only is this negativity counterproductive, it creates a toxic environment and dampens creativity. A preferred approach is to acknowledge the work being done by others and either hitching your project to that wagon, or accelerating the project you’re working on so that the other team decides to follow you.

Having been part of both activities, I can honestly say that the latter is more constructive. After all, everyone is working towards the same vision and goals. This distributed empowerment is at the heart of the Open Government work and the associated collaborative community development. Perhaps the externally focused empowerment can be further embraced internally to allow the creativity of one group to be adopted by the others within the organization.