Gov2.0 Expo

Updates: oldest first | newest first

• 8:34 a.m. #

  Our schedule for the day: Five minutes per speaker, not 10 seconds more. Essentially, this is an entire day of lightning talks. Stay tuned.

• 8:39 a.m. #

  Five categories of #gov20: Government as Process, Provider, Protector, Peacekeeper, Partner. More than 200 talks submitted when the call went out a couple months ago.

• 8:40 a.m. #

  We're also finding out the winner of @sunlightlabs Apps for America 2 contest. Finalists are still campaigning outside. Impressive work.

• 8:45 a.m. #

  Tim O'Reilly coming on stage for today's keynote. This has really become his thing lately.

• 8:45 a.m. #

  "As I came to Washington and learned more about government, I'm really amazed at how hard you all work," O'Reilly says. Mostly government crowd here.

• 8:46 a.m. #

  Web2.0 was more than a conference. It was more of an idea. It was a renaissance of the web after the dotcom crash built by those that survived.

• 8:47 a.m. #

  Key to web2.0: All successful sites "harness collective intelligence," or "data is the 'Intel Inside'"

• 8:48 a.m. #

  So, what's Gov2.0? TO notes that Obama harnessed social media to win the White House, and uses the web to talk to people. But there must be more, he says.

• 8:51 a.m. #

  "Government should be convening people." It's a means of collective action. - O'Reilly

• 8:53 a.m. #

  "All of these web services are web frameworks, and users add to them all the time."

• 8:54 a.m. #

  The idea behind government, as with the web, Tim O'Reilly says, is that individuals are empowered to add value and build on the platforms provided by others.

• 8:55 a.m. #

  Tim Berners-Lee didn't build the web, didn't write the trillion pages now online, but the created a way for others to add to it.

• 8:56 a.m. #

  Google, Amazon, eBay figured out the web first. We forget how Amazon beat other retailers: they helped users helped themselves.

• 8:58 a.m. #

  When Amazon had extra bandwidth, it started leasing out computing power as AWS. This is now a self-service business itself (which I use).

• 9 a.m. #

  "It's not just harvesting users to leave comments. It's getting them to do work for you on your infrastructure."

• 9 a.m. #

  "This is a bridge between the Democratic view of government services and the Republican idea of individualism."

• 9:01 a.m. #

  On craigslist: "What's refreshing about craigslist is how little they do."

• 9:04 a.m. #

  Big craigslist lesson: If people are good an needs are simple, less is more.

• 9:04 a.m. #

  The old (current) way of looking at government is as a vending machine: put in tax money and services come out. But people want more and more, which raises cost and is less responsive.

• 9:05 a.m. #

  Instead, look at Data.gov as the government's first SDK. Gov2.0 means government becomes a platform that enables the public to build the services people need on government's infrastructure.

• 9:06 a.m. #

  Here's an early example: USAF put up GPS satellites for their own use, then let the public use the data. Now we're seeing a whole industry built on location-based services.

• 9:07 a.m. #

  There's a danger here: Government needs to make sure data is available and can't be taken away, as happened with an app in San Francisco.

• 9:08 a.m. #

  On participation: Protesting and other usual involvement is like shaking the government vending machine. What if government simply convened people who could do the work themselves? Call it DIY on a civic scale.

• 9:09 a.m. #

  "When the best leader leads, the people say, 'We did it ourselves,'" says Lao Tzu.

• 9:11 a.m. #

  Here's a practical question: Should .gov sites use social media? and which ones? and how?

  OK, that's three questions. Thoughts?

• 9:13 a.m. #

  Vending machine government is most useful for repetitive services: trash collecting and such. Rapidly changing situations, such as the military or sudden spikes in need, that fits the platform model, O'Reilly says.

• 9:15 a.m. #

  On maps: Microsoft was ahead of Google, but wanted to control partnerships ("a salesman will call you"). Google caught up and got ahead by opening their API.

  OK, that's the end of O'Reilly's keynote.

• 9:18 a.m. #

  Steve Radick's up next, talking about Government as a Process.

• 9:19 a.m. #

  Ah, the Santa Cruz people. Close to my heart. "It's a bit like living on the forest moon of Endor, except we have the best surfing on the planet."

• 9:20 a.m. #

  This year, Santa Cruz just ran out of money. "We were, we are, functionally bankrupt." The city is known for, and often governed by, it's loudest citizens. The quiet middle was crowded out.

• 9:21 a.m. #

  "The lunatics run the asylum." Ya.

• 9:21 a.m. #

  I didn't realize @robknight was in on building the Santa Cruz city portal. Cool.

• 9:22 a.m. #

  "We were hearing the voice of the community, and it was reasonable."

• 9:23 a.m. #

  "We were able to get roughly 8% of our community involved in the site." That's about 5,000 people, I think.

• 9:25 a.m. #

  That was Peter Koht from the City of Santa Cruz. Will see if I can grab him later.

• 9:26 a.m. #

  Chris Willey from DC up now: "We're teaching people to fish, instead of providing fish."

• 9:26 a.m. #

  On some projects, "an 80% solution is OK," because we don't have to think about scaling and all features.

• 9:27 a.m. #

  Business drives development, and apps get used right away.

• 9:28 a.m. #

  Chris Willey's presentation is very much a technical how-to on agile government. Some of this is going right over my head.

• 9:29 a.m. #

  Up next: Joan McIntyre (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) talking about A-Space.

• 9:31 a.m. #

  They're building environments where analysts collaborate and trends are broadly available to all. This looks really cool.

• 9:32 a.m. #

  Effectively, this is a social network for intel analysts where they can talk amongst themselves, build communities and share information.

• 9:33 a.m. #

  Early lesson, keep users and their needs in mind. Analysts control the environment. Start small and scale large. "We have to succeed. We owe it to the American people."

• 9:36 a.m. #

  Now, Tina Cariola from TSA:

  IdeaFactory harnesses the power of social media to empower all employees to develop, promote, and improve ideas for programs, processes, and technologies and share them, without filter, to the entire TSA community. Employees post ideas, rate and provide comments that improve the visibility of ideas, and communicate with the rest of their user community – and with headquarters.

• 9:37 a.m. #

  IdeaFactory went from concept to launch in six weeks.

• 9:38 a.m. #

  Asked employees for ideas, then recognized contributions.

• 9:38 a.m. #

  Here's one idea: set X-ray machines to idle when not being used. Simple, right? Big money saver.

• 9:39 a.m. #

  "Our employees are not in front of a computer," so TSA uses posters and other ways to get news out.

• 9:40 a.m. #

  "The IdeaFactory is a program, not a website. It will not transform your workforce magically."

• 9:42 a.m. #

  Next up, SpaceBook from NASA:

  Emma Antunes, Web Manager from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, will share lessons learned from Spacebook, an enterprise social network developed for NASA. While social networks like Spacebook are new and exciting tools to help us get our work done, they bring with them impact to the organization. Emma will talk about the change management challenges she's had to overcome to implement Spacebook. Read more.

• 9:42 a.m. #

  NASA's business is innovation and discovery. So... innovate and discover.

• 9:44 a.m. #

  SpaceBook was about getting people to work together, help internal communication: http://spacebook.nasa.gov

• 9:45 a.m. #

  All the fears about social media at work are the same as they were with email 20 years ago. (yes, email is that old).

• 9:46 a.m. #

  Now, everybody publishes. "We've taught webmasters to publish, now we need to teach everyone else to."

• 9:46 a.m. #

  "If we focus on the people, then the technology decisions are so much easier."

• 9:48 a.m. #

  Panel discussion time. Curious to hear some ideas bounce around among this group.

• 9:50 a.m. #

  Peter Koht: "When you got through the usual channels--op eds and letters to the editor--the same 200 people participate." Santa Cruz needed more input.

• 9:52 a.m. #

  On A-Space, the idea was "Start small. Fail cheap." Not something that happens a lot in government.

  "We wanted to get something out quick and get reactions from users." There were three versions before launch, each progressively better.

• 9:55 a.m. #

  "There's huge bureaucratic and technological problems" with trying to implement a grand vision all at the same time, says Joan McIntyre (Office of the Director of National Intelligence).

• 9:56 a.m. #

  DC did Apps for Democracy earlier this year, but may do more collaborative, less competitive projects in the future. Would be interesting to see.

• 9:58 a.m. #

  Good question here: How does DC engage its poorer population that doesn't have access to technology. "The more services government offers online, the more we have a responsibility to make sure all citizens have access," says Chris Willey.

• 9:59 a.m. #

  Another good question: "How do you enable government as a platform when you're behind the firewall?" Talking about internal tools at NASA, TSA.

• 10 a.m. #

  "It's about enabling our workforce," says Emma Kolstad Antunes of NASA.

• 10:01 a.m. #

  Tina Cariola: TSA is talking about expanding IdeaFactory to the rest of Homeland Security.

• 10:03 a.m. #

  Good line: "One size doesn't fit all, but several sizes may fit most." I think that was Emma Antunes of NASA.

• 10:04 a.m. #

  Joan McIntyre on reaching outside the intelligence community: We needed outside ideas.

• 10:05 a.m. #

  Peter Koht, on local governments: When the economy gets rough, people want to see their government being as efficient as possible.

• 10:06 a.m. #

  Chris Willey echos: Regionalism is really just as important as localism. This really is a region. "We're a state government, too." That got applause.

• 10:07 a.m. #

  "Leaders happen at every level." If it's too top-down, people resist, but you also need buy-in from the top.

• 10:11 a.m. #

  The big surprise, from both DC CTO and A-Space, was how quickly they caught on. People like to collaborate.

• 10:13 a.m. #

  Some people are afraid of social networks. "They were falling all over themselves to imagine the worst that could happen," says NASA's Emma Antunes.

• 10:16 a.m. #

  OK, that's the end of the first section, 70ish updates later.