Recovery.org Transforms Government Spending Transparency

You may not like President Obama's economic stimulus package, but you should at least like President Obama's use of the Web to account for that stimulus money. Recovery.gov isn't just another government website. According to Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board chairman and Inspector General Earl Devaney, the stimulus-tracking website has permanently and positively transformed the concept of government transparency:

...it's transformational. I think that the government is going to do business like this in the future. This is probably the biggest experiment going on right now, and they'll take the good and build on it and we will probably learn a lot of lessons as we go along [Earl Devaney, quoted by Chad Vander Veen, "Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Federal Recovery Board, Talks About Building and Running Recovery.gov," Government Technology, 2010.06.15].

But wasn't there some ruckus last fall about recovery money being spent in non-existent Congressional districts? Yes... and that ruckus wouldn't have happened without the transparency of Recovery.org:

...the downside to transparency is often embarrassment. When we went live [with stimulus spending data] in October, there was a lot of outcry about the data. Some of the data was bad. There are 99 data elements that the recipients [of stimulus funds] had to send in to FederalReporting.gov and get right. One of the big snafus was that turns out not many of the recipients knew what congressional district they live in. So they just put in two numbers, they didn't care if they were the right numbers because the system allowed them to move on to the next question. Well, when we had a database full of incorrect congressional districts, that didn't make Congress very happy. There's a technical fix to that; we tied the ZIP codes to the congressional district, and if the ZIP code entered by the user doesn't match the congressional district, the user is told there is a problem. That corrected that problem in the next reporting period, so that data got a lot better [Devaney in Vander Veen, 2010].

Devaney sees himself and a couple dozen other inspectors general now backed up by thousands and thousands of reporters, bloggers, and regular citizens searching Recovery.gov for information on local projects and eager to print critical news stories or hit the "report fraud" button if they see something questionable. He says the stimulus money has as much potential for waste and abuse as past government spending programs. The difference is that it's a lot easier for us to find out about it, alert the overseeing agencies, and stanch that waste and abuse.

All thanks to a website and citizen participation... and an Administration that understands the value of both.

IgniteSD #2 Lights up Madison Main Street

This one's for you, Officer.... I hope it was another quiet night shift.

Hey, what was all that traffic on Main Street...

...on a sunny Tuesday night...

...making it hard to get to the counter at the coffee house?

Oh, just a bunch of people coming out to hear some visual aid speeches...

...at the best darn semi-self-organizing intellectual entertainment in the state!

IgniteSD #2 packed Mochavino here in Madison last night. Fifty-some people squeezed in, folks ranging in age from my own Divine Miss K (still in the single-digits) to my octogenarian neighbor and comrade Gerry Lange. People came from at least five counties (and some new friends, by more complicated life journeys, from Minnesota and New Hampshire!) for coffee, wine, conversation, and enlightenment.

IgniteSD's second program was filled with the Unexpected™:

1. Jon Hunter spoke of his passion for sailing (ah ha! that Madison logo does speak to us!). I learned that sails work by Bernoulli's principle: it's not push, but sideways lift!
2. Megan Nelson explained why she likes running marathons better than selling insurance.
3. Heather Mangan told us how whittling your life down to two suitcases helps you see what matters (I prefer one frame pack myself—right, Toby?—but the idea stands).
4. Chris Francis touted the upcoming first-in-the-nation White Night arts event, happening right here in Madison July 1.
5. Joe Bartmann discussed the joys of worm ranching and compost tea... and offered free livestock!
6. Kent Thompson shared bits of his experiences from eleven years of medical mission trips to Tanzania. He got back from his latest trip hardly 24 hours before speaking at IgniteSD #2.
7. Jael Thorpe extolled the virtue of being one's own boss, running for office, and not wasting time waiting for things to happen.

I'd have snapped pix of the speakers, but I was busy emcee-ing... and enjoying every presentation!

I rhapsodized about the community-building value of Ignite events after the first IgniteSD in Brookings last month. I feel the same way tonight. At Ignite, anybody who wants to speak can speak. People want to come and listen, not because the speakers are famous or rich or powerful, but because they are us. Ignite brings South Dakotans together to say things that matter. We need more of that...

...and we'll get more! Organizer John Meyer says we can expect IgniteSD #3 to take place in Sioux Falls in June! He said he was thinking holding it at an outside venue... but last night's 40-mile-per-hour gusts reminded him that keeping this event indoors is just fine. Stay tuned to IgniteSD.com (and this very blog) for updates!

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Update: IgniteSD #2 gets mention on KJAM as well.

Daugaard Promotes E-Government... but for Consumers or Citizens?

Seeing Dennis Daugaard is making a campaign stop at the Madison 9-12 meeting next week reminds me that I still need to finish reading his big economic plan (now nicely available in plain text as well as PDF). I've had some fun picking through some of the good, the same-old same-old, the stinky, the wrong, and the explosive parts of the plan.

Now I get to a part that I can't help but give props to. Daugaard's plan includes a plank on digital government, or e-government. Daugaard notes that Game Fish and Parks, the university system, and the state legislature are already making good use of the Internet.

...But too many of our interactions with the state are still paper-based and require a trip to a state office. I will inventory the most common interactions that people and businesses have with state government. The state will create “step-by-step” online portals to guide users to the correct website or state office. Ideally, users should be able to complete common interactions with state government entirely online.

Online services are significantly more convenient – they can be accessed at any time and from any place. They can also result in considerable cost savings – although they require an upfront investment, they will lead to increased efficiency [Daugaard campaign text, 2010].

I don't think I can take seriously any candidate, from local auditor up to governor and president, who doesn't recognize the urgent need to rewire government with the greatest information technology ever created. (Hey, Governor Rounds, are you on e-mail yet?)

My only quibble with the Daugaard proposal is that it appears to be stuck in the mindset that views government as a business and citizens as consumers. The Web is great for services like purchasing licenses, paying taxes, and reserving campsites. Improving and increasing such services online can indeed make government more efficient.

But we mustn't (and Daugaard mustn't) forget that government is not simply some office to which we pay money and from which we receive services. The government is us. Government is a system we design and participate in. The Internet increases our ability to participate in government on a regular basis, to act not simply as consumers but as engaged citizens.

So sure, more license tags online are great. Now, Mr. Daugaard, how about using the Internet to promote participatory budgeting, as they've done in Brazil, Germany, the UK, and even Iowa? How about inviting the public to handle legislative redistricting, as Ohio did last year? How about...

...but wait a minute. What am I doing using the Internet to give politicians ideas on how to engage citizens in government affairs? Aren't the politicians supposed to come up with all the answers and then convince us to buy them? ;-)

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p.s.: Mike Knutson hits on a related theme: Let's think of the Internet not simply as a way to provide services to consumers, but a way to engage citizens in deliberation and decision-making.

Update 15:10 CDT: Read more on civics and the Web from Axel Bruns, who reports on Andy Williamson's keynote from the 2010 Conference on E-Democracy in Krems, Austria:

So, what is it that we do, and how can we do it better? As societies, we have shifted from a culture of community to a culture of individualism; we are no longer just citizens but also (and perhaps primarily) consumers - including of government or democratic services. This is a problem - our behaviour as citizens should still be different from our behaviour as consumers, and if governments treat us simply as the latter, this undermines the democratic process. This applies especially also to online government services, of course [Axel Bruns, notes on Andy Williamson's EDEM 2010 keynote address, "Towards Real Citizen Participation in e-Democracy," Snurblog, 2010.05.06].

Blogging as Invitation to Participate: My Five Minutes' Worth

Why do I like blogging so much? Because it gave me a great topic for the first Ignite talk in South Dakota!

Cory Allen Heidelberger, Ignite SD #1, Brookings, SD, April 21, 2010 (from Ignite SD on Vimeo).

9-12ers Bring Nelson, Curd, Howie to Madison Tonight

Memo to Nelson campaign: brief out your response to my cousin's imminent question: "So what do you think of full-reserve banking?"

The local Glenn Beck fan club is hosting three political candidates at its Good Friday meeting, one of whom actually stands a chance of winning. The Madison 9-12 Project is hosting a conversation with Secretary of State Chris Nelson, District 12 State Representative R. Blake Curd, and District 30 State Senator Gordon Howie to Madison tonight, 6 p.m., VFW.

Gubernatorial Candidate Gordon Howie will be attendance. He will be talking about his candidacy and the South Dakota Health Care Freedom Act.

U.S. House candidates Chris Nelson and Blake Curd will also be there. I am sure they are eager to shake babies and kiss hands... or something like that... [Jason Bjorklund, meeting announcement, Madison 9-12 Project calendar].

One clarification: the Health Care Freedom bill is Tea Bag Republican Senator Howie's third attempt to nullify health care reform by declaring federal law invalid in South Dakota. (Next step: abolishing the Civil Rights Act and expropriating Ellsworth AFB, to be renamed Fort Sumter.) 9-12 organizer Jason Bjorklund is organizing a petition drive to put Howie's twice-failed legislation on the November ballot as an initiated law, and Howie and the 9-12ers will be stumping for signers tonight.

I am pleased to see the 9-12ers advancing from raging and flag-waving to canvassing for real civic action. Too bad their first project would cost the state a half million dollars in futile litigation.

But hey, they're also giving out free hot dogs! Come eat, come meet and greet! Tonight, Madison VFW, 6 p.m.

Online Crackerbarrel: Questions Due Today!

The Madville Times Online Crackerbarrel is taking questions through suppertime today! Submit your questions today for District 8 legislators Rep. Mitch Fargen, Rep. Gerry Lange, and Sen. Russell Olson. (If you're from another district and want to submit a question for any other legislators, feel free!)

This evening I will compile the questions and e-mail them to our local legislators (and any others you might specify) tonight. They'll take the weekend to consider, compose, and return their responses. I'll organize and post those responses right here next Wednesday.

Remember, we still don't have a state budget, so there's lots to ask our elected officials about, and plenty of chance to make your voice heard on what you think they should prioritize in the budget. So submit your questions and comments now!

Madville Times Online Crackerbarrel: Post Your Questions by Thursday!

The Madville Times online crackerbarrel is on! We already have three questions in the hopper (on a Sunday, no less!). Representative Gerry Lange was the first to get back to me, and he's committed to answering your online questions about what's happening in Pierre. (I eagerly await confirmation from Rep. Fargen and Senator Olson. [Update 15:10 CDT: Rep. Fargen says he'll try to get to the questions over the weekend! Whoo-hoo! We've got a quorum!])

Our legislators still have to finish their biggest job, the state budget, so now's the time to ask questions. Submit your questions and comments between now and Thursday. I'll forward the questions to our District 8 delegation (and to any other legislators you'd like to ask questions of), then post their responses the next week. Make your voice heard!

A note on civility: the questions submitted so far are good! I hope you will all follow the same tone of civility. Remember, I'm hosting this online crackerbarrel because our legislators may not have time for a traditional face-to-face crackerbarrel. But we should still speak as if we were looking our elected officials and each other in the eye. That also means speaking by name—no anonymous comments allowed! (Remember: our legislators really dislike anonymous comments. ;-) )

Click here to participate in the online crackerbarrel!

Online Crackerbarrel: Ask Your Legislators about the Budget!

Update 2010.03.24:
Legislator Responses
here and here!

The Madville Times is hosting an online crackerbarrel to give residents of District 8 an opportunity to ask their legislators important questions before they return to Pierre for Budget/Veto Day on March 29. Usually there's not much to discuss before Veto Day, but our legislators have yet to decide on budget cuts and pass the most important piece of legislation they consider, the state budget. They need our input, and you need to hear from them where they stand on budget priorities.

After two months in Pierre, our legislators may be too busy catching up at their day jobs to hold many public meetings, so I offer this crackerbarrel as a convenience for legislators and citizens alike. Here's how it will work:

1. First, citizens, submit your questions here in the comment section. I'll take questions here through Thursday, March 18, at 5 p.m.
2. My main focus is to get questions for our District 8 legislators: Senator Russell Olson, Representative Mitch Fargen, and Representative Gerry Lange. However, if you live in another district and want to submit a public question for your legislator, fire away.
3. On Thursday around suppertime, I will e-mail Russ, Mitch, and Gerry the questions submitted here. I'll also send an e-mail notice to any other legislator to whom questions are directed.
   
4. Legislators will have until Tuesday night, March 23, to send me their responses by e-mail. (Legislators can reply directly in the comment section if they want; I offer the e-mail route simply as a way to verify identity.)
   
5. I will compile the legislators' e-mail responses and post them in full, verbatim, here on the Madville Times by the end of the day Wednesday, March 24.
6. If further discussion ensues in the comment sections, that's great!
   

Big decisions remain for the South Dakota Legislature: make your voice heard! Submit your questions here, and let's see what our elected officials have to say about our budget and our shared future.

New Poll! Name Madison's Arts Center!

The Madison Area Arts Council is conducting a poll to pick a new name for the Community Arts Center. Not that there's anything wrong with "Community Arts Center"—that's the current name and one of the options in the poll, for you lovers of the status quo. But some folks (at least seven, as of my current reading of the poll) think that name sounds a bit generic, and too much like the "Community Center," Madison's wonderfully successful exercise in fitness and socialist job creation.

We used to have the Firehouse Art Gallery; names floating about in the poll are BrickHouse and FreightHouse, but the poll is taking other suggestions. Be creative, be snappy, be contextual! One word is probably better than more, but maybe you can surprise me. Think of a name that will distinguish the facility and fix it in visitors minds.

By the way, notice that the Madison Area Arts Council website is one of the only websites in town actively seeking public participation. Extra kudos for that! Not one of Madison's other "community" websites does that. Boggles me that CommissionSoup/Bulldog Media hasn't figured out how to build a comment section for the city yet.

GOP SD Budget Plan: Big on Cuts, Short on Citizen Participation

Well, at least we won't be arguing over cutting public radio (or will we?)....

Our men in Pierre, David Montgomery and Bob Mercer, provide excellent coverage of the Republican plan to balance the state budget. Montgomery is also fast on the draw covering the bad blood bubbling openly between Governor Rounds and his fellow Republicans in the Legislature. Meanwhile, Democrats are hanging back, watching the fun and reminding us that they proposed about two-thirds of GOP's budget ideas last November.

I will agree with Governor Rounds on at least one point:

Said Rounds: “We have been available and have offered every single week to participate and to discuss the budget. We have been told that it was a secret and we have been told that when they were ready they would come visit with us.”

Rounds sharply criticized the Republican budget, saying it was “not the appropriate way to build a budget” and would have a “devastating” impact on the Board of Regents and other programs [David Montgomery, "Gloves Come off for Rounds, Legislators," Pierre Capital Journal: Behind Government Lines, 2010.03.04].

Keeping the governor of your own party out of the loop on your state budget plan sounds almost dysfunctional. What bugs me more is that this budget plan was kept secret from 99.999% of the rest of us, too.

I've talked previously, here on the blog and in academic work, about the importance of citizen participation in government budget processes. Government openness and transparency are perhaps nowhere more important than in the process of deciding how to spend our money. The Republicans' hunkering down behind closed doors to set priorities for everyone in South Dakota diminishes our sense of trust and ownership, just as it does here in Madison, where our city commission, Chamber, economic development corp, school administration... well, heck, darn near every public official approaches policy decisions as if they have to be kept secret and handled strictly by a few privileged insiders.

Other places are finding ways to involve citizens in public budgeting. The city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, started a wave of participatory budgeting experiments in Brazil in 1989. It's not a perfect model—you need to make an extra effort to make sure the process isn't dominated by wealthy folks and to reach out to citizens in poverty who are often shut out of public affairs. But is a messy public process any less perfect than a few puffed up legislators playing budget kings in secret?

Secret and state government don't belong in the same sentence. The budget belongs to all of us. We should have all ideas out on the table from the start, open for discussion by everyone. Yes, that means that when an idea like cutting SDPB comes up, some of us will raise hell. But some of us will also engage in honest conversation and make some progress toward uncovering public sentiment.

We have the tools available to open up the budget and pretty much everything else our Legislature handles to public discussion. Our legislators can and should still make the final decisions. But this Web-thingy makes it possible for them to open up the process for every citizen to contribute and debate ideas. A commitment to democracy makes it obligatory.

Blog Heaven: Obama Admin Releases Huge Database to Public

You want government transparency? President Obama's got your transparency right here, with a huge upload of public data to the Web:

The Transportation Department will post ratings for 2,400 lines of tires for consumer safety based on tire tread wear, traction performance and temperature resistance. The Labor Department will release the names of 80,000 workplaces where injuries and illness have occurred over the past 10 years.

The Medicare database has previously been available for a fee of $100 on CD ROM. Under the Obama initiative, it can be downloaded free, providing detailed breakdowns of payments for Medicare services. The Medicare data will be sortable by the type of medical service provided.

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database rates car seats for ease of use, evaluating the simplicity of instruction sheets, labels, vehicle installation features and securing the child.

"We're democratizing data," White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said Thursday in an interview [Pete Yost, "Government Posting Wealth of Data to Internet," AP via Miami Herald, 2010.01.22].

The Medicare database—once $100, now free, and in Excel and Google-Maps-ready format (well, only csv/txt for now, but they're working on it)! And the LAIC wanted $250 for its measly one-binder housing study? Take a transparency memo, Dwaine!

The Obama Administration still has a long way to go on improving government openness (expect the comment section to fill with the right's favorite talking points). But making these gobs of government data so freely available is a huge step forward. Full and easy access to government data is a necessary step toward full and easy participation in government.

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Update 2010.01.28: But the President still needs to crack some skulls down through the bureaucracy. His people are still fighting more FOIA lawsuits than his predecessor did.

SD-DOT Surveys South Dakotans on Transportation Needs

Holy cow! Pierre asks for your advice!

KELO reports that the South Dakota Department of Transportation is hosting an online survey to get our input on what we should set as our long-term transportation priorities in South Dakota. Expect John Goeman and Russ Olson to call all their friends and flood the server with entries from Madison saying the most important change South Dakota needs is four lanes on Highway 34 west from I-29!

The survey includes one of my favorite participatory exercises, the mock budget, where you have to divide a hundred dollars into actual categories of spending. Of course, such an exercise needs a little more context: for real participatory budgeting, folks need some idea of the current spending benchmarks before they can offer numbers that offer guidance for future spending. The survey takes comments; the survey would be even better if it published those comments and and allowed respondents to see and discuss each other's answers. (The state's web dudes should also program the "Total" field to automatically add the responses to make it easier to keep track of that $100.)

As you would expect, I went online and told them to make more room for bicyclists, walkers, horses, and other alternative transportation. I also told them to look for ways to restore the good old passenger rail system. South Dakotans used to ride trains back and forth all over the place. Commuters, think how much more productive you'd be if you could spend that hour each day sitting on a train concentrating on your laptop instead of the highway.

But hey, don't let us blog-hippies get all the votes—take the survey yourself, tell Pierre what sort of transportation we need to work on!

Public Gets Involved in Lake Herman Sanitary District Budget -- Mission Accomplished!

Remember what I said about the dismaying apathy around my lovely Lake Herman when it comes to political matters?

Well, we may have shaken some activism loose. The Lake Herman Sanitary District budget process was a success, drawing a dozen residents to participate by calling, writing, or showing up at the two (not on, but two!) meetings we held to discuss and set the budget. A dozen may not sound like much to you, but in a neighborhood with maybe just a couple hundred registered voters, that's like having 250 people show up at a Madison City Commission meeting (if only!).

You can read the press release on the process at the district website; suffice it to say I'm pleased that citizens took the time to say what they want this humble little branch of their local government to do.

Now, if we could just get someone to run for that vacant seat...

Brookings and Howard Referenda: Votes Swing on Transparency

The results of this month's referenda in Brookings and Howard offer a lesson for all politicians and organizations on the value of transparency. Last week Brookings voters reversed by a 3-to-1 margin a Brookings County Commission decision to buy and raze two houses in the city's historic district and blight the area with a parking lot. This week Howard voters approved by a nearly identical margin the city's decision to vacate parts of Farmers Avenue and an alley to make way for the Rural Learning Center's new conference facility.

The difference in outcomes is due in part to the difference in the projects. The Maroney Center will actually improve the community, bringing Howard 18 more jobs, increased visitor traffic, positive publicity, and increased economic and cultural activity. Another parking lot in Brookings would only facilitate more driving, increase the urban heat island, and trigger runaway global warming.

But fears of planetary extinction probably figured less in voters' minds than the way in which each project was sold to the local electorates. The Brookings County Commission caught heck for making its decision about the proporety purchase and the parking plan without much public discussion. Howard's Rural Learning Center has made great efforts from the beginning not just to inform but to involve Miner County residents in their plans for improving Howard, including a four-month design process with numerous day-long public listening and design sessions.

The takeaway for community leaders: Operate behind closed doors, and the public likely will vote you down. Open the doors, let everyone participate, and your project will fly.