Washington, DC
Open Government Comments
Comments received in response to the request for comments:
Submitted on Wed, 10/30/2013 - 7:14am
Submitted by anonymous user: [10.82.43.28]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples.
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
DCPS budget data -- complete budgets for each school, including items "charged" to schools but actually Central Office expenses and a full and complete accounting of all Central Office expenditures. DCPS is the least transparent, most reflexively hostile to transparency, public entity I have ever encountered. The budget they data they release now is often intentionally misleading and incomplete.
Which document or data formats should be available for online information?
PDF and Excel
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Submitted on Fri, 11/01/2013 - 1:48pm
Submitted by anonymous user 2: [10.82.43.28]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples.
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
Would it be unhelpful if I said 'all'? The reality is that government is in place to provide services and support to citizens. We all benefit from different services. The single restaurateur next-door will have needs (liquor licenses, business license interaction) which will likely differ from my family's focus on schools and education services. Where we are the same is that taxes we generate support both needs. Data collected about us, our neighbors, our children, our businesses, is actually ours. As citizens, we can be more supportive of and collaborative with government if we have access to the same information.
Which document or data formats should be available for online information?
Whatever document is posted online (pdf for a bill, testimony, report, agenda; xls for report, analysis, results, etc.), the same information should be posted in machine readable formats, via APIs.
How might advisory committees, rulemaking, public hearings, social media or emerging technology be better used to improve decision-making?
I don't have 'data' on why efforts don't get community buy-in and input, but instinctively, I believe this is because we fail to connect with folks on key issues 'where they are'. Generally, DC has done a terrific job in the past few years of leveraging social media, live feeds of public hearings, creating advisory committees, etc to engage communities. It's unrealistic (and overwhelming) to think everyone can be reached. I'm impressed by Tracy Hughes' efforts to reach out to existing groups (like code for dc), who are actively working on open government and open data efforts.
What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decision-making and increase opportunities for citizen participation?
It's worth DC paying attention to and connecting with the Open Government Partnership http://www.opengovpartnership.org/. While government-wide efforts are important, it seems the more local efforts have the best opportunities for engaging citizens. Our interactions w/ government are much more personal at the local level. In DC, it's a shame that not everyone knows there are ANCs (or know their ANC commissioners, for that matter). It's a missed opportunity to influence and be heard. Can they be leveraged to collect feedback about issues or spread the word about DC's open gov efforts?
What are the limitations to transparency?
The biggest issue raised is privacy. OSSE's data team is experimenting with simulated data to help data crunchers work on data without compromising student privacy. The other issue is the variances around individual capacity to analyze data. The good news here is that efforts born out of groups like Code for DC or community groups like Parents and Communities for Neighborhood Schools attempts to understand and distill issues. Example: Parents and Communities for Neighborhood Schools took the Catania Bills, simplified them, and communicate potential impact to a network of parent communities across the city (http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/20359/group-critiques-catania-education-proposals/). Code for DC is crunching education data via Open Schools (http://edu.codefordc.org/) to help make the lottery process easier for families. In all cases, these limitations do not mean data cannot or should not be made open.
What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?
The usual silos that exist in bureaucracies. Opening data is not just helpful to citizens, it's helpful to government itself. DGS, OSSE, DCPS, and DCPCS could certainly benefit from sharing facility data (inventory, plans for development, budgets). Making this data open to the public only supports how citizens can also pitch in. Example from my children's own school include a parent who is an architect drafting plans for renovating playground and contacting vendors to research pricing options. To do this efficiently, she needed access to budget, priorities, playground details (size), permit requirements. This planning and research is a ton of work the city saved in resources. Having all of that information open would also make it easier for other schools to benefit from local resources (as having access to this data breaks down barriers to being helpful).
What changes in training or hiring of personnel would enhance innovation?
In all cases, building data analysis capacity and providing staff with tools would help DC staff in making decisions (especially when resources are limited or issues are complex). Creating some kind of program where DC employees (particularly those who are not client/public facing) have to engage with residents would also go a long way to helping them understand what the problems DC is working on actually look like 'on the ground'
What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of open government policies?
Here are the open gov partnership's requirements: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/how-it-works/requirements and action plans: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/how-it-works/action-plans, in case this is helpful. Off the top of my head, things I would look for are signs that DC agencies are collaborating among themselves, signs that residents are aware of information (# of data hits, comments, questions), journalist use of data in describing local issues (connect with data post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/data/datapost.html or with atlantic cities emily badger http://www.theatlanticcities.com/authors/emily-badger/, who focus on data-driven reporting). Also, set targets (how about 100%) for all reports from DC agencies being issued w/ the underlying charts and data published in reusable and machine-readable fashions (xls, csv, w/ APIs).
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Submitted on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 8:43am
Submitted by anonymous user 3: [10.82.43.26]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples.
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
GIS data is great, but needs to be up-to-date. Time sensitive information is usually up to a year out of date. For instance the schools layer is still from 2010-2011 as of 11/8/13. There should be a focus on keeping data current, otherwise, it's not useful.
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Submitted on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 1:51pm
Submitted by anonymous user 4: [10.82.43.26]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples. --
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
The contents of the FP300 filed to justify tax exempt property owned by non-profits but not used for the non-profit mission.
What changes in training or hiring of personnel would enhance innovation?
Train personnel to give complete answers such as not just that something is under study by a committee but when the study will be completed and the date it will be available to the public or the reason it will not be available.
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Submitted on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 1:53pm
Submitted by anonymous user 5: [10.82.43.26]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples. --
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
Real property tax paid for property used for retail purposes in multiuse buildings.
What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?
too much information requires a FOIA to gain access
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Submitted on Tue, 12/10/2013 - 7:17pm
Submitted by anonymous user 6: [10.82.43.28]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples. --
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
DCPS/DCPCS enrollment & budget data including how much money is spent at the DCPS Central Office. Enable apples-to-apples comparisons of school budgets across various schools and easily trackable year over year changes. Each school's % in-bounds, % through the feeder pattern vs OOB lottery enrollments. Retention and attrition data by grade and school. DCPS contracting information, particularly large contracts like their food service contract with Chartwells. DCPS/PCS expulsion and mid-year withdrawal rates. Actual poverty measures for all schools ("community eligibility" schools make FARM% not useful way of comparing poverty rates across schools).
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Submitted on Fri, 01/03/2014 - 8:23am
Submitted by anonymous user 7: [10.82.43.27]
Submitted values are:
--Comments on transparency and open government may relate to government-wide or agency-specific policy, project ideas and relevant examples. --
What government information should be more readily available online or more easily searched?
We need more data on schools, particularly on the movement of families between schools and between the public and charter schools. A system of choice will only be helpful if we better understand what parents are choosing when and why. His information needs to be as detailed as possible to be informative, not aggregated. We also need to know more about how people move they the designated feeder patterns. All I can find on my school is how many kids are in boundary, when what matters most is how many children are following their designated feeder pattern, but that info is impossible to find. Budget data is also critical. The challenge is in presenting budget data that can be understood by lay people but with enough details to be really meaningful. Dcps' budget is almost impossible to understand even for elected officials and city staff. That's a huge problem and it makes clear decision making and citizen engagement in decision making next to impossible. Budget data, like school data, should be available in a detailed, searchable format that allows individuals to search and analyze independently. Elected officials and citizens should all have access to the same open searchable data on all city budgets.
Which document or data formats should be available for online information?
All data should be searchable, so people can ask specific questions and analyze the data themselves. It should also be possible to map data so you can see what's happening visually. Budgets should be available on line in an easy to understand format, but with all details available for searching and analyzing.
How might advisory committees, rulemaking, public hearings, social media, or emerging technology be better used to improve decision-making?
You need to make it easier for people to participate in public hearings. Why not create an automated system for signing up that assigns you a time slot and texts you updates to the schedule during the day so that people know if they'll be expected sooner o later. The current system is difficult to sign up for and requires you to take an entire day and night off of work and family time in order to give three minute testimony that council members may or may not even be present for.
What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decision-making and increase opportunities for citizen participation?
Better data sharing and more open data sources. If all citizens had access to the same budget data ha elected officials had access to, and if they had online tools for searching and analyzing that data, it would transform public and citizen engagement in public decision making.
What are the limitations to transparency?
Individual, personal data available for others to search. But here is no limit to aggregated data and what should be available.
What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of open government policies?
Excellent questions. Glad you're asking them. Too complex for me to to respond to in a survey.